Biodiversity conservation and the Brazilian Forest Code : small-scale farmers and law compliance in Southern Brazil

Abstract: Various strategies may be used to promote biodiversity conservation on private land and support conservation at the landscape level. Brazil has had a law that addresses this issue to some extent since 1934. It is called Forest Code (FC), and has been revised twice, in 1965 and 2012. One of the reasons that led to its most recent revision was insufficient compliance among landowners. Another argument was that it was difficult to conciliate agricultural practices and conservation needs as established by the FC in small rural properties. A case study was carried out in the municipality of Arroio do Tigre, state of Rio Grande do Sul, to investigate factors that influenced small-scale farmers’ motivations to comply with the FC. Semi-structured interviews with small-scale farmers were carried out, and data was examined through thematic analysis. Findings demonstrate that diverse factors affected their compliance decisions by influencing their instrumental, normative, and legitimacy motivations for compliance. These factors are enforcement of the law, socioeconomic conditions, perceptions about forests, group behavior, distribution of costs and benefits, and contradictory governmental policies. Awareness about regulations also played a role. Strategies that could support increased conformity with the FC, as well as the possibility of the 2012 FC achieving greater compliance, and considerations on implications of the latest version of the law for biodiversity conservation are discussed.