Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística

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• -Background#AmazôniaLegal

Background

The term Legal Amazon was only incorporated in the most recent legislation, such as Law no. 11,952, of June 25, 2009, and the Forestry Code (Law no. 12,651, of May 25, 2012), and it is not explicitly included in the laws that established the Brazilian Amazon area for the purpose of public policies in the previous decades. The use of the adjective "legal" is to distinguish the division of the Amazon region by biome or river basin established by legislation, as well as of the International Amazon. According to Art. 43 of the Federal Constitution, the Union is in charge of creating the Legal Amazon and can articulate its action in the same social and geoeconomic complex, aiming at its development and at the reduction of regional inequalities. For that matter, the Legal Amazon was established aiming at defining the geographic delimitation of the political region that will attract tax incentives to foster its regional development.

The Legal Amazon is divided into two parts: Western Amazon, comprising the states of Amazonas, Acre, Rondônia and Roraima, and Eastern Amazon, comprising the states of Pará, Maranhão, Amapá, Tocantins and Mato Grosso. The Western Amazon was mentioned for the first time in Decree-Law no. 291, of February 28, 1967, and ratified in Decree-Law no. 356, of August 15, 1968.

The establishment of the Brazilian Amazon area was always associated to the creation of public offices and the implementation of governmental policies. The first definition dates back to 1953, made by Law no. 1,806, of January 6, 1953, which created the Superintendence of the Economic Valorization Plan of the Amazon - SPVEA and established its action area, encompassing the regions comprising the states of Pará and Amazonas, the federal territories of Acre, Amapá, Guaporé and Rio Branco, and also part of the state of Mato Grosso to the north of Parallel 16, part of the state of Goiás to the north of Parallel 13 and part of Maranhão to the west of Meridian 44.  It was a geopolitical construction aiming at establishing an area to apply economic and territorial policies to incorporate the north vastness of the Brazilian territory into the socioeconomic fabric, thus assuring the sovereignty over the territory.

In the 1960s, changes in the Brazilian territorial planning led to the extinction of SPVEA and its replacement by the Superintendence for Development of the Amazon - SUDAM, which became in charge of running the Economic Valorization Plan of the Amazon. Nevertheless, the redaction of Law no. 5,173, of October 27, 1966, maintained the Amazon area established by Law no. 1,806, of January 6, 1953.

The Amazon area and, consequently, the action area of SUDAM remained unchanged until 1977, when the state of Mato Grosso do Sul was created. The Complementary Law no. 31, of October 11 1977, extended the border of Amazon beyond Parallel 16, matching the border of the states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul. The limits of the Legal Amazon were not changed with the enactment of the Federal Constitution, which created the state of Tocantins. Those limits were only changed in 2001, when the Provisional Measure no. 2,146-1, of May 4, 2001, extinguished SUDAM and created the Amazon Development Agency - ADA. The limit represented by Parallel 13, in force up to then, was replaced by the border of the states of Goiás and Tocantins. The same redaction was given by Provisional Measure no. 2,157-5, of August 24, 2001. The Complementary Law no. 124, of January 3, 2007, which recreated SUDAM, established as its action area exactly the same defined by Provisional Measures no. 2,146-1 and no. 2,157-5, of 2001.