Minister Osorio delivers land to the Mapuche Community Lorenzo Quintrileo of Tirúa, Chile. Photo Credit: Ministerio de Bienes Nacionales, Chile
In Chile, a major program returning land to the Mapuche has strengthened their ability to determine how their territories are used, while producing more mixed environmental results.
Researchers from the United States and Chile examined more than 510,000 acres returned to the Mapuche, Chile’s largest Indigenous population. They found that pastures expanded and non-native forest plantations declined, but native forests, biodiversity, carbon storage and erosion control showed little change.
“These changes demonstrate how land restitution empowers Indigenous communities to actively influence land use,” said UC Santa Barbara’s Robert Heilmayr, a Marine Science Institute Principal Investigator and senior author of the study published in Nature Sustainability. “However, common narratives that Indigenous land reforms will always yield environmental benefits are overly simplistic.”
The findings suggest that returning land can advance Indigenous self-determination without automatically delivering environmental improvements. Additional support, including financial incentives for ecosystem restoration, may be needed when communities seek to restore heavily modified landscapes.
The Mapuche provide an important case for understanding the effects of land restitution. They were among the major Indigenous societies in South America to maintain independence from the Spanish Empire. Their sovereignty continued until conflicts with Chilean and Argentine forces between 1860 and 1881. After their defeat, their territories were incorporated into the two countries, and Chile forcibly relocated Mapuche communities onto nearly 3,000 reservations.
Decades of protest, conflict and political change eventually contributed to Chile’s adoption of the Indigenous Law in 1993. The legislation recognized historical rights and promoted socioeconomic development among the country’s Indigenous peoples. It also created a program through which land could be purchased and returned to Indigenous communities as collective property.
The researchers examined more than 510,000 acres returned to the Mapuche between 1994 and 2023. To measure the effects of restitution, they compared parcels that had already been returned with similar parcels that had not yet been restituted. This approach allowed them to estimate what might have happened to the returned lands had they remained outside the program.
An aerial view of the Chilean coast, including restituted lands. Photo Credit: Dany Jaimovich
Using satellite imagery and administrative records, the team assessed land use, productivity and environmental conditions across 1,577 parcels. They also drew on earlier research to estimate changes in carbon storage and biodiversity.
Returned lands experienced a 4.5% increase in pasture area and an 18% reduction in non-native forest plantation cover. Native forest cover, however, changed little. The researchers also found no meaningful improvement in estimated carbon storage, biodiversity or erosion control.
The changes in land use appear to reflect Mapuche priorities and economic traditions. Livestock production has been an important part of Mapuche livelihoods for centuries. The adoption of horses, firearms and cattle ranching also helped the Mapuche maintain their independence from the Spanish Empire.
The findings demonstrate that restitution can give Indigenous communities greater control over how their land is used, but those choices will vary according to each community’s history, culture and priorities. The researchers emphasize that the primary purpose of restitution should be to address historical dispossession and strengthen Indigenous self-determination rather than assume that every program will produce the same environmental outcomes.
The study also highlights an important difference between land restitution and Indigenous land titling. Previous research has often examined communities that have maintained continuous stewardship of their traditional territories and later received formal legal recognition of their land rights. Restitution, by contrast, involves returning lands that Indigenous communities lost control over, often after those landscapes have been substantially transformed.
Returned lands may therefore lack the continuity of stewardship found in other Indigenous territories. They may have been altered by generations of outside landowners and, in some cases, may be located far from where the communities currently live. As a result, the environmental effects of restitution can differ from those associated with Indigenous communities that have maintained uninterrupted control of their lands.
Heilmayr, Jaimovich and their collaborators are continuing to study how land restitution and titling policies affect economic development, environmental conditions and Indigenous control. Chile’s Indigenous Law restricts the sale, leasing and mortgaging of Indigenous properties in an effort to preserve Indigenous ownership. The researchers are examining how these restrictions influence economic opportunities and environmental outcomes.
Their work could help governments develop land restitution and titling policies that better support Indigenous self-determination while also addressing environmental goals, particularly as countries work to implement international commitments such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Adapted from original reporting by Harrison Tasoff, “Indigenous land restitution empowers communities, but environmental gains require extra support,” The Current, UC Santa Barbara, 2026.