The challenge
Clearing for cattle ranching and farming was destroying tens of thousands of square kilometres of Amazon rainforest a year.
The case
In 2004 Brazil's federal government launched the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PPCDAm), originally coordinated by the President's Chief of Staff's Office across 13 ministries. It created protected areas, used the DETER satellite system to send near-real-time deforestation alerts to enforcement agents, and from 2008 made subsidised rural credit conditional on environmental and land-title requirements. Annual deforestation measured by INPE, Brazil's national space research institute, fell from 27,772 km² in 2004 to 4,571 km² in 2012. Economists Assunção, Gandour and Rocha found falling crop and cattle prices helped, but estimated that the policies avoided about 73,000 km² of clearing from 2005 to 2009, 56% of what would otherwise have been cleared.
Why it worked
Researchers highlight the role of DETER's satellite alerts in targeting law enforcement. Deforestation began rising again after 2012, amid economic crisis, weaker commitment to environmental laws and changes to how the plan was run.
Sources
- Assunção, J., Gandour, C., & Rocha, R. (2015). Deforestation slowdown in the Brazilian Amazon: prices or policies? Environment and Development Economics, 20(6), 697–722.
- Climate Policy Initiative. Evidence pack: PPCDAm and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon (in Portuguese).
- Assunção, J., Gandour, C., Rocha, R., & Rocha, R. (2020). The effect of rural credit on deforestation: Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon. The Economic Journal, 130(626), 290–330.
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