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What Drives the Erasure of Protected Areas? Evidence from across the Brazilian Amazon

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  • Keles, Derya
  • Delacote, Philippe
  • Pfaff, Alexander
  • Qin, Siyu
  • Mascia, Michael B.

Abstract

Protected areas (PAs) are a widely used strategy for conserving forests and ecosystem services. When PAs succeed in deterring economic activities that degrade forests, the impacts include more forest yet less economic gain. These economic opportunity costs of conservation lead actors with economic interests to resist new PAs, driving their sites away from profitable market centers and towards areas featuring lower opportunity costs. Further, after PAs are created, economic actors may want PA downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement (collectively PADDD). We examine reductions in PAs' spatial extent – downsizings (partial erasures) and degazettements (complete erasures) − that presumably reduce protection. Using data for the entire Brazilian Amazon from PADDDtracker.org, our empirical analyses explore whether size reductions from 2006 to 2015 resulted from bargaining between development and conservation. We find that the risks of PA size reductions are raised by: lower travel costs (as implied by distances to roads and cities), which affect economic gains and enforcement; greater PA size, which affects enforcement; and more prior internal deforestation, which lowers the impacts of size reductions. These dynamics of protection offer insights on the potentially conflicting factors that lead to PA size reductions, with implications for policymaking to enhance PA effectiveness and permanence.

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  • Keles, Derya & Delacote, Philippe & Pfaff, Alexander & Qin, Siyu & Mascia, Michael B., 2020. "What Drives the Erasure of Protected Areas? Evidence from across the Brazilian Amazon," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:176:y:2020:i:c:s0921800919305282
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106733
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    Cited by:

    1. Eric de Souza Nascimento & Sonaira Souza da Silva & Leandra Bordignon & Antonio Willian Flores de Melo & Amintas Brandão & Carlos M. Souza & Celso H. L. Silva Junior, 2021. "Roads in the Southwestern Amazon, State of Acre, between 2007 and 2019," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-12, January.
    2. Derek Sheehan & Katrina Mullan & Thales A. P. West & Erin O. Semmens, 2024. "Protecting Life and Lung: Protected Areas Affect Fine Particulate Matter and Respiratory Hospitalizations in the Brazilian Amazon Biome," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 87(1), pages 45-87, January.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Land use; Forest; Protected area; Conservation; PADDD; Amazon; Brazil;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q56 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth
    • Q57 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Ecological Economics
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy
    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • O21 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Planning Models; Planning Policy

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