PROTECTED TERRITORIES, THOUGH CRITICAL, ARE NOT ENOUGH TO SLOW AMAZON DEFORESTATION

This policy brief by the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI/PUC-Rio) evaluates the effectiveness of landscape protection—specifically protected areas and indigenous lands—in reducing deforestation within the Brazilian Amazon. While the analysis finds that these territories are effective at shielding the specific forests they cover, they have a negligible impact on aggregate deforestation levels because they tend to deflect forest clearing to unprotected regions.

• Protected territories in the Brazilian Amazon are effective at reducing deforestation locally, particularly in high-risk areas, but they do not significantly lower the overall rate of deforestation across the region.
• Between 2004 and 2014, Brazil significantly expanded its landscape protection under the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PPCDAm). Protected areas nearly doubled to 113 million hectares, and indigenous lands grew by 10 million hectares to reach 107 million hectares, resulting in more than half of the Brazilian Amazon being covered by protected territories by 2014.
• Under the PPCDAm, Brazil shifted its allocation strategy for protected territories to include current and future deforestation risks, specifically targeting the 'Deforestation Arc'—a region within 750 kilometers of the Amazon's southeast border that accounted for over 90% of deforestation in the plan's first decade.
• A counterfactual analysis conducted by CPI/PUC-Rio suggests that the absence of protected territories between 2007 and 2014 would not have markedly changed total deforestation. The difference between observed deforestation and a hypothetical scenario with no protection was only 43,801 hectares, representing 1% of the total deforested area.
• Brazilian protected territories consist of protected areas (such as national parks and biological reserves) and indigenous lands. While protected areas are created via laws or decrees to conserve high-value ecosystems, indigenous lands are recognized to preserve traditional livelihoods, though both are legally regarded as protected territories that allow for harsher punishment of environmental infractions.
• The authors recommend that while protected landscapes should be maintained and expanded to shield specific forests, they must be coordinated with complementary conservation policies to prevent the displacement of deforestation to unprotected areas.

APA

Assunção, J., & Gandour, C. (2020). PROTECTED TERRITORIES, THOUGH CRITICAL, ARE NOT ENOUGH TO SLOW AMAZON DEFORESTATION. Climate Policy Initiative. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/PB-Protected-territories.pdf

Chicago

Assunção, Juliano, and Clarissa Gandour. PROTECTED TERRITORIES, THOUGH CRITICAL, ARE NOT ENOUGH TO SLOW AMAZON DEFORESTATION. Climate Policy Initiative, 2020. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/PB-Protected-territories.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Assunção |first1=Juliano |last2=Gandour |first2=Clarissa |title=PROTECTED TERRITORIES, THOUGH CRITICAL, ARE NOT ENOUGH TO SLOW AMAZON DEFORESTATION |publisher=Climate Policy Initiative |date=May 2020 |url=https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/PB-Protected-territories.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{assuno2020protected, author = {Assunção, Juliano and Gandour, Clarissa}, title = {{PROTECTED TERRITORIES, THOUGH CRITICAL, ARE NOT ENOUGH TO SLOW AMAZON DEFORESTATION}}, institution = {Climate Policy Initiative}, year = {2020}, month = may, url = {https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/PB-Protected-territories.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }