The Deforestation Menace: Do Protected Territories Actually Shield Forests?

The research finds that protected territories in the Brazilian Amazon effectively shield the vegetation within their boundaries from advancing deforestation, particularly in high-risk contexts. However, this protection does not reduce the overall level of deforestation in the region; instead, it appears to deflect clearing activities to unprotected areas. The shielding effect is most pronounced in protected areas for sustainable use and decreases as proximity to transport infrastructure increases.

• Legal protection effectively shields forests within its domain from advancing deforestation, with significantly less forest being cleared in protected cells than in unprotected ones when both face equivalent pressures.
• While protection shields specific areas, it does not reduce the aggregate level of deforestation; instead, it deflects clearing activity to unprotected regions.
• The shielding effect is most significant in protected areas for sustainable use, followed by strictly protected areas, while indigenous lands do not show a statistically significant shielding effect against advancing clearings for most of the sample period.
• Proximity to transport infrastructure, including both paved and unpaved roads, nullifies the shielding effect of protection; the effect becomes more accentuated as cells become more isolated from roads.
• Deforestation pressure is spatially persistent, where an increase in the intensity of forest clearing alerts within a 50km radius of a cell is associated with increased clearings inside that cell the following year.
• Under an increase of one standard deviation in neighborhood alert intensity, the difference in forest clearings between unprotected and protected cells is 3% of the sample standard deviation or 26% of the sample mean.

APA

Assunção, J., & Gandour, C. (2018). The Deforestation Menace: Do Protected Territories Actually Shield Forests? Climate Policy Initiative. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/WP001-The-Deforestation-Menace.pdf

Chicago

Assunção, Juliano, and Clarissa Gandour. The Deforestation Menace: Do Protected Territories Actually Shield Forests? Climate Policy Initiative, 2018. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/WP001-The-Deforestation-Menace.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Assunção |first1=Juliano |last2=Gandour |first2=Clarissa |title=The Deforestation Menace: Do Protected Territories Actually Shield Forests? |publisher=Climate Policy Initiative |date=September 2018 |url=https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/WP001-The-Deforestation-Menace.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{assuno2018deforestation, author = {Assunção, Juliano and Gandour, Clarissa}, title = {{The Deforestation Menace: Do Protected Territories Actually Shield Forests?}}, institution = {Climate Policy Initiative}, year = {2018}, month = sep, url = {https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/WP001-The-Deforestation-Menace.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }