The Deforestation Menace: Do Protected Territories Actually Shield Forests?

This research paper evaluates whether legal territorial protection in the Brazilian Amazon effectively shields forests from deforestation. Using a spatially explicit panel dataset from 2006 to 2014, the author finds that protected territories successfully reduce forest clearing in high-risk areas compared to unprotected cells under similar pressure. However, the study concludes that this protection does not reduce the overall level of regional deforestation but instead deflects clearing activity to unprotected areas.

• Legal protection in the Brazilian Amazon effectively shields forests from advancing deforestation in high-risk contexts, resulting in significantly less forest clearing in protected cells than in unprotected ones when exposed to equivalent pressures.
• While protected territories shield the vegetation within their own boundaries, they do not reduce the total amount of deforestation in the region; instead, they deflect clearing activity to unprotected areas.
• The shielding effect of protection is quantified as a difference in clearings of 3% of the sample standard deviation, or 26% of the sample mean, following a one standard deviation increase in the intensity of neighborhood alerts.
• The effectiveness of the shielding effect varies by protection type: protected areas for sustainable use show the strongest shielding capacity, followed by strictly protected areas, while indigenous lands do not appear to significantly block advancing clearings.
• Proximity to transport infrastructure, including both paved and unpaved roads, tends to nullify the shielding effect of protection; the effect becomes more pronounced as cells become more isolated from roads.
• Deforestation pressure is spatially persistent, with clearing activity within a 50km radius of a cell being positively associated with increased forest clearings inside that cell in the following year.
• The higher cost of clearing protected forests is driven by a greater likelihood of detection due to increased scrutiny and harsher legal penalties, including higher fines and potential imprisonment.
• Counterfactual simulations indicate that if protection were revoked, deforestation in originally protected cells would be systematically larger, particularly during high-pressure periods.

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} }