Presented by Clarissa Costalonga e Gandour

The Amazon region has long been the world’s most active agricultural frontier in terms of forest loss and CO₂ emissions. In Brazil, the conversion of forest areas in the Amazon biome has contributed nearly half of the country’s total net CO₂ emissions (MCT, 2010). Identifying whether the deforestation slowdown from 2005 onwards was due to economic circumstances or resulted from conservation policies introduced during that period could provide critical input for policymakers in Brazil and other countries.

Climate Policy Initiative assessed the contribution of Brazil’s policies to decreased deforestation rates by using regression techniques to disentangle the impacts of the policies from those of other potential explanatory factors, such as agricultural price cycles and other possible drivers of deforestation. As mentioned in a recent Economist article, our analysis shows that approximately half of the deforestation that was avoided in the Amazon in the 2005 through 2009 period can be attributed to conservation policies introduced in the second half of the 2000s. Join us for a presentation of our analysis – including an overview of our methodology and key findings.