Conservation Contracts and Political Regimes

Harstad, Bård; Mideksa, Torben K.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2744535

Cited by 14 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…That, in turn, predicts differences across agencies in the internal impact and forest spillovers of PAs. Variations on such hypotheses include the interests and relative strengths of political elites in any democracy (32) and spatial property-right variations that influence cross-jurisdictional effects (33).…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of protected areas vary with the level of government: Comparing avoided deforestation across agencies in the Brazilian Amazon

Herrera

Pfaff

Robalino

2019

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Protected areas (PAs) are the leading tools to conserve forests. However, given their mixed effectiveness, we want to know when they have impacts internally and, if they do, when they have spillovers. Political economy posits roles for the level of government. One hypothesis is that federal PAs avoid more internal deforestation than state PAs since federal agencies consider gains for other jurisdictions. Such political differences as well as economic mechanisms can cause PA spillovers to vary greatly, even from “leakage,” more deforestation elsewhere, to “blockage,” less deforestation elsewhere. We examine internal impacts and local spillovers for Brazilian Amazon federal and state agencies. Outside the region’s “arc of deforestation,” we confirm little internal impact and show no spillovers. In the “arc,” we test impacts by state, as states are large and feature considerably different dynamics. For internal impacts, estimates for federal PAs and indigenous lands are higher than for state PAs. For local spillover impacts, estimates for most arc states either are not significant or are not robust; however, for Pará, federal PAs and indigenous lands feature both internal impacts and local spillovers. Yet, the spillovers in Pará go in opposite directions across agencies, leakage for indigenous lands but blockage for federal PAs, suggesting a stronger external signal from the environmental agency. Across all these tools, only federal PAs lower deforestation internally and nearby. Results suggest that agencies’ objectives and capacities are critical parts of the contexts for conservation strategies.

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Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of protected areas vary with the level of government: Comparing avoided deforestation across agencies in the Brazilian Amazon

Herrera

Pfaff

Robalino

2019

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Two concrete problems, one with negative (logging rainforests) and the other with positive (contributing to a public good) actions, are used. Given the focus of the paper, how private information and how different but observation equivalent setups affect incentives, the examples -the protection of a rainforest is based on Harstad and Mideksa (2017) and the contribution to a public good affected by warm glow (Andreoni, 1990) is based on Wichman (2016) -are taken from the literature but modified in order to account for private information.…”

Section: Examplesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The agent's benefit from logging is linear if he is a price taker (p denotes the profit per unit), b(x) = px, p > 0, but logging is also costly if the agent appreciates the remaining rainforest. Assuming a standard (logarithmic) utility function (Harstad and Mideksa (2017) assume linear relations and ignore private information), the recipient country's convex cost from logging is…”

Section: Rainforestmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental incentives facing private information

Wirl

2021

Envir. Dev. Econ.

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Environmental incentives are characterized by two distinct features: (1) a benefit-cost trade-off; and (2) private information about the trade-off. This suggests a degree of freedom of where to attach the private information, either to the benefit or the costs, as long as these choices imply the same behavior absent incentives (‘observation equivalent’). However, we show that different observation equivalent specifications can lead to different incentives. This is demonstrated for two cases: rainforest protection and contributions to a public good. Therefore, the choice of a private information parameter must be justified against observation equivalent alternatives.

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“…By focusing on BLA and using standard and spatial econometrics, Faria and Almeida [32] argue that the increase in openness to trade and increase in deforestation are positively correlated. Harstad and Mideksa [33] argue that trade liberalization makes it beneficial to capture market share by discouraging competitors and, as a result, illegal deforestation gains positive signals. Agriculture-driven deforestation is affected by agricultural output prices: if trade liberalization increases local agricultural prices, then liberalization reinforces and deforestation increases [34].…”

Section: Embedded Deforestation In Current Global Trade and Financementioning

confidence: 99%

Embedded Deforestation: The Case Study of the Brazilian–Italian Bovine Leather Trade

Mammadova

Masiero

Pettenella

2020

Forests

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Deforestation and forest degradation driven by Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) are important sources of carbon emissions. Market globalization and trade liberalization policies reinforce this trend and risk deforestation to be embedded in global value chains. Due to the complexity of global production and trade systems, deforestation risk is also embedded in the supply chains of the products and sectors that are not direct deforestation drivers. Bovine leather is a commodity closely entangled in the debates about deforestation as it is a by-product of cattle. This research focuses on leather trade between Brazil and Italy to demonstrate the channels through which Italian imports of Brazilian leather could possess embedded Amazonian deforestation and related risks. The data employed for the analysis was searched at three different levels for the leather trade between Brazil and Italy: (a) the country level annual leather trade statistics for the years 2014–2018 taken from the Comtrade database; (b) the state level leather trade data, for the years 2014–2018 taken from the Comexstat database; and (c) the exporter–importer level leather trade data for the period of August 2017–August 2018, based on customs declarations. The analysis helps to demonstrate that the Italian leather trade with Brazil possesses the risk of deforestation unless the proper traceability and due diligence systems are in place to claim the opposite. The European and Italian leather industry need to be more proactive in acknowledging the existence of the risk at different levels, putting full traceability systems in place and sending out clear market signals that deforestation is not tolerated, and that sustainability is valued.

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Conservation Contracts and Political Regimes

Cited by 14 publications

References 79 publications

Impacts of protected areas vary with the level of government: Comparing avoided deforestation across agencies in the Brazilian Amazon

Impacts of protected areas vary with the level of government: Comparing avoided deforestation across agencies in the Brazilian Amazon

Environmental incentives facing private information

Embedded Deforestation: The Case Study of the Brazilian–Italian Bovine Leather Trade

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