The Ability to Influence: A Comparative Analysis of the Role of Advocacy Coalitions in Brazilian Climate Politics

Aamodt, Solveig

doi:10.1111/ropr.12282

Cited by 23 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…witnessed one of Brazil's worse political, economic and fiscal crisis. At the same time, however, contextual factors seem to correspond with an interpretation that the forest conservation funding provided through the Amazon Fund lacks financial additionality, particularly considering the unfavorable political climate for environmental protection [47], more flexibility within forest legislation since 2012 [48], multiple bills for reducing environmental protection during election year 2018 and, as a consequence of all these factors, rising deforestation rates since 2014 [49].…”

Section: Benefit Distribution Across Stakeholdersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Results-Based Forest Conservation Funding: Amazon Fund 10 Years Later, Lessons from the World's Largest REDD+ Program

Correa¹,

R²,

Rajão³

2019

Preprint

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Results-Based Funding (RBF) for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) has become an important instrument for channeling financial resources to forest conservation activities. At the same time, much literature on conservation funding is ambiguous about the effectiveness of existing RBF schemes. Many effectiveness evaluations follow a simplified version of the principal-agent model, although in practice the relation between aid providers and funding recipients is much more complex. As a consequence, intermediary steps of conservation funding are often not accounted for effectiveness studies. This research paper aims to provide a nuanced understanding of conservation funding by analyzing the allocation of financial resources for one of the largest RBF schemes for REDD+ in the world: the Brazilian Amazon Fund. As part of this analysis, this study has built a dataset of information on Amazon Fund projects at unprecedented detail in order to accurately reconstruct the allocation of financial resources across different stakeholders (i.e. governments, NGOs, research institutions), geographies and activities. The results show that stakeholders seem to hold preferences with respect to the type of activities that they support, thereby suggesting that project owners exert much influence on how deforestation reduction is to be attained. There are evidences that governmental organizations lack financial additionality of their projects, which renders the growing share of funding to this type of stakeholder particularly worrisome. By contrast, the geographical distribution of financial resources seemed to follow a more focused rationale as financial support tends to concentrate in areas where deforestation threats are highest. Overall, the allocation of the financial resources from the Amazon Fund reflects an arbitrary support of different projects that adopt very diverging theories of change that are not primarily concerned with attaining further deforestation reductions. As projects owners exert influence on funding effectiveness to some extent, the Amazon Fund may either seek to regulate the allocation of financial resources more actively or adopt funding effectiveness evaluations that account for this influence more comprehensively.

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Section: Benefit Distribution Across Stakeholdersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Results-Based Forest Conservation Funding: Amazon Fund 10 Years Later, Lessons from the World's Largest REDD+ Program

Correa¹,

R²,

Rajão³

2019

Preprint

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“…Furthermore, it should be highlighted that the period following 2015 witnessed one of the worst political, economic, and fiscal crises in Brazil's history. At the same time, however, contextual factors seem to correspond with an interpretation that the forest conservation funding provided through the Amazon Fund lacks in some instances financial additionality, particularly considering the unfavorable political climate for environmental protection [50], the greater flexibility within forest legislation since 2012 [51], multiple bills for reducing environmental protection during election year 2018, and, as a consequence of all these factors, rising deforestation rates since 2012 [52]. These observations cannot, by themselves, confirm a direct causal relationship between the increasing financial disbursements from the Amazon Fund and the decreasing budgets of the recipient federal agencies.…”

Section: Benefit Distribution Across Stakeholdersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Amazon Fund 10 Years Later: Lessons from the World’s Largest REDD+ Program

Correa

Hoff

Rajão

2019

Forests

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Results-Based Funding (RBF) for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) has become an important instrument for channeling financial resources to forest conservation activities. At the same time, much literature on conservation funding is ambiguous about the effectiveness of existing RBF schemes. Many effectiveness evaluations follow a simplified version of the principal-agent model, but in practice, the relation between aid providers and funding recipients is much more complex. As a consequence, intermediary steps of conservation funding are often not accounted for in effectiveness studies. This research paper aims to provide a nuanced understanding of conservation funding by analyzing the allocation of financial resources for one of the largest RBF schemes for REDD+ in the world: the Brazilian Amazon Fund. As part of this analysis, this study has built a dataset of information, with unprecedented detail, on Amazon Fund projects, in order to accurately reconstruct the allocation of financial resources across different stakeholders (i.e., governments, NGOs, research institutions), geographies, and activities. The results show that that the distribution of resources of the Amazon Fund lack a clear strategy that could maximize the results of the fund in terms of deforestation reduction. First, there are evidences that in some cases governmental organizations lack financial additionality for their projects, which renders the growing share of funding to this type of stakeholder particularly worrisome. Second, the Amazon Fund allocations did also not systematically have privileged the municipalities that showed the recent highest deforestation rates. rom the 10 municipalities with the higher deforestation rates in 2017, only 2 are amongst the top 100 receiving per/Ha considering the 775 municipalities from Legal Amazon. Third, the allocation of the financial resources from the Amazon Fund reflects the support of different projects that adopt significantly diverging theories of change, many of which are not primarily concerned with attaining further deforestation reductions. These results reflect the current approach adopted by the Amazon Fund, that do not actively seek areas for intervention, but instead wait for project submissions from proponents. As a consequence, project owners exert much influence on to the type of activities that they support how deforestation reduction is expected to be attained. The article concludes that the Amazon Fund as well as other RBF programs, should evolve over time in order to develop a more targeted funding strategy to maximize the long-term impact in reducing emissions from deforestation.

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“…Brazil and India both significantly changed their climate policies after 2000. Brazil's main source of GHG emissions is deforestation, and the implementation of forest protection regulations was poor until the mid-2000s (Aamodt, 2018; CAIT Climate Data Explorer, 2017). In 2004, Brazil issued an action plan for reducing Amazonian deforestation and, in 2008, became the first national climate plan formally connecting reduced deforestation to climate change mitigation (Carvalho, 2010).…”

Section: Analytical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Conflicts concerning the Amazon rainforest have for decades been central in Brazilian environmental and climate policy making, forming a political cleavage between environmental/indigenous concerns and economic growth/territorial control concerns (e.g., Aamodt, 2018; Hochstetler & Keck, 2007). In 1973, responding to growing international and domestic pressure about environmental issues, Brazil established an environmental agency responsible for domestic environmental issues, such as biodiversity, forest protection, and water security (Hochstetler, 2012; Lago, 2009).…”

Section: The Ministries Of Environment In Brazilian and Indian Climatmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the presidential election victory of Lula da Silva in 2002 led to institutional changes in Brazilian climate politics when da Silva appointed well-known environmentalist Marina Silva as environmental minister and supported her ambitious environmental agenda (Aamodt, 2015; Vieira, 2013). With several staff members recruited from NGOs and research institutions, the environmental ministry under Silva developed a climate logic close to the climate-as-environment logic (Aamodt, 2018; Carvalho, 2010). The ministry's new dominant view was that Brazil's environmental protection record was poor, with deforestation and forest degradation in the Amazon as primary examples (Interviews B1, B2, B11).…”

Section: The Ministries Of Environment In Brazilian and Indian Climatmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Environmental Ministries as Climate Policy Drivers: Comparing Brazil and India

Aamodt

2018

The Journal of Environment & Development

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With the 2015 Paris Agreement, global climate governance increasingly depends on domestic climate policy ambitions, also in large developing countries such as Brazil and India, which are prominent representatives for developing countries in the international climate negotiations. Although the environmental policy literature expects ministries of environment to be important drivers of domestic climate policy, studies find that the climate policy ambitions of the Brazilian and Indian environmental ministries differ considerably. With a long-term analytical approach building on historical institutionalism, this article analyses and compares the climate policy roles of the Brazilian and Indian ministries of environment. The comparative analysis finds that three factors in particular influence the environmental ministries' climate policy ambitions: first, the historical view of environmental policy as a domestic or an international issue; second, the ministry's formal role in international climate negotiations; and third, the subsequent development of institutional climate logics.

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The Ability to Influence: A Comparative Analysis of the Role of Advocacy Coalitions in Brazilian Climate Politics

Cited by 23 publications

References 57 publications

Results-Based Forest Conservation Funding: Amazon Fund 10 Years Later, Lessons from the World's Largest REDD+ Program

Results-Based Forest Conservation Funding: Amazon Fund 10 Years Later, Lessons from the World's Largest REDD+ Program

Amazon Fund 10 Years Later: Lessons from the World’s Largest REDD+ Program

Environmental Ministries as Climate Policy Drivers: Comparing Brazil and India

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