Improving Local Governance and Environmental Outcomes: A Study of the Programa Municípios Verdes in the Brazilian Amazon.
Presented by:
Nilesh Shinde
Resource Economics
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Thursday, February 15, 2024
3:45 pm-5:00 pm
Taylor-Hibbard Seminar Room (Rm103)
This paper evaluates an important, voluntary stakeholder program to combat deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The Green Municipalities Program (Programa Municípios Verdes–PMV) has operated in the Brazilian state of Pará since 2010. By leveraging advanced causal inference methods and twenty years of municipality and property-level land use data, the study finds suggestive evidence that PMV results in a 22% annual reduction in deforestation. Moreover, PMV led to a clear, unintended increase in secondary forest cover by 6%. The economic benefits from reduced carbon dioxide outweigh program costs. The program has also reduced land conflicts and boosted non-agricultural GDP, demonstrating its effectiveness in local capacity building. In this setting, the voluntary PMV program has significantly improved environmental conservation and local economic development.