Blacklists protect the rainforest

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-09/uob-bpt092415.php

Public Release: 24-Sep-2015
Blacklists protect the rainforest
University of Bonn: Brazil names and shames municipalities to prevent further deforestation
University of Bonn

Brazil's public authorities regularly publish "blacklists" of municipalities with high illegal deforestation rates. This environmental policy tool is working: scientists at the Center for Development Research (ZEF) and the Institute for Food and Resource Economics (ILR) at the University of Bonn have found that the public shaming strategy reduced Amazon forest loss in the blacklisted districts by 26% per year. Their findings have now been published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has declined recently. While in 2004, trees were still being felled on more than 27,000 square kilometers of land, the area was reduced to fewer than 10,000 square kilometers starting in 2009. "There is a whole range of factors causing this," says Elías Cisneros, Junior Researcher at the Center for Development Research (ZEF) and an employee of the Institute for Food and Resource Economics (ILR) at the University of Bonn. For instance, demand for internationally traded agrarian and forestry products also dropped in response to the financial crisis in 2008. However, Brazil's environmental policy has played a key role in protecting the rainforest, as Cisneros has shown in his work with Sophie Lian Zhou (ILR) and Junior Professor Dr. Jan Börner (ZEF).

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