Tackling Deforestation at Subnational Scales in the Brazilian Amazon: Diverse Municipalities, Agents, and the Struggle for Collective Action in a Moving Frontier
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Date
2020-12
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[Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University
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Abstract
The Brazilian Amazon is a mosaic of social-cultural and environmental realities, urban and
rural. Home to 28 million people living across hundreds of municipalities, the region has
been the stage for conflicting narratives and demands over conservation and development.
How do agents across diverse municipalities respond to national anti-deforestation policies
in the Amazon? This dissertation examined the development of the Brazilian forest
legislation, the trajectory of colonization, territorial occupation, and development of
Amazonian municipalities, and the implications of one emblematic national antideforestation
policy targeting municipalities along the region’s expanding frontier: the List
of Priority Municipalities (LPM). The LPM policy has imposed tough sanctions on
municipalities considered hotspots of deforestation, being considered innovative for
requiring both individual and collective actions to curtail deforestation. This research
adopted a social-ecological systems’ perspective, drawing upon the Institutional Analysis
and Development framework to guide systematic data collection, integration, and analysis.
Mixed methods were combined to analyze archival documents, geospatial and official
secondary datasets compiled for 530 municipalities in the Amazon biome, and in-depth case
studies and interviews with diverse stakeholders. That provided complementary evidence
to the multi-spatial and temporal analysis of three questions. First, the dissertation drew
upon archival research and past forest regulations to ask how narratives and values about
forests have evolved. Second, it compiled official secondary data at the municipal level and
used logistic regression models to inquiry about the factors and local attributes affecting compliance with the LPM policy. Third, the research combined multivariate analysis and indepth
case studies to examine interactions both between the geographical context of listed
municipalities and within the region’s moving frontier, as well as to analyze factors
underlying collaboration among local agents. Findings show that forest legislation and
narratives about the value of forests have expanded in scope, resulting in more stringent and
comprehensive regulations. However, interest groups have recurrently contested the
societal value of forests, undermining forest regulations that threaten sectoral activities.
Further, results revealed that historical-geographical factors defined municipal attributes
and conditions across the moving frontier that have either facilitated or hindered local
responses to LPM sanctions. The location of municipalities in areas undergoing different
phases of occupation and transformation significantly affected the ability of local agents and
municipal governments to comply with policy criteria applied similarly across the region.
The analysis highlights the importance of strengthening law enforcement and municipal
environmental governance, and the relevance of inter-institutional cooperation among
governments, markets, and civil organizations. The study shows both challenges and
opportunities for balancing regional development and forest conservation through
collaboration among diverse groups of agents and levels of governance.
Description
Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, 2020
Keywords
environmental policy, institutional analysis, lista de municípios prioritários, forest legislation, Pará, Brazilian law
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Doctoral Dissertation