Protected area types, strategies and impacts in Brazil’s Amazon: public protected area strategies do not yield a consistent ranking of protected area types by impact
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The leading policy to conserve forest is protected areas (PAs). Yet, PAs are not a single tool: land users and uses vary by PA type; and public PA strategies vary in the extent of each type and in the determinants of impact for each type, i.e. siting and internal deforestation. Further, across regions and time, strategies respond to pressures (deforestation and political). We estimate deforestation impacts of PA types for a critical frontier, the Brazilian Amazon. We separate regions and time periods that differ in their deforestation and political pressures and document considerable variation in PA strategies across regions, time periods and types. The siting of PAs varies across regions. For example, all else being equal, PAs in the arc of deforestation are relatively far from non-forest, while in other states they are relatively near. Internal deforestation varies across time periods, e.g. it is more similar across the PA types for PAs after 2000. By contrast, after 2000, PA extent is less similar across PA types with little non-indigenous area created inside the arc. PA strategies generate a range of impacts for PA types—always far higher within the arc—but not a consistent ranking of PA types by impact.
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As protected areas technically do not allow for any deforestation and received more regulatory attention, they were deemed most effective, followed by indigenous areas and sustainable use areas.
“they were deemed most effective, followed by indigenous areas and sustainable use areas [126-129].”
From A systematic comparison of deforestation drivers and policy effectiveness across the Amazon biome (2023) · cites this paper as [128]
The Introduction says Integral protection officially prohibits deforestation, but it does not establish the claimed effectiveness ranking. The paper’s summary states that impacts vary by region and time and that PA strategies do not yield a consistent ranking of types by impact. Its finding that Integral areas outperform sustainable-use areas in one high-pressure setting does not establish the asserted overall order. (LLM, conf=0.90)
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Research works printed but not linked: 20
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
The Effect of Rural Credit on Deforestation: Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon
Assunção, J., Gandour, C., Rocha, R., & Rocha, R. (2020) · The Economic Journal · doi:10.1093/ej/uez060 · Cited by 174 · see citing works
A systematic comparison of deforestation drivers and policy effectiveness across the Amazon biome
Hänggli, A., Levy, S. A., Armenteras, D., Bovolo, C. I., Brandão, J., Rueda, X., & Garrett, R. D. (2023) · Environmental Research Letters · doi:10.1088/1748-9326/acd408 · Cited by 73 · see citing works
- Authors
- Pfaff, A., Robalino, J., Sandoval, C., & Herrera, D.
- Affiliations
- Duke University (US)
- Centro Agronomico Tropical de Investigacion y Ensenanza Catie (CR)
- Corresponding author
- Pfaff, Alexander
- Venue
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2015-11-05
- Volume
- 370
- Issue
- 1681
- Pages
- 20140273
- ISSN
- 0962-8436 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-2970
- PMC
- PMC4614730
- OpenAlex
- W2341749783
- Cited by
- 84
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 6.74
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Forest Management and Policy
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Land Use and Ecosystem Services
- Keywords
- protected areas, deforestation, forest conservation policy, Arc of Deforestation, Amazon
- MeSH terms
- Brazil, Conservation of Natural Resources, Politics, Public Policy, Forestry, Ecosystem, Forests
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