Data and Code for: DETERring Deforestation in the Amazon: Environmental Monitoring and Law Enforcement

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Juliano Assunção, Climate Policy Initiative / PUC-Rio; Department of Economics / PUC-RIo; Clarissa Gandour, Climate Policy Initiative / PUC-Rio; Romero Rocha , Institute of Economics / URFJ

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
plus			02/14/2021 03:27:PM

Project Description

Summary:

This is the replication package (data and code) that accompanies the article "DETERring Deforestation in the Amazon: Environmental Monitoring and Law Enforcement". In the article, we study Brazil's recent use of satellite technology to overcome law enforcement shortcomings resulting from weak institutional environments. DETER is a system that processes satellite imagery and issues near-real-time deforestation alerts to target environmental enforcement in the Amazon. We propose a novel instrumental variable approach for estimating enforcement's impact on deforestation. Clouds limiting DETER's capacity to detect clearings serve as a source of exogenous variation for the presence of environmental authorities. Findings indicate that monitoring and enforcement effectively curbed deforestation. Results are not driven by the displacement of illegal activity into

neighboring areas, and hold across several robustness checks.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: deforestation; conservation; monitoring and law enforcement; Amazon; satellite monitoring; policy impact; impact evaluation; instrumental variable

JEL Classification:
      K42 Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
      Q18 Agricultural Policy; Food Policy
      Q23 Renewable Resources and Conservation: Forestry
      Q58 Environmental Economics: Government Policy

Geographic Coverage: Brazilian Amazon

Universe: Municipalities in the Brazilian Amazon Biome

Data Type(s): administrative records data; geographic information system (GIS) data

Collection Notes: Processing of the entire replication package is time-consuming, due to processing of GIS data for database construction. Please refer to the README file for details and see individual processing times noted in each script.

Methodology

Unit(s) of Observation: Municipalities

Related Publications

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Published Versions

V1 [2023-03-29]

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DDI 2.5

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