Public attention and the Amazon

Climate-induced disasters can often capture the attention of both the public and the media, which make them effective channels for government accountability as governments could then be pressured into taking action. A dramatic surge of public attention on certain events could largely shape the emergent response of regulatory agencies. Yet the existence and duration of such an effect is still unknown.

Rafael Araujo of the Brazilian School of Economics and Finance, and colleagues from the USA, examined the sudden spike in global attention on forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon during August. Using a difference-in-difference setting, they find that compared with less visible but similar fires in Peru and Bolivia during the same period, the unprecedented public scrutiny from global society led to a 22% reduction in fires in this region. The effect is more pronounced in areas with denser forest cover. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the effect avoided 24.8 million tons of CO₂ emissions, which accounts for 3.86% of CO₂ emissions that Brazil needed to abate in 2018 to reach the Paris Agreement goals. The authors also discuss the potential channels through which government actions reduced fires.