Impacts of Conservation Incentives in Protected Areas: The Case of Bolsa Floresta, Brazil

Incentive-based conservation is a promising approach to tropical forest conservation, including within multiple-use protected areas. In this paper, we analyze the environmental impacts of Bolsa Floresta, a longstanding forest conservation program combining conditional household–level payments with livelihood-focused investments in 15 multiple-use forest reserve areas in the Brazilian state of Amazonas. We use grid-based data, nearest-neighbor matching, and panel data econometrics to compare three forest-related program outcomes – deforestation, degradation, and fires – of participating and non-participating reserve areas. Both pre and post-treatment deforestation and degradation pressures were low, including because low–pressure sites had been preferentially targeted. Thus, we find significant but small additional conservation effects from the implementation of the program. Notwithstanding, treatment effects excel in areas with higher deforestation pressure and higher potential agricultural income. Our findings add to the growing body of evidence showing that adverse spatial targeting by administrative choice, i.e. dis- proportionally selecting low–pressure sites into programs, is a prime cause for the low additionality found in rigorous impact evaluations of incentive-based forest conservation initiatives.