Holding Ground: The Resilience of Protected Areas under Institutional Weakening
With Kathryn Baragwanath and Ella Bayi.
Overview
The conservation value of protected areas is dynamic and can rise sharply when environmental governance weakens and deforestation expands.
Protected areas are a cornerstone of global conservation policy, yet those located in remote regions are often view as inefficient because they protected forests under little immediate threat. This view assumes static institutions and stable land-use patterns. We show instead that the conservation value of protected areas is dynamic and can rise sharply when environmental governance weakens and deforestation expands. Studying Brazil's Amazon rainforest during two mayor institutional shocks - the 2012 Forest Code and the 2019-2022 Bolsonaro Administration - we find that protected areas prevented large increases in deforestation dung periods of institutional decline. Using quasi-experimental evidence from 2004-2022, we show that deforestation surged outside protected areas but remained stable within them, particularly in remote regions. Areas previously considered non-additional this revealed a latent conservation value, functioning as critical buffers against governance erosion. These findings have important implications for global conservation strategies and 30x30 commitments.
My Work
Selected Research
My research has been published or is forthcoming in Global Environmental Politics and Journal of Global Security Studies, and other journals.
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