Tough on Green Crime? The Political Cost of Anti-deforestation Enforcement

• In Event: The Environment and Electoral Connections

Abstract

The transition from Bolsonaro to the Lula da Silva administration in Brazil has been associated with a substantial crackdown on deforestation, with a significant increase in the number of fines issued and asset seized by enforcement agents (CNN Brazil, 2023). While this approach has been lauded both inside and outside of the country, recent reports have underscored some potential downsides. “Manuel, the wildcat miner whose barge was blown up by federal agents, says he voted for Lula last year […] It never occurred to him that a pro-worker president would shut down his business. Now he is furious. ‘They treat us like bandits,’ he says. And ‘now there’s nothing to eat.’” (The Economist, 2023).

In contexts of weak capacity, recent research has shown targeted environmental enforcement has been effective at curbing deforestation (Balboni et al., 2023). However, there is comparatively less evidence on what the electoral effects of this type of enforcement are. Different research traditions provide contradictory predictions. On one hand, incumbents could benefit from lower levels of criminal activity. This would be in line with work that identifies electoral benefits of reductions in crime (Heberlig et al., 2017). On the other hand, this type of crackdown could lead to backlash among voters due to loss in resources. Holland (2015) explains that law enforcement has political costs, especially when it affects major constituencies, which is consistent with research that has identified political interference in anti-deforestation enforcement (Harding et al., 2023; Sanford, 2021). Moreover, other work stresses that visible climate policy can lead to electoral backlash (Stokes, 2015).

I focus on the case of anti-deforestation enforcement in the Brazilian Amazon, the relevance of which is underscored by the threat that biodiversity loss poses. On a global scale, forest depletion has long been linked with patterns of climate change due to decreases in carbon capture (Bonan 2008; Lapola et al. 2023). On a regional scale, recent research has shown that forest loss will have severe repercussions in the biome once a tipping point is reached (Nobre 2014), and the consequences—droughts and erosion in agricultural land—will be felt outside of the Amazon (Araujo et al. 2023; Butt et al. 2023). Since 2004, Brazil has adopted a series of policies intended to curb deforestation (Tacconi et al., 2019). However, enforcement has varied in intensity across different presidencies, while at the same time presenting significant spatial variation. These features present an opportunity for measuring the effects of enforcement on electoral outcomes.

In particular, I exploit two institutional features of anti-deforestation enforcement in the Brazilian Amazon. First, the country’s main environmental agency relies on satellite imagery to monitor for potential illegal activity. In line with recent research (Assunção et al., 2023), this allows me to leverage the exogenous variation of cloud cover—which influences satellite’s ability to identify deforestation hotspots—as an instrument for environmental enforcement. And second, starting in 2008 the country’s environment ministry created a blacklist intended to restrict under-performing municipalities’ access to federal funding. In line with other work (Assunção & Rocha, 2019), I exploit the temporal and spatial variation of this blacklist in a difference-in-difference design.

In contrast to recent research that studies the effectiveness of enforcement in curbing criminal activity (Assunção et al., 2023; Assunção & Rocha, 2019), my outcome of interest is the electoral support for national and local incumbents between 2004 and 2022 in Brazil. Additionally, I explore environmental enforcement as a potential explanation for the rise of anti-establishment candidates like Jair Bolsonaro, as well as variations in electoral support for the Ruralista congressional caucus. Finally, I discuss the normative implications of the findings for the prospects of environmental protection.

Author

• Clemente Tomas Sanchez Barja, Massachusetts Institute of Technology