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Abstract:
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"At the begin of the 21st century, the Brazilian Amazon, a region larger than the European Union, had more than 25.000 Km² deforested annually. During the first mandate of the worker's party of President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2006), tackling deforestation took a central place in the presidential agenda. The Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PPCDAm) came up through an interministerial working group composed of 13 federal agencies, led by the chief minister in the Brazilian government. As part of PPCDAm, each institution proposed strategic actions in relevant areas to prevent and control deforestation. This led to a more than 50% decrease in deforestation rates from 2004 to 2008 and the plan has been renewed continuously since. We analyze PPCDAm by paying attention to the institutional and political roots that favored its launch, and its results and changes in the long-term. The presentation is part of CIFOR’s global research into multi-stakeholder forums, carried out in Brazil through mixed-method interviews with PPCDAm participants, organizers and other relevant stakeholders, supplemented with research on official documents and third-party evaluations. The results show that PPCDAm changed Brazil’s approach to deforestation in different ways. Firstly, organizing multi-institutional command-and-control actions supported by remote sensing techniques worldly recognized. Secondly, by promoting access to public services as compensation for the economic impacts after command-and-control actions. Thirdly, by raising awareness that land-use planning can optimize resources, including the creation of conservation units in deforestation hot-spots. The results also appoint that the budget prioritization for implementing PPCDAm activities and the coordination in the Civil House were important factors regarding the multi-institutional adherence to the plan. However, States and municipalities were not enough involved in the planning stages, although many actions focused on their territorial performance. Thus, PPCDAm proved to be an expensive and less effective plan in the long-term. Over time there has been greater involvement through the development of State plans, although these tend to have technical and budget limitations. Another challenge is that command-and-control actions were more successful than sustainable uses and land-tenure clarification. Finally, after more than one decade, recently PPCDAm has played a marginal role regarding a wider shift in development policies due to the predominance of conventional development paradigms and alliances with economic elites and traditional policies. At the same time, illegal deforestation has been re-shaping its patterns to overcome the remote sensing control. As a result, Brazil has shown increases in deforestation rates after 2014. In the long-term, therefore, the PPCDAm is becoming worn out, either because the deforestation problem was considered over control, by changes in the political practitioners, or because of rearrangements in national and international pressure and priorities."
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