Carlos Eduardo Espinel Campos (p), Lorena Vieira da Costa Lelis

Philip S. Morrison

The Brazilian Amazon rainforest faces high deforestation rates due to the agricultural frontier's advancement, encompassing approximately 500,000 km² of land in the eastern and southern parts of the state of Pará to the west, passing through the states of Mato Grosso, Rondônia, and Acre. In 2020, the Satellite Monitoring Project for the Brazilian Amazon Forest (PRODES/INPE) revealed that around 11,088 km² of forest were deforested in the municipalities that make up the Legal Amazon. To determine the impact of environmental regulation on deforestation in the Brazilian Legal Amazon, this study aimed to evaluate the effect of a higher or lower level of environmental regulation on forest exploitation in the states of Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima, and Tocantins between 2013 and 2018. An analysis that ignores the inherent endogeneity of environmental fines (which correspond to a measure of monitoring and control of deforestation) applied in each of the nine states of the brazilian Amazon may raise incorrect analyses of the causal effect of interest. In this case, the expenses with environmental control in each state were used as an exogenous source of variation for the variability of environmental violations in each of the states considered in the analysis. The study applied the Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) method to estimate the model with Instrumental Variables (IV) to overcome the complications inherent in endogeneity. The total expense of each state with environmental control in its territories was used as an instrument to delineate the causal relationship between environmental regulation and the level of deforestation. The results indicated that environmental violations were not significant in explaining deforestation in the Amazon region in Brazil. The bureaucracy related to the processing of environmental violations may explain the insignificance of enforcement in reducing deforestation in the region. Moreover, the reduced amount charged for environmental violations does not prevent deforestation practices from being attenuated. In conclusion, the study showed that environmental violations are not significant in explaining deforestation in the Legal Amazon region and it also highlighted that it is crucial to develop and implement effective control and monitoring policies and allocate sufficient public budget to combat deforestation in the region.

Lukas Vashold (p), Nikolas Kuschnig

Carlos Eduardo Espinel Campos

Deforestation continues to plague the Brazilian Amazon, and poses a serious threat to the fight against climate change. Pristine forests on public and private lands are cleared, legally and illegally, for the production of commodities but also land speculation. Within this mechanism, the role of cattle is unclear, as it may act as a means to land appropriation, or an end in itself. In this paper, we present empirical evidence on the causal effect of cattle ranching on Amazon deforestation. We exploit exogenous variation in Chinese beef demand for causal identification of our econometric model, and implement novel spatial econometric methods to accurately model spillover effects across regions. We find that the deforestation impacts of cattle, when disentangled from other drivers, are lower than one would expect. We posit political uncertainty, which drives land speculation, as an alternative explanation for high deforestation rates. Our findings suggest that resilient policies and strong, independent institutions are needed for a sustainable reduction of deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon and beyond.

Bianca Biagi (p), Marta Meleddu

Lukas Vashold

This study aims to analyze the difference between environmental concern and behavior within a sample of developed EU countries different in their social capital. The dataset was gathered from the PEW Research Center's "Spring 2021 Global Attitudes Survey," which includes individual responses from 9 European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom), along with the corresponding breakdown at NUTS1 level within each country . The study focuses on two questions from the survey questionnaire that pertain to environmental concern and willingness to change behavior among the countries under examination. The first question inquiries about the level of personal concern regarding the harmful effects of global climate change: "How concerned are you, if at all, that global climate change will harm you personally at some point in your life? Are you very worried, a little worried, not too worried, or not worried at all?" The second question assesses the willingness to alter personal lifestyle and work habits to mitigate the impact of global climate change: "How much, if anything, would you be willing to change about how you live and work to help reduce the effects of global climate change? Would you be willing to make a lot of changes, some changes, only a few changes, or no changes at all?". The responses to the second question serve as a proxy for actual environmental behavior by representing stated behavior. Trust in government is used to measure social capital (Putnam, 2000; Sarracino et al., 2017) and to classify the countries in the sample accordingly.
The work employs a statistical method, the Combination of a Uniform and a Shifted Binomial distribution model (CUB), developed by Piccolo (2003). The empirical results of the present study suggest that countries with high levels of social capital and strong social norms exhibit a smaller discrepancy between environmental concern and behavior, while countries with lower levels of social capital and weak social norms have a larger discrepancy between the two. The analysis of regional differences within each country reveals that territorial gaps exacerbate these discrepancies, whereas in more territorially cohesive countries, non-territorial differences are less pronounced. These findings carry significant implications for environmental public policies.

Philip S. Morrison (p)

Bianca Biagi

The mental health and well-being literatures remain preoccupied with personal correlates of wellbeing - our personality, values, income and levels of social engagement. Until recently our geographic context has been neglected. In this talk, and the book on which it is based, I argue that when it comes to evaluating our well-being we must pay more systematic attention to the place we live in - to the qualities of our neighbourhood, city and region, to the local social, cultural and physical environment in which we are embedded.
In recent years the top-down approach to well-being adopted in most countries has been complemented by a recognition that well-being also varies across and within regions. While enriching our understanding of well-being this introduction of location raises a new set of theoretical and methodological issues. They both centre on the endogeneity issue.
Any two people can experience the same location quite differently and therefore simply knowing the characteristics of the person and where they live is insufficient because it does not address the interaction between the two. If the place (or change in place) is not the result of a person’s choice it is exogenous by definition and its impact on their well-being can be measured using standard tools. Such cases are unusual however because in most liberal democracies people can choose where they live and this ability to choose renders place endogenous which complicates any quantitative assessment of the independent well-being impact of place.
In urban settings in particular, places impact our well-being both endogenously as a result of the location choices we make and exogenously as a result of the un-consulted choices other people make. Place is a durable good and while some attributes are chosen at purchase (e.g. proximity to green space) others are imposed by others well after purchase (e.g. the erection of a neighbouring high rise). This combination of choice and circumstance renders the assessment of place on people’s well-being quite problematic and constitute a challenge to the framing and exercise of well-being policy at the sub-national level.