Impacts of Paraguay’s zero-deforestation law

Anna Pede, Kendra Walker, Robert Heilmayr, Atahualpa Ayala, Lauren Sharwood

Countries are increasingly banning deforestation on private lands. While this policy represents an ambitious commitment to forest conservation, its lack of flexibility has drawn criticism. However, relatively little research details whether such bans have been effective. Here, we study the impacts of Paraguay’s zero-deforestation law, a ban on deforestation across the Eastern half of the country that was adopted in 2004. We estimate the impact of the law by comparing deforestation trends in Eastern Paraguay against deforestation in other South American sub-national jurisdictions using a synthetic difference-in-differences approach. We find a precisely estimated null result, which is robust to a wide variety of alternate model specifications. To explore why the law failed to reduce deforestation, we draw upon a review of the law’s implementation, and novel, remotely sensed data detailing the drivers of deforestation. We demonstrate that weak enforcement and conflicts with agrarian reform policies likely undermined the zero-deforestation law.

Event: World Bank Land Conference 2024 - Washington

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Document type:Impacts of Paraguay’s zero-deforestation law (849 kB - pdf)