The article recently published in The Economist cites the paper written by João Paulo Mastrangelo (Universidade Federal do Acre) and Alexandre Gori Maia (Universidade Estadual de Campinas) to highlight the importance of the rule of law to control deforestation in the Amazon. Land-grabbing is widespread in the region. Land-grabbers invade public land, deforest it, and sell it to ranchers. Clearer property rights would help to protect the forest because owners would invest in the long run rather than stripping land and flipping it. They would also make it easy to identify who should be paid for conserving land or fined for spoiling it.

Preliminary versions of the paper written by Mastrangelo and Gori Maia were presented at the conferences of two main international associations of agricultural economics: Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA), and Agricultural Economics Society (AES). The paper highlights that when there are no overlapping claims for the same piece of land, it is less likely to be deforested and more likely to be used lawfully. The paper presented at the AAEA can be downloaded here.

The article published in The Economist (click here for full access) cites the paper's results to highlight that “if rainforests were in countries where property rights were clear and the rule of law was strong, it would be straightforward to pay the landowners to conserve them. Where property rights are muddled and the rule of law is weak, however, whom do you pay, and how do you know he or someone else won’t chop down the forest anyway? Alas, rainforests are often in the second kind of country.”