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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.

People share and seek information online that reflects a variety of social phenomena, including concerns about health conditions. The study recently published by Alexandre Gori Maia (UNICAMP) and colleagues (Daniel Morales Martínez - UNICAMP, Leticia  Marteleto - UT at Austin, Cristina Guimaraes Rodrigues - FIPE/USP, and Luiz Gustavo Sereneo - UNICAMP) analyzed how the contents of the social network Twitter may provide real-time information to monitor and anticipate policies aimed at controlling or mitigating public health outbreaks. The authors collected tweets on the COVID-19 pandemic with content ranging from safety measures, vaccination, health, to politics. The study then highlights how mentions of selected keywords can significantly explain future COVID-19 cases and deaths in one locality. Two main theoretical mechanisms help explain the links between Twitter contents and COVID-19 diffusion: risk perception and health behavior.

Finding ways to stimulate the diffusion of water-saving irrigation is essential to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change on water supply. The study recently published by José Daniel Morales Martínez (UNICAMP), Alexandre Gori Maia (UNICAMP), and Junior Ruiz Garcia (UFPR) compared the factors determining the diffusion of least efficient (sprinkler systems) and most efficient irrigation (localized systems) in the Brazilian agriculture. The authors highlight how the diffusion of water-saving systems depends on knowledge flows between farmers (peer effects). On the other hand, the diffusion of least efficient systems depends fundamentally on the easy availability of water, which may become more scarce with climate change.

We scrape all publicly available Twitter data (tweets) with mentions of the Brazil's six leading presidential candidates: Lula, Bolsonaro, Moro, Ciro, Doria, and Tebet. The trends show how the candidates perform in the social networks, offering insights into public opinion and the Brazilian election process.

The integration of trees, crops, and livestock (or simply agroforestry) is among the priority policies in Brazil to increase food production without further deforestation and carbon emissions. The environmental benefits of agroforestry are well known, such as restoration of degraded lands, water and soil conservation, carbon and nitrogen fixation. However, the economic impacts of agroforestry are still poorly understood. A research partnership between the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA) analyzed the impacts of the diffusion of agroforestry on cattle farming in Brazil. The researchers published a paper in the journal Land Use Policy highlighting that the diffusion of agroforestry systems had positive and relevant impacts on the stocking rate (heads/pasture area) and, in some cases, in the total value of production.