Replication Data for: Playing Politics with Environmental Protection: The Political Economy of Designating Protected Areas

Protected areas play an important role in biodiversity conservation, but they also carry local costs in the form of constraints on natural resource extraction. We investigate how policymakers make trade-offs between national environmental benefits and local economic costs by examining the designation of protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find causal evidence that the Brazilian government systematically over-designates protected areas in municipalities controlled by opposition mayors relative to municipalities controlled by mayors in the president's political coalition. In addition, we find evidence that this dynamic is likely driven by the economic interests of local elites in safe districts, and not by those of the municipal electorate. These results show that political considerations bias the geographic distribution of protected areas in the world's largest rainforest.

保护区在生物多样性保护中发挥着关键作用，但同时也会以限制自然资源开采的形式给当地带来经济成本。本研究以巴西亚马逊地区的保护区划定为研究对象，探讨政策制定者如何在国家层面的环境收益与地方层面的经济成本之间进行权衡取舍。本研究采用断点回归设计（Regression Discontinuity Design），获得了因果性证据：相较于由总统所在政治联盟的市长管辖的市政辖区，巴西政府会系统性地在反对党市长执政的市政辖区内过度划定保护区。此外，研究证据表明，这一现象的驱动机制更可能源于安全选区中地方精英的经济利益，而非市政选民的群体诉求。上述结果显示，政治考量会对全球最大热带雨林的保护区地理分布产生偏误性影响。