Forest governance without transparency? Evaluating state efforts to reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon

Abstract

Over 60% of the Amazon basin is contained within nine federal Brazilian states. How transparent are state-level governments about implementing and enforcing deforestation reduction policies? Advocates and officials can only influence forest conservation outcomes to the extent that they have information about the actions – the inputs and outputs – of front-line local actors. Leveraging a recently adopted freedom of information (FOI) law, this paper evaluates how well governments comply with website-based disclosure requirements (active transparency), and how effectively they respond to FOI requests (passive transparency) on the implementation and enforcement of deforestation reduction policies. By focusing on how subnational administrations disclose accountings of forest governance – the inputs and outputs of governance – the current study complements an already extensive body of scholarship on central government monitoring of forest cover – the transparency of outcomes. Comparing our results with an original database of transparency evaluations from Brazil, we find extremely low levels of compliance with FOI obligations. We do find, however, that government agencies possessing electronic FOI platforms, which help applicants send requests and appeals and accompany responses, fare better than those without. This and other findings have implications for the design of transparency systems, while global results speak to the policy challenges of federalism, especially dilemmas of subnational policy enforcement. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment