projects

Climate change is a global emergency, requiring both technological and institutional interventions to mitigate its effects. Among the contributions of political science to climate action are institutional solutions that address collective action problems, such as collective property rights. Accordingly, collective titling became a prominent conservation strategy in recent decades. However, empirical evidence on its effectiveness remains inconclusive, with inconsistent findings often lacking clear theoretical explanations. We bridge this gap by arguing that the impact of collective titling depends on the strength of intracommunity institutions – where communities with more cohesive institutions experience solider conservation outcomes, as suggested by the common-pool resource literature. We test this argument by analyzing the effects of collective titling programs on deforestation in Brazil. We find that while collective titling reduces degradation, its benefits are concentrated in communities with strong pre-existing collective institutions, highlighting a more nuanced reality than is often assumed in the policy literature.

A growing literature links democratic institutions, particularly elections, to increased deforestation but fails to fully explain how politicians manipulate forest access near elections. We propose a theoretical framework connecting electoral incentives, environmental policy, and outcomes, focusing on enforcement efforts. We argue that stringent enforcement often triggers electoral backlash, leading incumbents to reduce and strategically redistribute enforcement to avoid political costs. This results in higher deforestation rates, with enforcement leniency favoring core supporters and stricter penalties targeting opposition areas. This strategic behavior explains both the election-deforestation nexus and the mixed results in existing studies, highlighting the need to account for non-linear policy-making dynamics. Our findings offer a nuanced understanding of how electoral pressures shape environmental outcomes and suggest ways to design more resilient environmental policy.

The socioeconomic dimension of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification remains underexplored. This study provides the first large-scale empirical assessment of the socio-economic effects of FSC certification of natural forests in the Brazilian Amazon. In 2013, certified Forest Management Units (MUs) covered 3.3 million hectares, predominantly in the states of Pará and Rondônia, and varied widely in size, operational structure, and ownership. We combined quasi-experimental methods with multiple data sources to identify the causal effects of FSC certification on a set of outcomes selected through a scoping literature review and FSC’s Theory of Change. We use information of 52 FSC-certified MU and 32 public concessions, constructed from primary and secondary sources, to capture spatial and temporal variation on certification. We use the information on the location of the 52 certified MUs and the polygons of the public concessions to create a municipal level panel of FSC certification. We further use the polygons for explicit spatial treatments. We thus provide estimates of the socioeconomic efects of FSC certification at the municipality and public concession level. Our results at the municipality level indicate that FSC certification does not significantly affected any of our measured outcomes, including forest sector outpit. While initial two-way fixed effects estimates pointed to potential associations with reduced incidence of tropical diseases, increased investment in public goods, and higher probabilities of land-based conflicts, more robust estimators shows there is no effect of certification at the municipality level, likely due to the relative small size of certification and the timber sector relative to the local economy. We thus use more rigorous analyses using a synthetic control estimator — focusing on municipalities where more than 40% of non-designated forests were certified — found limited evidence of robust or consistent socio-economic impacts at the municipal level. We do not observe any measurable social improvements with current administrative data, except in Novo Progresso, where certification covered over 77% of non-designated forests and was associated with increased provision of public goods. Our findings at the concession level are consistent with the municipal level results. We find modest improvements in education outcomes (higher approval and lower failure rates), and higher nightlight intensity (a proxy for economic development) after a concession gets certified. This points to the existence of local economic gains that accrue to households and thus allows for education gains. These findings underscore both the promise and the challenges of identifying the broader social impacts of forest certification. Future research should examine more localized or disaggregated outcomes, including firm performance, household livelihoods, and community perceptions.

This paper evaluates the impact of a rainwater harvesting intervention in rural public schools across Brazil’s semiarid region—a drought-prone and economically vulnerable area. Exploiting variation in program rollout and the timing of climate shocks, we estimate the causal effect of access to school-based rainwater systems on educational outcomes. I find that treated schools experience a 22% reduction in student dropout rates during droughts, indicating that water infrastructure significantly increases educational resilience to climate shocks. The program also leads to a 5% improvement in average academic performance, though we detect no effect on grade approval rates. Interestingly, we observe a decline in enrollment, likely reflecting broader demographic responses to extreme weather rather than direct program effects. These findings highlight the role of low-cost infrastructure in mitigating the educational impacts of climate shocks. While effective at the school level, our results suggest that broader adaptation strategies are needed to build fully resilient communities in the face of increasing climate volatility.

Strengthening land tenure is a leading policy for curbing tropical deforestation, yet its effects are inconsistent and poorly understood, especially in weak-governance frontiers. We examine when titling fosters conservation in such settings. We combine satellite and survey data with two randomized choice experiments among 2,000 farming households in the Colombian Amazon. We find that individual formal titles increase conservation choices only among households with stronger social capital, and we provide evidence of the operating mechanism: a land title generates larger gains in perceived security as social capital increases. Land cover data show that areas where more households held formal land titles lost more forest, but this association was weaker where social capital was stronger. These findings indicate that informal and formal institutions complement each other: land rights are more likely to support forest conservation where local institutions make them secure, limiting the climate-mitigation potential of titling alone in weak-governance frontiers.

How does climate adaptation affect fertility and birth outcomes? As global warming intensifies extreme droughts, access to water—already a challenge in many regions—is increasingly linked to reproductive decisions and pregnancy outcomes. Yet little is known about how household-level adaptation strategies shape fertility behavior or mitigate climate-related health risks. This paper studies Brazil’s “Cisterns Program,” a large-scale intervention providing low-cost rainwater harvesting systems to rural households in the drought-prone Semiarid region. Covering roughly 25% of the population, the program aims to smooth water consumption and increase resilience to climate shocks. We combine detailed administrative data on program rollout and household characteristics with Brazil’s complete birth registry from 2000–2022, covering over 5,000 municipalities and 510 microregions. Using this rich dataset, we analyze how access to cisterns affects birth outcomes, fertility timing, and exposure to waterborne diseases. We find that cisterns reduce the negative effects of droughts on birth weight, prematurity, and fetal death, while also lowering the incidence of diarrhea and intestinal illnesses. These effects are robust across specifications and suggest that household water security improves both maternal and child health under climate stress. Strikingly, we also detect a shift in the seasonality of conceptions in program areas—evidence that families adapt fertility planning to water availability. This behavioral response highlights a novel mechanism through which climate adaptation shapes demographic outcomes. Our findings underscore the potential of decentralized, low-cost infrastructure as an effective climate resilience strategy. In contexts where large-scale water systems are infeasible, household-level interventions like cisterns can protect vulnerable populations from the health and demographic impacts of climate change.