Incentive-based conservation is apromising approach to tropical forest conservation,including within multiple-use protected areas. Here weanalyze the environmental impacts of Bolsa Floresta, alongstanding forest conservation program combiningconditional household payments with livelihood-focusedinvestments in 15 multiple-use reserves of Amazonas State,Brazil. We use grid-based data, nearest-neighbor matching,and panel data econometrics to compare forest-relatedprogram outcomes (deforestation, degradation, fires) withnon-participating reserves. While post-treatmentdeforestation and degradation was negligible, this wasalready the case pre-treatment, since low-threat reserveshad preferentially been targeted. We thus find onlystatistically insignificant additional conservation effectsfrom implementation. No important heterogeneous treatmenteffects could be detected either. Our findings thus add tothe growing evidence that spatial mis-targeting towardslow-hanging fruits, that is disproportionally selectinglow-threat forest conservation areas into programs,constitutes a prime cause for low additionality found inrigorous impact evaluations of incentive-based forestconservation initiatives.
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