Isolating the mechanisms by which environmental enforcement reduces violence

Determine the relative contributions of three mechanisms—(i) the decline in deforestation and related land conflict, (ii) increased state presence and deterrence, and (iii) disruption of illegal economic activities—to the observed reduction in homicide rates in Brazilian Amazon municipalities associated with environmental law enforcement under the Real-Time Deforestation Detection System (DETER), measured by deforestation-related fines issued by the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA).

Background

The paper provides causal evidence that environmental enforcement—proxied by deforestation-related fines issued under Brazil’s DETER satellite monitoring system—reduces homicide rates in Amazon municipalities. To interpret these effects, the authors discuss three plausible channels: decreasing deforestation and land-related conflict, strengthening state presence and deterrence, and disrupting illegal economic activities. While the empirical strategy robustly identifies an average effect on violence, it does not disentangle the contribution of each mechanism.

Understanding the dominant mechanisms is important for policy design, as it informs whether enforcement should be complemented by other interventions (e.g., land tenure regularization, targeted policing against illegal markets). The inability to isolate these channels reflects a common challenge in empirically separating overlapping institutional and behavioral pathways in weak-capacity settings.