Lessons from the historical dynamics of environmental law enforcement in the Brazilian Amazon.

Here, we analyze critical changes in environmental law enforcement in the Brazilian Amazon between 2000 and 2020. Based on a dataset of law enforcement indicators, we discuss how these changes explain recent Amazon deforestation dynamics. Our analysis also covers changes in the legal prosecution process and documents a militarization of enforcement between 2018 and 2022. From 2004 to 2018, 43.6 thousand land-use embargoes and 84.3 thousand fines were issued, targeting 3.3 million ha of land, and totaling USD 9.3 billion in penalties. Nevertheless, enforcement relaxed and became spatially more limited, signaling an increasing lack of commitment by the State to enforcing the law. The number of embargoes and asset confiscations dropped by 59% and 55% in 2019 and 2020, respectively. These changes were accompanied by a marked increase in enforcement expenditure, suggesting a massive efficiency loss. More importantly, the creation of so-called conciliation hearings and the centralization of legal processes in 2019 reduced the number of actual judgments and fines collected by 85% and decreased the ratio between lawsuits resulting in paid fines over filed ones from 17 to 5%. As Brazil gears up to crack-down on illegal deforestation once again, our assessment suggests urgent entry points for policy action.

Multiple facets of biodiversity are threatened by mining-induced land-use change in the Brazilian Amazon

Aim Mining is increasingly pressuring areas of critical importance for biodiversity conservation, such as the Brazilian Amazon. Biodiversity data are limited in the tropics, restricting the scope for risks to be appropriately estimated before mineral licensing decisions are made. As the distributions and range sizes of other taxa differ markedly from those of vertebrates—the common proxy for analysis of risk to biodiversity from mining—whether mining threatens lesser-studied taxonomic groups differentially at a regional scale is unclear. Location Brazilian Amazon. Methods We assess risks to several facets of biodiversity from industrial mining by comparing mining areas (within 70 km of an active mining lease) and areas unaffected by mining, employing species richness, species endemism, phylogenetic diversity and phylogenetic endemism metrics calculated for angiosperms, arthropods and vertebrates. Results Mining areas contained higher densities of species occurrence records than the unaffected landscape, and we accounted for this sampling bias in our analyses. None of the four biodiversity metrics differed between mining and nonmining areas for vertebrates. For arthropods, species endemism was greater in mined areas. Mined areas also had greater angiosperm species richness, phylogenetic diversity and phylogenetic endemism, although less species endemism than unmined areas. Main Conclusions Unlike for vertebrates, facets of angiosperm and arthropod diversity are relatively higher in areas of mining activity, underscoring the need to consider multiple taxonomic groups and biodiversity facets when assessing risk and evaluating management options for mining threats. Particularly concerning is the proximity of mining to areas supporting deep evolutionary history, which may be impossible to recover or replace. As pressures to expand mining in the Amazon grow, impact assessments with broader taxonomic reach and metric focus will be vital to conserving biodiversity in mining regions.