Conservation Policies

For my last blog post, I wanted to write about some of the economic policies that have helped to preserve biological diversity in the Pantanal.

In a study by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), they reported several national policies promoting conservation in the Pantanal. The first of these is that rural property owners are directed to leave 20% of their land holdings in its natural state, with tax benefits for people following this guideline (although there is no monitoring for compliance). In theory this would help to protect biodiversity within the natural landscape.

Another interesting thing reported is that in the past couple decades, the national currency has gotten more stable as part of the Plan Real, Brazil's monetary policy; this means that in the past there was an incentive to hold onto cattle as a "hedge against inflation," whereas now this incentive is gone once currency had stabilized. And in fact, the number of cattle has diminished in recent years, although this is due to a variety of reasons.

Although it was interesting to see a couple economic drivers favoring conservation within the Pantanal, it is clear that more needs to be done if the Pantanal is to be conserved for future generations. But perhaps tax benefits for conserved land are a good place to start.

-Palani