Under the impact caused by the disclosure of the record deforestation rate in 1995, the Brazilian Federal Government issued a Provisional Measure (PM) which, among other changes, increased the size of legal reserves in the Amazon from 50 to 80% hoping to reduce deforestation. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of this provisional measure as a tool to assist in the conservation of this biome. To this end, we compared deforestation rates before and after the PM by dummy variable regression analysis. Results indicated that there is no significant difference between the deforested area before and after the PM; we could not demonstrate that increased restriction in legislation has led to deforestation reduction.
forest code; conservation; economics and policy forest; Amazon