Study by the University of Bonn shows that political rhetoric alone can change people’s behavior
The former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro contributed to deforestation with statements opposing forest conservation. This is shown by an international study led by the University of Bonn. According to this, the destruction of the Amazon rainforest accelerated considerably when Bolsonaro and his ministers posted anti-forest-conservation messages on Twitter. Brazil’s environmental authorities were greatly weakened during Bolsonaro’s term of office. Irrespective of this, the analysis shows that even the perception of a low risk of punishment was a relevant driver of deforestation. The researchers estimate that up to 1,700 square kilometers of forest – almost double the area of Berlin – were destroyed due to the power of words. The results have been published in The Journal of Politics.
Can political leaders influence whether society complies with legal requirements – simply through what they say? The current study uses the example of Brazil to show that this can absolutely be the case. The huge country is home to the largest section of the Amazon rainforest. In 2018, Brazilians elected Jair Bolsonaro as their president. In the first months of his term of office, he and his ministers repeatedly made derogatory remarks about the protection of this valuable ecosystem.
The study shows that statements by the Bolsonaro government accelerated the destruction of the rainforest. “We analyzed data from the initiative MapBiomas Alerta,” explains Dr. Gustavo Magalhães de Oliveira. “This initiative reviews and validates deforestation alerts from various sources covering the whole of Brazil. We also examined more than 3,600 Twitter posts that Bolsonaro and his ministers of agriculture, environment, and foreign affairs published in 2019.” The researchers analyzed which of them indicated a lower enforcement risk for infringements against environmental laws. Overall, they identified 38 such posts.
Deforestation depends on the reach of the statements
Political messages are only effective if they are heard. The researchers thus estimated the Twitter reach for 578 municipalities in the Amazon region. To do this, they analyzed how many tweets relating to the topic of “forest” were posted there by citizens between 2015 and 2018. The higher the Twitter activity in a municipality, the greater the likelihood that relevant tweets from the government would not go unread there.
“We assume that such messages spread through word of mouth,” explains the postdoctoral student at the Institute for Food and Resource Economics (ILR) at the University of Bonn. “Supporters share them, as do critics, and they are discussed locally until they reach the people who actually make decisions about deforestation. They view them as a political signal.” The analysis showed a direct and far-reaching response: In the regions at greatest risk, deforestation increased significantly in the months when Bolsonaro and his ministers had published posts opposing forest conservation. “The impacts were not limited to Twitter,” explains Dr. Oliveira. “We see the same pattern when we analyze other forms of exposure, such as television.”
Effect depends on economic incentives
Interestingly, the researchers found that the government statements had no influence on municipal environmental fines or deforestation bans. “Our analysis indicates that, as a result of the messages, people change their expectations of the extent to which they will be prosecuted for breaking the law,” stresses Oliveira. “The effect is thus not attributable to any changes in the local enforcement of forest conservation laws.”
The phenomenon appears to be driven by economic incentives. As a result, the government’s messages did not fall on any more fertile ground in municipalities with high levels of support for Bolsonaro than elsewhere. By contrast, the effect was stronger in areas where agricultural returns are high and where nature conservation policy has restricted deforestation in the past. The researchers estimate that, in 2019 alone, between 190 and 1,700 square kilometers of forest fell victim to the statements by the Bolsonaro government.
The study provides evidence of how powerful words can be – at least when they come from people with great political influence. It is quite possible that this effect goes beyond forest conservation and the context of the Brazilian Amazon region.
Participating institutions and funding:
Alongside the University of Bonn, the University of Texas at Dallas (USA) and Wageningen University (Netherlands) also took part in the study. The research was financed by the ‘Bonn SDG Fellowship Program’ at the University of Bonn, the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL), the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the German Excellence Strategy, and the EU program ‘Horizon’. Dr. Gustavo Magalhães de Oliveira and Prof. Dr. Jan Börner are members of the Transdisciplinary Research Area ‘Sustainable Futures’; The PhenoRob Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bonn supported the project.
Publication: Gustavo Magalhães de Oliveira, Elías Cisneros, Jorge Sellare, Jan Börner: Anti-Environmental Signals and Deforestation: Evidence from Brazil; The Journal of Politics; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/744065