PPCDAm (Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon)

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The Brazilian federal programme launched in 2004, after the second-highest clearance year on record, that is generally credited with the roughly four-fifths fall in Amazon deforestation over the following decade. Its design is the interesting part: it did not rely on any single instrument. It combined near-real-time satellite alerts with field enforcement, a large expansion of protected areas and indigenous land demarcation in the path of the frontier, embargoes on specific properties, a list of priority municipalities subject to heightened scrutiny, and - the measure economists most often single out - a restriction tying access to subsidised rural credit to environmental compliance. Deforestation fell without agricultural output falling, which is the finding that makes the programme genuinely important, because it undercuts the assumption that clearance and production are the same variable. It has been through several phases, was substantially weakened in the late 2010s, and was relaunched in 2023.