Incentivos financeiros para conservação ambiental: avaliando o ICMS Verde e seus impactos na redução do desmatamento no Estado do Pará

Abstract

This work comprises three essays on Pará’s Green ICMS, theoretically framing it as a governmental PES. The first essay investigates the instrument’s institutional design and asks how orthodox and heterodox economic approaches would classify it (a “pure” PES, a constitutionalized PES, or a hybrid). Through a documentary mapping of the Law, Decree, Manual, and Technical Standard—coding elements such as conditionality, MRV, cost disclosure, financing, revenue sharing, and safeguards—it concludes that the institutional design of the Green ICMS fits a constitutionalized PES, implying that the hypothesis of design endogeneity is partially corroborated. The second essay examines whether Green ICMS transfers (2012–2021) reduced municipal deforestation in the state. Using Generalized Synthetic Control (GSC) with two-way fixed effects, it finds an average ATT of −18.15 km²/year (p-value = 0.003), which fully corroborates the additionality hypothesis. The third essay focuses on the municipality of Marabá (PA) and, applying GSC with 108 donor units, obtains an average ATT of −26.71 km²/year (p-value = 0.083), with initial gains and declining returns, partially corroborating the stated hypothesis. Taken together, these findings suggest that the Green ICMS delivers additional reductions in deforestation, but their magnitude depends on a design that more strongly rewards environmental results and on independent auditing by the state-level public authority. It is recommended to migrate from stock proxies to environmental performance metrics, institute auditable MRV with disallowances, incorporate mechanisms for cost disclosure, and strengthen substantive safeguards (municipal environmental councils with effective action), while preserving federative coherence.