The Effects of Local Environmental Institutions on Perceptions of Smoke and Fire Problems in Brazil

Environmental concern in developing
countries has risen rapidly over the past decade. At the
same time, decentralization and civic participation in
environmental policy-making have also burgeoned. This paper
uses data from the Brazilian Municipal Environmental Survey
2001 to examine the causal effect of municipio (county)
level environmental institutions on perceptions about
environmental problems in Brazil. Consistent with models of
public choice, the analysis assumes that the existence of an
environmental secretary or an environmental council is
related to characteristics of the municipio population. To
control for endogeneity - the possibility that the presence
of environmental institutions merely signals
constituents' tastes rather than influences municipal
actions - the authors construct a system of equations that
identifies the causal impact of the institutions.
Estimation via a trivariate probit model allows for
correlation of unobserved determinants of problem
perception, presence of an environmental secretary, and
presence of an environmental council. The results suggest
that the presence of environmental secretaries has a strong,
highly significant, positive causal effect on environmental
problem perception. Presence of local environmental
councils with civic participation has a significant but
weaker impact on environmental problem perception. The
authors conclude that local environmental institutions
indeed shape local environmental awareness and that
participatory institutions can influence local government.