Pressure over Stock: Explaining REDD+ Siting and Management in Brazil

The Amazon remains a climate cornerstone, yet deforestation pressures persist and the role of carbon projects in mitigating those pressures is contested. We assemble a municipality-level panel for the Brazilian Amazon by harmonizing land-cover classifications, deforestation indicators, municipal geometries, and the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) registry of REDD+ projects. Spatial structure is characterized with Moran’s I and Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA); environmental profiles are synthesized via PCA-assisted hierarchical clustering. To explain where projects occur, we estimate standard and Firth bias-reduced logistic regressions with standardized predictors reflecting pressure (recent deforestation) and stock (remaining forest cover). Projects concentrate both in well-preserved forest clusters and along livestock/agriculture conversion frontiers, indicating a bimodal geography consistent with preventive and reactive logics. Across specifications, recent deforestation share is the only consistent, statistically significant predictor of siting; a one-standard-deviation increase raises the odds of REDD+ presence by about 50% (OR ≈ 1.5) in the Firth model, while simple“more forest, more projects” patterns weaken once recent clearing is controlled for. We discuss implications for interpreting siting through a transparent pressure-stock lens (as an interpretive, not prescriptive, tool), and we note limitations alongside extensions using spatial logit/probit, improved entity resolution, and quasi-experimental checks for impacts.