Human development is driving numerous global species to the brink of extinction, threatening essential resources like water and soil, and contributing to climate change. Conservationists have shown that putting critically threatened areas under protection is vital if nations are to slow or reverse these trends, and global frameworks such as the Convention on Biological Diversity have identified the creation and maintenance of protected areas as the cornerstone of such efforts.
Yet, a new study in Environmental Conservation focusing on protected areas in Brazil—one of the most biologically megadiverse countries on the planet—shows that shortfalls in funding are systematically undermining conservation goals.
Approach and Key Findings
Researchers, based at the Federal University of Amapá in Macapá, Brazil, Conservation International Brazil, and the University of Miami, closely examined the funding for 300 protected areas covering a total of 289,527 square miles (749,872 square kilometers). These were in three different ecological regions of the country: the Amazon, an adjacent belt of drylands and savannas, and the Atlantic coastal forest. They found that 72 percent of Brazil's federal protected areas were underfunded, with a combined shortfall of about $958 million for 2023.
"In a country with high income inequality like Brazil, conservation investments can make a big difference in places with limited traditional economic output, but huge natural capital," said José Maria Cardoso da Silva , professor and chair of the Department of Geography and Sustainable Development at the University of Miami, and one of the study's authors. "If protected areas that are distant from urban centers are fully funded and resources are used locally, a conservation-based economy yoked to genuine social progress can be sparked."
This analysis was sourced from financial data from 2014 to 2023, which indicated the cost of managing each protected area, including staff salaries and benefits, as well as operating costs. When they compared actual funding with costs, they noted that a majority of Brazil's protected areas are funded far below the levels needed to adequately maintain them.
The analysis also revealed that:
- Despite a 30 percent increase in funding over the decade, spending did not keep pace with the expansion of land under protection.
- Amazon reserves faced the greatest funding gap, receiving only about 20 percent of what they needed to operate.
- By contrast, reserves in the highly urbanized and economically robust Atlantic Forest region received about 72 percent of what they needed.
- Funding shrank significantly in 2020–2021 due to COVID-19 budget cuts and deliberate rollbacks of environmental policy, and only partly recovered in 2022–2023.
- Parks near cities and towns tended to receive more funding — likely because people in urban areas can more effectively lobby government for conservation investment.
Why It Matters
Brazil's system of protected areas is among the largest on Earth. These reserves are central to global biodiversity conservation and to Brazil's commitments under the international Convention on Biological Diversity. The study reveals a pattern in the underfunding: Parks that are larger, more remote, and farther from major population centers are consistently the least well-funded. This places the Amazon—arguably the world's most ecologically important region—at an enormous disadvantage. A reserve without adequate staffing cannot be properly patrolled, monitored, or maintained, leaving it vulnerable to illegal deforestation, mining, and poaching.
What the Researchers Recommend
The study puts forward several concrete recommendations for Brazilian policymakers:
1. Prioritize the Amazon. No national effort to close the conservation funding gap will succeed without dramatically increasing resources for Amazonian reserves. Existing programs like the Amazon Region Protected Areas Program (ARPA) and Fundo Amazônia are valuable but insufficient on their own.
2. Build stable, multi-year funding commitments. The study shows that short-term policy changes can cause lasting damage. Conservation funding should not be hostage to annual budget cycles or political shifts. Protected areas need reliable, long-term financial planning.
3. Create a national protected area financing platform. Brazil should develop an open, publicly accessible database tracking investment in all protected areas — federal, state, and private. This would enable better decision-making, accountability, and reporting to international bodies.
4. Invest in remote and newly established parks. Newer and more isolated reserves lack the political networks, institutional support, and media attention that older, better-connected parks enjoy. Targeted support for these areas is essential to close the equity gap.
Helenilza Cunha, professor at the Federal University of Amapá and one of the article's authors, concluded: "Protected areas are a linchpin not only of Brazil's efforts to survive long-term climate change, but also of our future economic growth, meaning that they should be treated as strategic assets that deserve stable funding over time."
About the Study
"Chronic underfunding of protected areas in a megadiverse country: spatial, temporal and socioeconomic patterns from Brazil" was authored by Helenilza Ferreira Albuquerque Cunha, Luís Cláudio Fernandes Barbosa, Alan Cavalcanti da Cunha, and José Maria Cardoso da Silva. It is published in Environmental Conservation (Cambridge University Press, 2026). DOI: 10.1017/S037689292610040X
The researchers used a decade of financial data from Brazil's federal transparency portal, alongside advanced statistical methods, to identify not only direct funding drivers but also the ways in which wealth and population patterns in surrounding regions influence conservation spending across the country.
