Brazil launched the “Low-Carbon Agriculture” Plan and a special line of credit: the ABC Program. However, the program has been slow in getting off the ground. To understand why, the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) conducted more than forty interviews with members of various producer, cooperative, association and industry groups, as well as the government.

In the last eight years, we have seen a drastic reduction in deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon. The annual deforestation rate in 2014 (484.8 thousand ha) was 75% lower than the historical average between 1996 and 2005 (1.95 million ha). This reduction has...