The Impact of Social and Environmental protection programmes on food security and the environment

Social and environmental protection programmes are common strategies to deliver improvements in social and environmental conditions. Holistic analysis of interventions which examine linkages between multiple sustainable development outcomes are key for understanding transitions to sustainability and make progress towards sustainable development. This thesis uses a multidisciplinary approach and focuses on Brazils’ flagship Zero Hunger social protection programme and the National Rural Environmental Registry (CAR), and the role of small-scale farmers, to examine intended and unintended outcomes and trade-offs of the interventions. Specific outcomes of focus are multi-dimensional poverty, food insecurity and health, use of agro-chemical (inorganic fertilizer and pesticide), expansion of agricultural area (crop and pasture) and and natural vegetation loss. Results show that social and environmental protection programmes which focuses on small-scale farmers can deliver simultaneous beneficial social and environmental outcomes. However, trade-offs and heterogeneous effects often occur. These heterogeneities arise for three primary reasons. First, programme impacts vary across food security, multi-dimensional poverty, health and environmental outcomes, with evidence for positive, negligible and negative impacts depending on the outcome in question. Second, within a single outcome impacts vary depending on the specific programme activities, in particular whether support to small-scale farmers is given through conditional cash transfers, agricultural credit, support for agricultural market access or environmental monitoring. Third and finally, within a single outcome and specific programme activity there is considerable variation in the magnitude and even direction of impact. This variation in impact we find both spatially across Brazil and across the types of farmers that participate. These differences in impact is driven primarily by variation in local contexts and variation in characteristics of programme participants. The success of the Zero Hunger and CAR programmes, and likely the success of integrated social and environmental programmes in other developing countries, have been identified to rely on three main conditions: the presence of basic infrastructure, the presence and collaboration of institutions across sectors, and appropriate programme design and targeting to engage the poorest and most in need farmers.