Climate-induced disasters can often capture the attention of both the public and the media, which make them effective channels for government accountability as governments could then be pressured into taking action. A dramatic surge of public attention on certain events could largely shape the emergent response of regulatory agencies. Yet the existence and duration of such an effect is still unknown.

Rafael Araujo of the Brazilian School of Economics and Finance, and colleagues from the USA, examined the sudden spike in global attention on forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon during August. Using a difference-in-difference setting, they find that compared with less visible but similar fires in Peru and Bolivia during the same period, the unprecedented public scrutiny from global society led to a 22% reduction in fires in this region. The effect is more pronounced in areas with denser forest cover. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the effect avoided 24.8 million tons of CO₂ emissions, which accounts for 3.86% of CO₂ emissions that Brazil needed to abate in 2018 to reach the Paris Agreement goals. The authors also discuss the potential channels through which government actions reduced fires.

气候引发的灾害通常会引起公众和媒体的注意，这使它们成为政府问责的有效渠道，因为政府可能会被迫采取行动。公众对某些事件的关注度急剧上升，可能在很大程度上影响监管机构的紧急反应。然而，这种影响的存在和持续时间仍然未知。

巴西经济与金融学院（Brazilian School of Economics and Finance）的拉斐尔·阿劳霍（Rafael Araujo）和来自美国的同事研究了8月份全球对巴西亚马逊地区森林火灾的关注度突然激增的情况。使用双重差分设置，他们发现，与同期秘鲁和玻利维亚不太明显但相似的火灾相比，全球社会前所未有的公众监督导致该地区的火灾减少了 22%。这种影响在森林覆盖较密集的地区更为明显。粗略的计算表明，该效果避免了 2480 万吨二氧化碳排放，占巴西 2018 年为实现《巴黎协定》目标而需要减少的二氧化碳排放量的 3.86%。作者还讨论了政府行动减少火灾的潜在渠道。