As someone who went through grade-school in the 90s, with all of our "Save the Rainforest" campaigns, all I can think is: a fat lot of good that "awareness" did...
Sure it didn't stop the destruction, but I don't think that was ever in the cards. But it might have helped by some amount even if small. 1%? 2%? 6%?
If it reduced destruction by 2%, would that have made the campaign worth it?
I think there's a chance it did do some good in that it was in enough awareness to end up somewhere on a foreign policy agenda higher than it might have otherwise been, and thus policies might have been negotiated in trade agreements, treaties, company due diligence source tracing, etc.
I thought this was a brilliant idea, and it wasn't until the first time I visited Brazil (which is, somehow, 20 years ago now) that I learned that it wasn't really helping at all. In part, it's not that easy to "buy part of the rainforest". But more importantly (as the article describes), small-scale miners and loggers don't usually respect those property claims (or designations of areas as protected parkland).