Does economic development have an unavoidable ecological cost? We examine the ecological impacts of one of India's signature place-based economic policies involving massive tax benefits for new industrial and infrastructure development following the creation of the new state of Uttarakhand. The...

Rural agroforestry landscapes in West and Central Africa face a number of threats. Since decades, the ever escalating bushmeat crisis is pushing populations of threatened wildlife closer to extinction in many parts of West and Central Africa. In addition, population growth and economic needs are...

Every government that controls an exhaustible resource must decide whether to exploit it or to conserve and thereby let the subsequent government decide whether to exploit or conserve. This paper develops a theory of this situation and shows when a small probability that some future government...

In this paper, I study the effectiveness of privately managed FSC certified forests and public sustainability reserves distributed over the entire Brazilian Amazon from 2002-2015. The paper uses high-resolution data on forest cover derived from satellite images and organized in a grid of 1 km2...

This paper proposes an environmental DSGE model with deforestation of a tropical rain forest. The forest can be used to produce goods, but it also affects the well-being of the representative individual. Environmental policy is implemented with the taxation of the deforestation activity. We...

A growing number of case studies and reports suggest that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) play an important role in fighting against deforestation, and the penetration of ICT help decrease deforestation in a different part of world's forests. The aim of this study is to test...

Philippines has a land mass of 30 million ha, 52.7 percent of which was classified as forestlands. The country was identified as a megadiverse area in terms of tropical forests and biodiverse ecosystems. Laws and policies were laid since 1975 in order to inform forest management strategies. The...

This paper presents the first rigorous empirical evidence of the impact of a large hydrocarbon project in both its economic and environmental dimension. Concentrating on Peru’s largest hydrocarbon project, the Camisea Gas Project, which began operating in the dense Amazonian jungle under...

To reduce SDG tradeoffs in infrastructure provision, and to inform searches for SDG synergies, the authors show that roads’ impacts on Brazilian Amazon forests varied significantly across frontiers. Impacts varied predictably with prior development – prior roads and prior deforestation –...

In this paper, we use geospatial data and difference-in-differences models to identify the deforestation effects, during 2000-2013, of the leading forest policies in the Peruvian Amazon: i) logging concessions, ii) third-party certification of concessions, and iii) Protected Areas (PAs). We find...

Deforestation is one of many factors that hinder smallholder farmers' participation in sustainable palm oil (SPO) certification. Thus, policies that enhance the appetite for rainforest preservation might be helpful to increase the participation rate in certification schemes. Our study aims to...

This paper studies the relationship between land tenure for smallholder agriculture and deforestation in Viet Nam. We combine high resolution satellite data on deforestation with rich household and commune-level, biannual panel data. We study two margins of tenure security, whether a household...

The demand for agricultural land is globally increasing due to population growth and dietary diversification. As the availability of agricultural land is limited, much of the cropland expansion is occurring at the expense of tropical forests. During the past few decades, oil palm has become one...

Changes in land use, such as deforestation, expansion of sedentary agriculture and intensification of agricultural systems, significantly altered economic and ecological conditions in many regions of the world. In recent decades, one of the most rapid changes in land use was the expansion of...

There is an emerging consensus that carbon emissions must be limited. An attractive approach to promoting carbon reductions is to encourage reductions in deforestation. But any such strategy must confront a basic problem: agents that might be induced to reduce their actions which would reduce...

"The disappearance of China's naturally occurring forests is one of the most significant environmental shifts in the country's history, one often blamed on imperial demand for lumber. China's early modern forest history is typically viewed as a centuries-long process of environmental decline,...

The forest conservation policy instrument REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) is designed to compensate governments of tropical countries for their efforts to conserve forests. Food insecure countries that are specialized in agriculture and have weak...

The paper provides historical and analytical perspectives for the assessment of the challenges and opportunities of cattle raising activities in the transition toward a low-carbon agriculture in Brazil. It is organized as follows. The first section poses the problem. The second presents long run...

To inform the search for SDG synergies in infrastructure provision, and to reduce SDG tradeoffs, the authors show that road impacts on Brazilian Amazon forests have varied significantly across settings. Forest loss varied predictably with prior development - both prior roads and prior...

To inform the search for SDG synergies in infrastructure provision, and to reduce SDG tradeoffs, the authors show that road impacts on Brazilian Amazon forests have varied significantly across settings. Forest loss varied predictably with prior development - both prior roads and prior...