Browsing by Subject "Deforestation"

American cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) is a severely understudied and neglected“disease of poverty” widespread throughout Peru. Transmission dynamics of CL are complex, requiring sandfly vectors and mammalian reservoir hosts to maintain the pathogen in a local environment whereby incidental hosts (people) can become infected. We employed a One-Health approach to understand CL transmission in rapidly changing region of northern Peru. We describe the characteristics of 529 CL positive patients from four participating clinics. Using conditional logistic regression, we assessed risk factors of CL for residents of small urban areas through a matched case-control study with 63 patients who had visited one of the same clinics for CL (cases) or other medical reasons (controls). We later enrolled 343 households as part of a community based study occurring in 15 urban and rural areas of Soritor. We found 256 positive humans (n= 914) as tested via the Montenegro Skin Test; we found 11 positive dogs (n = 236) via an immunofluorescence antibody test. Our results suggest that most- if not all- of CL transmission is occurring in rural areas and that urban women and urban children engage in many high risk activities typically attributed to men. We find evidence that prevalence of past infection is highest among rural residents and men. We believe dogs are unlikely Leishmania reservoirs in either rural or urban settings. It remains unknown if the high number of MST positive children in rural areas is a result of peridomestic or intradomestic transmission.

To date, the creation of protected areas (PAs) has been the dominant policy in the efforts to protect forests. Yet there is still somewhat limited rigorous evidence about the impacts of PAs on rates of deforestation. Further, most of the existing evidence concerns the impacts of protection within the boundaries of PAs. Much of that existing evidence does not use the characteristics of the protected lands when generating the baselines to which outcomes on protected lands are compared in order to infer the PAs' impacts. Yet even when impact within a PA has been estimated as rigorously as possible, since the total impact of protection involves impact not only inside the PA but also outside the PA even the best possible estimates of impacts within PAs could mis-state total PA impacts. Overstatements occur if there is "leakage" from PAs, i.e., spillovers of activities to forests outside PAs, so deforestation outside is higher than it would have been without the PAs.

My dissertation starts with a reduced form examination of net local spillovers. We follow this with an evaluation of two mechanisms through which PAs could affect forest nearby. In particular we explore two novel angles by considering both migration choices and road building decisions. PA creation could affect the development equilibrium by shifting private and public expectations to lower migration and road building where the PA is established, beyond the PA's boundaries. My dissertation explores implications of such thinking and provides novel empirical evidence for the Brazilian Legal Amazon.

Chapter 1 estimates deforestation spillovers around Brazilian Amazon PAs. Given PA location bias towards regions with low deforestation pressure, we use matching methods to control for observable land characteristics that may confound PAs' impacts. Specifically, we compare 2000-2004 and 2004-2008 deforestation on the land nearby to PAs with clearing of untreated forests similar in key deforestation determinants. We find that some PAs reduce deforestation rates nearby and, consistent with deforestation impacts inside PAs, those local spillovers vary across the landscape. Reductions are significant near roads and cities − not expected if the result is due to insufficient empirical controls but unsurprising if real impacts are arising due to PAs − and around an understandable subset of PAs. This result contrast sharply with most existing analyses of PAs' spillovers where, if anything, 'leakage' (higher nearby clearing) is discussed and observed. Yet we affirm a more general point that local spillovers depend on local development dynamics.

Chapter 2 examines one mechanism for the prior result that PAs lowered rates of deforestation nearby. Given migration's importance throughout the history of this forest frontier, we ask whether dissuading migration could be a mechanism for protection's local conservation spillovers. Examining individual migration decisions among the Amazon municipalities, we find that Federal PAs − previously seen to reduce rates of deforestation near PAs − seem to encourage outmigration from and discourage migration to PA areas.

Chapter 3 examines another mechanism for the result in my Chapter 1. We consider a recent expansion of the unofficial roads networks in the Brazilian Amazon to provide initial evidence concerning whether PAs may affect such investments in development. Specifically, controlling for prior roads − both official and unofficial − we test whether the growth in unofficial roads between 2008 and 2010 is reduced by establishments of PAs. Thus, we examine road growth as another potential mechanism for forest spillovers from PAs. Controlling for relevant observable factors, and using both matching and OLS, we find that having a large fraction of municipal area in PAs − in particular Federal PAs − reduces the growth of unofficial roads. Such impacts can significantly influence regional development patterns.

The construction of roads, either as an economic tool or as necessity for the implementation of other infrastructure projects is increasing in the tropical forest worldwide. However, roads are one of the main deforestation drivers in the tropics. In this study we analyzed the impact of road investments on both deforestation and jaguar habitat loss, in the Mayan Forest. As well we used these results to forecast the impact of two road investments planned in the region. Our results show that roads are the single deforestation driver in low developed areas, whether many other drivers play and important role in high developed areas. In the short term, the impact of a road in a low developed area is lower than in a road in a high developed area, which could be the result of the lag effect between road construction and forest colonization. This is consistent since roads resulted to be a significant deforestation driver for at least two decades. Roads significantly affect jaguar's habitat selection; however males showed a higher tolerance than females. From 1980 to 2000 female jaguars lost 36% of their habitat wile males lost 22%. Our forecasting of the impact of the proposed road, shows that it will promote the deforestation of approximately 16,851 has, and the jaguar habitat loss of 146,929, during the first decade; meanwhile the alternative route will have and impact of 2519 hectares and the habitat loss of 899 hectares.

This dissertation presents three program evaluations in environmental and resource economics. In the first chapter, I ask whether rural roads can contribute to a reversal of tree cover loss. Prior literature shows roads to be strong drivers of deforestation; however, I hypothesize that in some settings the opposite relationship may hold. Roads may (1) increase the relative productivity of labor in non-agricultural sectors, reducing agricultural activity and allowing reforestation; (2) raise profits from forest management or plantations by linking markets, encouraging forest planting; and (3) provide access to imported fuel sources, reducing pressure on forests from firewood collection. I use a large-scale rural road construction program in India to explore these possibilities. I construct a nationwide, village-level panel, and estimate the impacts of roads on tree cover using a differences-in-differences approach. In aggregate I find that road construction contributed to tree cover expansion, in great contrast to the existing empirical road-forest literature. I also find considerable variation in road impacts across settings within India: frontier settings saw reductions in tree cover due to new roads, while less isolated settings with more established agriculture saw increases in tree cover.

In the second chapter, I apply similar quasi-experimental methods to a very different question: does rights-based fisheries management increase fish prices? Rights-based management, specifically “catch shares,” is known to extend fishing seasons by slowing the destructive “race to fish.” This reduces fishing costs. It may also increase fishing revenues, because longer fishing seasons reduce product gluts that depress prices. I test this hypothesis for the majority of U.S. catch share fisheries (all those with data available) using an individually matched control fishery for each treated, catch share fishery and a difference-in-differences approach. I find evidence for increased ex-vessel prices among fisheries that undergo season decompression; however, highly variable results suggest that there is a need for a richer theoretical understanding of transitions to rights-based management. I discuss effort substitution in multispecies fisheries systems as a possible explanation for this heterogeneity.

In the third chapter, I consider how environmentally beneficial actions can be incentivized by conditional payments (i.e. payments made in return for specific actions or outcomes) in collective land management settings. I use a framed field-lab experiment with participants from collective lands enrolled in a new payments for ecosystem services (PES) program in Mexico. I test the impact of increasing collective conditionality. Because social interactions are integral in collective decision-making, I also test the impact of PES design features that aim to improve group cooperation. Greater collective conditionality raised contributions, with higher impact on lower baseline contributors. Giving groups a way of participating in program rule-setting further improved their cooperation with those rules.

What farmers do matters. Even as the world’s population is increasingly urbanized, almost a billion people make their living in agriculture (World Bank, 2018) and 5 billion acres (38%) of the world’s land area is farmland (FAO, 2020). Moreover, agriculture accounts for a significant portion of global deforestation, forest fragmentation, and habitat loss (Defries, Rudel, Uriarte, & Hansen, 2010; Rudel, Defries, Asner, & Laurance, 2009), while consuming 70% of global freshwater and contributing substantially to water pollution (FAO, 2011). The sheer size of the land mass managed by smallholders means that interventions intended to improve environmental quality, sequester carbon, or foster economic development must reckon with the preferences and responses of rural landholders if they hope to meet their goals. Development economics is home to a rich literature modeling the actions and reactions of farmers, motivated by a desire to boost agricultural productivity and reduce rural poverty rates. Environmental economists have also contributed to an understanding of rural preferences and incentives as conservationists have increasingly seen the value of enlisting private land to increase wildlife habitat, sequester carbon, and provide ecosystem services. This dissertation examines farmer’s incentives, preferences, and interactions in relation to three policies in three different settings, with an eye to improving program design for agro-environmental policy in rural developing countries. Chapter 1 examines a change in water quality due to the expansion of a water treatment facility upstream of the Jordan Valley—the country of Jordan’s major agricultural region. I examine the substitutability of recycled water for freshwater, examining farmers’ water use and production using a model of agricultural production and exploiting the quasi-experiment to see how water use changes in the affected area. While I find no evidence that farm production was significantly impacted by the change—good news for urban water consumers whose water supply was increased by this substitution of recycled water in the agricultural sector—I do find that elements of water governance could improve the acceptability of the policy change from the farmers’ perspective. Chapter 2 examines farmer interactions when faced with a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program in Central India. Specifically, it asks if program targeting should change if farmers’ acceptance of the program depends’ on their neighbors’ actions. Using the results of a choice experiment, I simulate private interactions of farmers’ across the landscape surrounding Pench national park, and place zones in priority order by total welfare both with and without private interactions. Consideration of private interactions changes both the priority order of the zones and the number of zones which pass a cost/benefit analysis. Chapter 3 asks the question, does land tenure registration cause, or prevent deforestation? Utilizing the implementation of a land registry called a DUAT in norther Mozambique, I observe land parcels before and after registration and estimate the effect on tree cover loss as measured by the Hansen et al. forest cover loss dataset (Hansen et al., 2013). I also show the results of a tree crown detection algorithm intended to estimate the presence of individual trees in agricultural mosaic landscapes. Findings indicate a modest increase in tree cover loss on parcels that are registered communally, whereas there is a modest decrease for parcels registered to individuals. The impact of DUAT registration also varies by pre-existing tree cover and population. These findings recommend caution regarding the possible environmental benefits of land registration and tenure reform, highlighting heterogeneity by both tenure type and pre-existing land cover.

In recent years, the expansion of agricultural lands into areas rich in biodiversity has led to a conservation dilemma between the need for food security for an expanding human population and the goal of conserving species and habitat to curb biodiversity loss. In this dissertation, I evaluate several different concerns about agricultural expansion from a conservation perspective. One of the central goals of conservation is the preservation of species and habitats within the context of anthropogenic threats. Agriculture has come to exemplify these threats to conservation both directly through habitat loss and indirectly through increased human/wildlife conflict, reduced in connectivity between intact areas and loss of ecosystem services in farming areas. Many of these effects can be observed through monitoring of land use change and populations of critical species. Still other effects will only be observed in the future, as agricultural areas continue to expand. In recognition of the importance of addressing these questions, there has been an increasing push by both agroecologists and conservation scientists to adopt increasingly interdisciplinary approaches in their research, focusing both on ways to minimize, mitigate and predict possible negative effects of agricultural production on biodiversity and the environment.

In Chapter 1, I examine the global impacts of a rapidly expanding commodity crop, oil palm, on deforestation and biodiversity. Here I address the deforestation associated with development of oil palm over the past 25 years in 20 different countries, discussing the implications for future deforestation and risk of biodiversity loss in the context of a changing climate. I conclude that the potential expansion of oil palm agriculture threatens many of the world’s most biodiverse places, but that the exact areas of highest conservation priority are dependent on the biodiversity criteria by which such areas are selected.

In Chapter 2, I build upon this analysis with a study of oil palm in the context of other agricultural development in Peru--a country found to have sharply increasing deforestation related to oil palm in Chapter 1. Here I show that oil palm is contributing to deforestation more than other crops. I also show how the spatial pattern of this impact differs from other crops, with larger and more clustered patches of deforestation. I expand on the analysis of areas at long-term of deforestation from oil palm from Chapter 1 by examining specific biophysical variables that show how oil palm is suitable in habitats not typically exploited for agriculture in this region. I also assess short-term risk of deforestation based on variables associated with human population and accessibility. Finally, I evaluate the effectiveness of protected areas and officially recognized indigenous areas in meeting the threat from oil palm across the different ecoregions of Peru’s Moist Tropical Forest biome.

In Chapter 3, I examine the impacts of agricultural activity on an iconic predator species, the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus). This species is designated as threatened by the IUCN and plays an important role in the ecosystems in which it occurs. Currently, cheetah are facing loss of habitat and restrictions of connectivity from agriculture, especially livestock production. Farmers in areas where many cheetah occur are also a risk to the species through persecution and killing individuals. We found that cheetah are decreasing in number, supporting an argument to uplist the cheetah to endangered.

I did not only want to focus on the problems associated with agricultural production, but also consider a proposed solutions. Thus, in Chapter 4, I consider an option that could balance the needs for food security of human populations and habitat for species conservation: increased intensity of production on existing agricultural land, such as growing multiple crops per year. This suggestion is not without possible drawbacks or pitfalls, motivating the need to study multiple cropping systems and the consequences of their expansion. However, the study of cropping intensity over large geographical areas is complicated by the lack of high-quality maps of cropping intensity at such scales. I evaluate cropping intensity throughout South America using MODIS Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) data in Google’s Earth Engine over the period 2003-2015. I conclude that there is great potential for this approach to reduce habitat loss in South America, but there are also potential complications that could arise from its widespread adoption.