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The additionality of forest conservation interventions is frequently questioned. In particular, they are often considered to be located in places where forests are not threatened, which points to the existence of location biases. Revisiting this location bias concept, we conceptually distinguish potential and effective additionality and theoretically consider how the objectives of the implementer affect the siting choice of the forest conservation interventions and their additionality. Our theoretical intuition is that the choices of the implementers are influenced by the quality of institutions. Our results show that (1) the implementer's objective and local institutions may lead the implementer to select a site with low development potential and low forest threat, and (2) the selection of a site with low development potential, which is frequently presented as a location bias, does not necessarily preclude additionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the impact of fiscal policy on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon and Atlantic Forests. We first construct a theoretical dynamic model to examine the effects of government spending and tax revenues on the environment. We then run a VAR model to test the implications of fiscal policies on Brazilian deforestation, using data from June 1998 to May 2022. Our results suggest that government expenditures reduce deforestation in both forests. Moreover, deficit-inducing and balanced-budget fiscal policy shocks have dampening effects on deforestation, with the latter being more effective. This is good news for developing countries like Brazil. They can combat deforestation through fiscal policy in a way that doesn't worsen their fiscal situation. Our findings were unaltered when we considered the effects of a simulated fiscal policy based on spending on public goods only (social assistance, science and technology, defense, education, health, national security, and transportation).

The COVID-19 pandemic and government responses led to a halt in economic activity. While this reduced pollution in urban areas, its effect on deforestation in areas outside of cities is unclear. Deforestation may have decreased due to the restrictions on economic activity, but, it may have increased due to the drying up of alternative income sources. We analyzed bi-weekly data on tropical forests worldwide in relation to the dates when different countries implemented lockdown restrictions. Our analysis found that while lockdowns did reduce mobility in forest municipalities, the average effect on deforestation was not significant. However, we did observe variations in the impact of lockdowns on deforestation based on the share of lockdown-vulnerable GDP and the level of government effectiveness. These results stand across tropical countries and within Colombia. These findings highlight the importance of alternative income sources and strong state capacity for effective policies aimed at reducing deforestation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a study of the effects of sectoral FDI inflows on the rates of change of forest land and the ecological footprint of economic activity measured in forest land. We test the “FDI ecological halo” hypothesis (Doytch, 2020) for nine distinct sectoral FDI inflows, including agricultural FDI, mining FDI, manufacturing FDI, construction FDI, financial FDI, transport FDI, tourism FDI, communications FDI, and trade services FDI, in addition to total FDI, using a global sample of countries and a GMM econometric approach. We find that one percentage increase (% GDP) in agricultural FDI, mining FDI, manufacturing FDI, and construction FDI can reduce 2.87 %, 1.76 %, 0.19 %, and 1.28 % of forest land area, respectively, and all but manufacturing FDI, increase the forest land footprint from. At the same time, the results associated with services FDI are mixed: trade services FDI hurts the forest environment, while one percentage increase (% GDP) in communications FDI, financial FDI, and transport FDI can increase forest land area to 0.24 %, 0.02 %, and 3.02 %, respectively. In the case of tourism FDI, the results are mixed. The results suggest that FDI in sectors that are “closer to nature”, such as agriculture and mining are more prone to cause harm to forests and therefore need to be regulated with maximum stringency. Some services FDI, such as communications FDI and financial FDI could be stimulated without harm to the forest environment.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has significantly changed the shape and organization of education in the State Forests, hence the purpose of this study is to assess its impact on the course, financing, forms and participation of youth and adults in forest education in Poland.

Land protection not only supports vital ecosystem services but also poses important challenges for social equity. Three key concerns emerge from economic frameworks about land protection policies: potential lost local economic development, reinforcement of existing structural inequalities, and disparities in access to the benefits of protected land. This article reviews evidence for each concern and identifies research needs as well as potential improvements in policy that could better support equity goals. Pathways forward towards greater equity include specific mechanisms that can ensure local communities benefit from land protection, attention to issues of spatial impacts and timing, explicit prioritization of equity in land protection initiatives, and community-centred processes. Economists have and can continue to play a role in strengthening these dimensions of land protection policies.

Forest farmers' organizations (FFOs) have recently gained scholarly attention as a collective action instrument to upgrade value chains. However, insights into possible business models and organizational forms of FFOs remain fragmented. This study thus aimed to co‐create FFO business models in order to assess the business models in the context of the regulatory framework and the value chain upgrading theory. The Input–Output scheme and the Business Model Canvas (BMC) were merged to create an analytical lens. Participatory workshops with two farmers' organizations, each in Ethiopia and Tanzania, were conducted and triangulated with ten focus group discussions and 25 key informant interviews. The co‐created business models reflected the grassroots entrepreneurial potential of smallholders to envision FFOs. The gaps requiring external support, namely the know‐how in accessing microfinance, silvicultural practices, and entrepreneurship, were revealed. We argue that the transformation from a farmers' organization to an FFO enables wood value chain upgrading. Diversifying wood with non‐wood products is key for FFOs. Regardless of how the regulatory framework shapes external support, the local government plays a pivotal role in facilitating the connection between FFOs and (non‐)governmental support actors. Through this research, we develop suggestions for further empirical studies and offer several recommendations for decision‐makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sets out a data-driven approach for targeting environmental policies optimally in order to combat deforestation. We focus on the Amazon, the world's most extensive rainforest, where Brazil's federal government issued a "Priority List" of municipalities in 2008—a blacklist to be targeted with more intense environmental monitoring and enforcement. First, we estimate the causal impact of the Priority List on deforestation (along with other relevant treatment effects) using "changes-in-changes" due to Athey and Imbens (2006), finding that it reduced deforestation by 43 |$\%$| and cut emissions by almost 50 million tons of carbon. Second, we develop a novel framework for computing targeted optimal blacklists that draws on our treatment effect estimates, assigning municipalities to a counterfactual list that minimizes total deforestation subject to realistic resource constraints. We show that the ex post optimal list would result in carbon emissions over 10 |$\%$| lower than the actual list, amounting to savings of more than |$ \$ $| 1.2 billion (34 |$\%$| of the total value of the Priority List), with emissions over 23 |$\%$| lower on average than a randomly selected list. The approach we propose is relevant both for assessing targeted counterfactual policies to reduce deforestation and for quantifying the impacts of policy targeting more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Payments for environmental services have been popularly used in environmental management and an increasing number of studies assesses their contribution to local livelihoods. This study employs propensity score matching with a dataset of 404 indigenous households in the Central Highlands of Vietnam to evaluate the effect of payments for forest environmental services (PFES) on their livelihoods. Participating in PFES increased households' employment and income from activities related to natural forests. Income from PFES allowed households to enhance productive investment and promote income from cultivation activities. All of this, in turn, increased their annual income, job satisfaction, living expenditures, and reduced the amount of any loan. Additionally, PFES enhanced opportunities to participate in training courses and traditional community activities. This confirms that PFES is not only a good initiative for forest management but also a livelihood policy for communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an optimal control model to simultaneously determine the optimal planting density, thinning schedules, harvest age, and revenues of an even-aged longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill) stand, an iconic species in the Southeastern United States. We assume that the forest stand is managed for timber production and carbon sequestration under different site indexes—a measurement of potential forest productivity. Our simulation results show that the optimal planting density tends to increase when longleaf pine is managed in medium and high site indexes. Furthermore, the optimal harvest age tends to be extended with payments for carbon sequestration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If bidders are better informed than the seller about a common component of auction heterogeneity, the seller can allocate more efficiently by keeping her reserve price secret and revising it using submitted bids. We build a model of a first‐price auction under unobserved auction heterogeneity—imperfectly observed by the seller—that captures this rationale and derive conditions for identification. An application to French timber auctions, where such revisions are widely used, shows that having perfect information about unobserved auction heterogeneity would increase surplus by 5.22%. Combining a secret reserve price with learning from submitted bids reduces this surplus gap by up to 84%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a model of optimal land allocation in a developing economy that features three possible land uses: agriculture, primary and secondary forests. The distinction between those forest types reflects their different contributions in terms of public goods. In our model, reforestation is costly because it undermines land title security. Using the forest transition concept, we study long-term land-use change and explain important features of cumulative deforestation across countries. Our results shed light on the speed at which net deforestation ends, on the effect of tenure costs in this process, and on composition in steady state. We also present a policy analysis that emphasizes the critical role of institutional reforms addressing the costs of both deforestation and tenure in order to promote a transition. We find that focusing only on net forest losses can be misleading since late transitions may yield, upon given conditions, a higher level of environmental benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aimed at evaluating the validity of the deforestation-induced Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis controlling for the democracy between 1971 and 2018 in Bangladesh. The cointegration results provide statistical evidence of long-run associations between economic growth, deforestation propensities and the quality of democracy. The elasticity estimates certify the validity of the EKC hypothesis for all the three indicators of deforestation used in this paper: forest area coverage, deforestation rate and net forest depletion rate. Moreover, controlling for democracy lowers the threshold level of growth beyond which the marginal impact of growth results in environmental betterment by reducing the deforestation propensities in Bangladesh. Moreover, democracy and economic growth are also seen to exert a combined impact on the growth-deforestation nexus. The estimated growth thresholds are above the current real GDP level of Bangladesh which reasons the nation's deforestation woes. Finally, the causality results also affirm causal associations between economic growth, deforestation and the quality of democracy. Thus, these findings impose key policy implications keeping into cognizance the sustainable economic and environmental development goals of Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boreal coniferous forests decrease climate forcing by sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. However, they also increase climate forcing through their effect on surface albedo, as coniferous forests make Earth's surface darker. Ignoring the warming effect of albedo can lead to a flawed climate policy that overstates the benefits of forest carbon sequestration. In this paper, we examine how these climate externalities affect the socially optimal harvest rotations and the social land value of a forest stand that is managed for timber, carbon, and albedo under changing economic and ecological conditions. We also examine how the relative importance of these externalities changes over time. We show that the rotations and the land value are sensitive to the changing external conditions, especially in the long run. Hence, for policy‐ relevance, stand‐level analyses with long examination horizons should account for these changes. In general, the carbon externality increases land value and lengthens rotations, whereas the albedo externality decreases land value and shortens rotations. At our study site in Finland, the positive effect of carbon on land value is stronger than the negative effect of albedo. The opposite effects of the two externalities on the timing of harvests are currently of equal strength, which means that they cancel out. More generally, inferences regarding the impacts of the externalities vary depending on climatic conditions, the incidence of solar irradiance, and the shadow prices of carbon and albedo. We discuss the extrapolation of our results throughout the boreal region based on variation in these factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) represent 22% of global greenhouse gas emissions. To meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement, the AFOLU sector greenhouse gases must be dramatically reduced and eventually transformed to net negative CO2e within this century. The decarbonisation choices will have significant environmental, social and economic impacts, yet few analytical frameworks exist able to account holistically for AFOLU mitigation strategies and their sustainable development impacts in a way that combines advantages of global and national approaches to decarbonisation pathways. This paper proposes a pathway design framework for AFOLU decarbonisation strategies that can help governments set targets across four types of levers (increasing sequestration; improving the emissions efficiency of agriculture; incentivising dietary changes; and displacing fossil fuels with bioenergy) and help them navigate potential synergies and trade-offs with sustainable development objectives (notably food security, biodiversity preservation, poverty alleviation and job creation), in a way that facilitates co-construction and discussion with main stakeholders.

Biomass inventories and techno‐economic supply studies tend to overestimate economic supply of crop and timber residues, because they ignore human decisions on whether to permit residue removal. By combining information about biophysical availability, production and delivery costs, and the willingness of different types of decision maker to permit removal of logging residues, we develop a realistic prediction of economic supply that becomes very price inelastic. Because managers of only 52% of Michigan and Wisconsin forestland studied would allow the removal of logging residues, we conclude that most forecasts overestimate residue biomass supply by 50 to 100%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 whether diffusion of ICT contributes to decreasing in deforestation in the world. For this purpose, the effect of ICT penetration on deforestation is estimated by using bivariate and multivariate fixed time effect models. In the sample selection process, those countries having 2% or more forest area as a percentage of total land area we included in our analysis. The largest sample includes 174 countries. The period under study is between 1991 and 2012. It is found that ICT penetration is significantly and negatively associated with deforestation. The results are robust to the inclusion of a number of control variables as well as different indicators of ICT penetration and deforestation as such all available four ICT indicators and two deforestation indicators are used. To avoid potential spurious regression problems in the analyses, the original models are re-estimated by using the stationary forms of all independent and dependent variables. A strong negative correlation between ICT indicators and deforestation indicators is also supported by the findings of re-estimated bivariate and multivariate models. Empirical evidence at the macro level provided in this paper confirms the results mentioned in the case studies.

Forests provide ecosystem services, including timber production. In some cases, private forest owners perform management actions in order to enhance the provision of such services, or they may be encouraged by public policies and payments. This paper focuses specifically on the decision to set forest land aside for biodiversity conservation, as part of the more general question of the efficiency of multiple-use vs. specialised management of forest lands. We propose an econometric analysis to identify factors in the set-aside choice and measure the impact of this decision on forest management costs. The results show that the set-aside choice depends on the landowners' income and motivations related to forest amenities. The choice of specialised management, as reflected in the set-aside decision, has a significant and positive impact on the intensity of management in the remainder of the forest and on management costs. From a policy implications point of view, these results suggest that instruments such as forest certification, subsidies and reverse auctions for conservation will be most likely to attract the interest of those forest owners with personal motivations and forest properties that offer both benefit and cost advantages in opting for such specialised management strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of wildlife tourism on the livelihoods of local population around the Ranthambhore National Park in India which is popular for tiger sighting. A detailed household questionnaire elicited information on demographic details, income sources and consumption expenditure from 224 households. An empirical assessment of the economic impacts of tourism reveals that tourism development has failed to provide tangible benefits to the community. Qualitative assessment of community perception of tourism impacts and information from key informant interviews reveals contrasting ideologies of diverse stakeholders vis-à-vis park use. With tourism development benefitting mostly the big private (often non-native) players in the tourism industry, the residents feel alienated, and this doesn't augur well for conservation efforts.

Both environmental protection and poverty alleviation are high on the international policy agenda for developing countries. We examine whether conditional environmental cash transfer programs contribute to the social protection of the beneficiaries, using data from a randomized controlled trial on reforestation, implemented in cooperation with the government of Burkina Faso. Randomly selected farmers were invited to undertake maintenance activities to increase the survival rate of trees that were planted on degraded forest lands. Compensation, in the form of monetary payments, varied with the number of trees still alive nine months after the tree planting. The timing of the conditional payments coincided with the lean season, when most farmers needed cash for food consumption and agricultural inputs. Six months after the transfers, the recipient households reported 12% higher food consumption expenditures compared to the control group, as well as a 35 and 60% reduction in, respectively, moderate and severe food insecurity. Our data indicate that the transfers received during the lean season were not only used to address immediate consumption needs but also to invest in crop and livestock production. The investments resulted in subsequent increases in agricultural outputs and income. We thus conclude that conditional environmental cash transfers, when paid in the lean season, can not only support consumption smoothing in the short run but can also improve livelihoods in the longer run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of forest conservation in the fight against emissions from deforestation and forest degradation has led to reexamination of the deforestation and economic development relationship. For this purpose, we use the recent method of long-term growth rate developed by Stern et al. (2017) on 85 tropical developing countries over the period 1990–2010. Results show that the EKC is not significant. However, we find a beta convergence across developing countries in terms of deforestation per capita. In other words, these countries converge in terms of policies that prevent deforestation and forest degradation. This implies that, just as with growth effects, beta convergence effects are also important in explaining changes in forest cover in tropical developing countries. The convergence effect in forest cover change may be consistent with the forest transition hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Subsidies to promote tree plantations have been questioned because of negative impacts of the forestry industry. Quantitative evidence on the socioeconomic impacts of afforestation subsidies or of tree plantations is elusive, mainly due to data scarcity. We assess the overall impact of a tree plantation subsidy in Chile, using our original 20-year panel dataset that includes small area estimates of poverty and the subsidy assignment at the census-district scale. We show that forestry subsidies – on average – in fact, do increase poverty. More specifically, using difference in difference with matching techniques, and instrumental variables approaches, we show that there is an increase of about 2 per cent in the poverty rate of treated localities. We identify employment as a causal mechanism explaining this finding, since we found a negative effect of tree plantations on employment, and therefore, on poverty. We suggest reassessment of the distributional effects of the forest subsidy and forestry industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An empirical analysis was conducted to show the interdependence relationship across GDP per capita (GDPPC), forest area (FA), metal and ores export (EX), organic water pollution (OWP), greenhouse gas (GHG) emission etc. This study consists of four equations simultaneous model using panel data covering 59 countries of different income groups i.e. higher, middle and lower-income for the period 1990 to 2015. We employed instrumental variable two stage least square (IV/2SLS) method to check the endogeneity problem. FE-2SLS (fixed effect two-stage least square) and RE-2SLS (random effect two-stage least square) models have been employed and followed by the Hausman test to choose between two said, models. The result indicates that organic water pollution, GHG emission and metal and ores export have a direct positive impact on economic growth while forest area is found to harm both GDPPC and GHG emission. Indeed, EX harms the forest but it is insignificant in middle and lower-income groups. The result also suggests that economic growth enhances OWP for higher income and GHG emission for the middle-income group only. Moreover, EX has a positive interconnection with GHG emissions in higher and middle-income groups. Lastly, policy suggestion has been made for attaining asustainable society.

This study examines the marginal willingness-to-pay (MWTP) and compensating surplus (CS) in response to the policy change of ecosystem services of Sundarbans based on focus group discussion (FGD) and survey. The choice experiment approach (CE) was conducted in seven villages of Sundarbans of Bangladesh to elicit stated preference data and measure MWTP and CS. Each respondent faced three options in every choice card-two hypothetical alternatives and one status quo scheme. Four ecosystem services-payment for ecosystem services, fish, shrimp larvae, and crab capture from canals and creeks, leaves, grasses and twigs collection, and fruits and honey collection are used to design choice cards. The findings suggest that age, income, education, family composition, and occupational status are the influential factors to choice the relevant attributes of ecosystem services. Respondents would like to pay more Tk. 0.015 in option 1, Tk. 0.086 in option 2 and Tk. 0.329 in option 3 for ecosystem services. With these MWTP, they get more surplus-Tk. 0.551 in option 3. The subsequent surplus will be estimated Tk. 0.105 in option 2 and Tk. 0.078 in option 1. The lower MWTP does not necessarily imply low demand for ecosystem services, as the findings from MWTP illustrate potential demand for ecosystem services of Sundarbans.