What Drives Deforestation and What Stops it? A Meta-Analysis of Spatially Explicit Econometric Studies

Abstract

We have constructed a comprehensive database of 117 spatially explicit econometric studies of deforestation published in peer-reviewed academic journals from 1996-2013. We present a metaanalysis of what drives deforestation and what stops it, based on the signs and significance of 5909 coefficients in 554 multivariate analyses. We find that forests are more likely to be cleared where economic returns to agriculture and pasture are higher, either due to more favorable climatological and topographic conditions, or due to lower costs of clearing forest and transporting products to market. Timber activity, land tenure security, and community demographics do not show a consistent association with either higher or lower deforestation. Population is consistently associated with greater deforestation, and poverty is consistently associated with lower deforestation, but in both cases endogeneity makes a causal link difficult to infer. Promising approaches for stopping deforestation include reducing the intrusion of road networks into remote forested areas; targeting protected areas to regions where forests face higher threat; tying rural income support to the maintenance of forest resources through payments for ecosystem services; and insulating the forest frontier from the price effects of demand for agricultural commodities.JEL Codes: Q15,Q23,Q24

Reductions in emissions from deforestation from Indonesia’s moratorium on new oil palm, timber, and logging concessions

“…We included cross-sectional regressions, which have been used by nearly all spatially explicit econometric studies of deforestation to date (40). That is, we estimated the impacts of land-use designations in place by 2000 on deforestation from 2000 to 2010.…”

“…Nearly all previous spatially explicit econometric studies of land-use change have necessarily relied upon crosssectional analyses because of data availability constraints. In a meta-analysis of 117 such studies (40), only three have previously used panel methods (39,41,42). This paper is at the forefront of what is likely to be a proliferation of panel econometric analyses enabled by the recent availability of reliable, annual, globally consistent data on patterns of forest loss (28).…”

Titling indigenous communities protects forests in the Peruvian Amazon

“…Two recent meta-analyses conclude that, in general, preexisting tenure security is associated with lower rates of forest cover change regardless of the form of tenure (36,37).…”

Getting More `Carbon Bang' for Your `Buck' in Acre State, Brazil

“…We note that T is a crude measure of transportation costs in that it may not reflect the proximity of farms to roads. Yet, it is commonly observed that proximity to roads is associated with deforestation (see Ferretti-Gallon and Busch, 2014). In many parts of the Brazilian Amazon, farms are often found near roads, e.g.…”