The Impact of Protected Areas on Deforestation: An Exploration of the Economic and Political Channels for Madagascar’s Rainforests (2001-12)
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February 25, 2016
- ISIDORE Id: 10670/1.edadfe...
- halshs: halshs-01278872
info:eu-repo/semantics/OpenAccess
Keywords
Impact Evaluation Protected Areas Africa Madagascar Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics • Environmental and Ecological Economics/Q.Q2 - Renewable Resources and Conservation Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics • Environmental and Ecological Economics/Q.Q2 - Renewable Resources and Conservation/Q.Q2.Q28 - Government Policy Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics • Environmental and Ecological Economics/Q.Q5 - Environmental Economics/Q.Q5.Q58 - Government Policy O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth/O.O1 - Economic Development/O.O1.O13 - Agriculture • Natural Resources • Energy • Environment • Other Primary ProductsSimilar subjects
Disforestation Depletion of forests Conversion, Forest Forest conversion Forest depletion Forest-land conversionCite this document
Sébastien Desbureaux et al., « The Impact of Protected Areas on Deforestation: An Exploration of the Economic and Political Channels for Madagascar’s Rainforests (2001-12) », HALSHS : archive ouverte en Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société, ID : 10670/1.edadfe...
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Abstract
Protected areas (PAs) remain the primary conservation instrument of Madagascar’s unique but threatened biodiversity. We combine matching and panel regressions in a quasi-natural experiment setting to analyze PAs’ environmental effectiveness annually between 2001 and 2012 and study two channels that moderate the impact: initial poverty rates and local variations in law enforcement. Our findings show that PAs have stabilized deforestation around a positive trend without having halted it. Their overall environmental impact is however limited: PAs created before the 2000 have helped to slow down deforestation by approximately 20%, meaning that 80% of forests are still cleared even though they are protected. As for new PA created from the mid-2000s, the early impact is statistically not significant. As a result, the total welfare impact of protection is currently uncertain. We show that PAs have been effective for municipalities where overall law enforcement was the lowest: PAs have helped to limit what we call opportunistic deforestation. Meanwhile, PAs have been poorly effective when poverty rates were high: when necessity is the driver of deforestation, PAs are not sufficient to slow down deforestation. As a consequence, effectively stopping deforestation in Madagascar will require ambitious policies to trigger the necessary agricultural transition for the country.
