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.

We investigate the effect of water quality on the educational outcomes of children aged 8–11 in 39 districts in five states in the Ganges Basin of India. Using data from the Centre for Pollution Control Board of India and the Indian Human Development Survey (IHDS) 2011–12, we study the effect of water quality in the Ganges Basin on the performance in three test scores. Our evidence suggests that faecal coliform levels in water sources above safety thresholds negatively affect reading and writing test scores. The effects of Nitrate-N and Nitrite-N in the water appear to be weaker compared to those of faecal coliform. The results establish that water pollution caused by excessive presence of faecal coliform is an important environmental factor in determining educational outcomes of children. High levels of faecal coliform in the water could be lowering cognitive abilities of the pollution-affected children through the channel of waterborne diseases.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This paper examines ethnic differences in fuelwood consumption in rural households, using an original survey dataset from two western Chinese provinces with large ethnic minority populations. We use a Heckman two-stage selection model to explain the quantity of fuelwood consumed conditional on a decision to use fuelwood. We find that ethnic minority families are more likely than majority Han Chinese families to use fuelwood. We also find that a household's off-farm income has a stronger negative effect on the quantity of fuelwood consumed for the ethnic minority families than for the Han Chinese families. In addition, families owning a larger area of forestland are more likely to use fuelwood. Yet the quantity of fuelwood consumed, especially in ethnic minority families, does not increase with owned forestland. Finally, we find that coal, rather than electricity, is a substitute for fuelwood for residential cooking and heating.

This study uses an econometric approach to investigate the role of IPR protection on renewable energy adoption using panel data of 102 countries at five-year intervals over the period 1990–2005. The Ginarte-Park index is used as a measure of the strength of intellectual property protection while the adoption of renewable energy is measured by the share of renewable energy in total final energy use. The results reveal that the level of intellectual property rights protection and reform of the intellectual property rights regime do not have significant impact on renewable energy adoption, suggesting that IPR protection is not a cause for concern in the global quest for clean energy transition. On the contrary, we find that trade openness has a stronger influence in the transition to clean energy. Based on the findings of the study, we conclude that IPR protection does not influence renewable energy adoption except in high R&D countries; rather policy makers should concentrate efforts on economic factors, such as trade openness, that drive the adoption of renewable energy technologies.

In 2008, the Brazilian government blacklisted municipalities in the Amazon to better target efforts to repress deforestation. Not only were law enforcement and monitoring activities intensified, but also economic sanctions and political pressures were imposed on those municipalities. We use a differences-in differences approach to compare deforestation reduction in blacklisted municipalities and non-blacklisted municipalities. We find that: (i) the blacklisting has significantly reduced deforestation; and (ii) this effect was primarily driven by the monitoring and law enforcement channel – there is no effect on agricultural production or credit concessions.

We analyze links between exposure to climate extremes and shocks, vulnerability and coping strategies, environmental reliance and poverty among 7,300 households in forest adjacent communities in 24 developing countries. We combine observed income with predicted income to create four categories of households: income & asset poor (structurally poor), income rich & asset poor (stochastically non-poor), income poor & asset rich (stochastically poor) and income & asset rich (structurally non-poor), and assess exposure and vulnerability across these groups. The income poor are more exposed to extreme climate conditions. They tend to live in dryer (and hotter) villages in the dry forest zones, in wetter villages in the wet zones, and experience larger rainfall fluctuations. Among the income-generating coping strategies, extracting more environmental resources ranks second to seeking wage labor. The poorest in dry regions also experience the highest forest loss, undermining the opportunities to cope with future climate shocks.

China has become the largest importer of roundwood and lumber products in recent years. In this study, the degree of competition among major supplying countries in China's import market is measured through the inverse residual demand elasticity over 1995–2015. Time-series properties of the data are considered through the autoregressive distributed lag model. The analysis reveals that market power exists in roundwood and lumber markets for a few supplying countries. The suppliers in the lumber import market have more market power than those in the roundwood market. Individual countries with substantial market power have more fluctuations in trading volumes.

This study examines the relationship between urban forests and household income and population density in the 149 cities with populations over 40,000 in nine southeastern states. Our empirical results show that urban forest percentage across the cities has characteristics of the environmental Kuznets curve. We find that household income around $39,000 is a threshold that changes the relationship between income and urban forest coverage from negative to positive, whereas the impact of population density on urban forests is just the opposite, from positive to negative when population density is around 180 persons per square kilometer.

Landowners rarely insure standing timber, suggesting the limited products available do not appeal to potential clientele. We estimated landowner willingness to pay (WTP) for standing timber insurance. Data were generated through a contingent valuation survey. Questionnaires were mailed to a random sample of Mississippi private forest landowners with 100+ acres of forestland. WTP for standing timber insurance was derived using an interval-censored survival model and a Kaplan-Meier Turnbull nonparametric model. The estimated WTP premium rate was approximately $3.20 per $1,000 of standing timber value, well below existing premium rates. This partially explains the underinsurance of standing timber among landowners.

A dynamic optimization model is used to compare the profitability of silvopasture with traditional cattle ranching in south Florida. Silvopasture can reduce phosphorus runoff from cattle ranching—a major environmental concern for Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades. Silvopasture can also sequester carbon, thereby offsetting global climate change. The effectiveness of phosphorus runoff taxes and carbon sequestration payments for inducing landowners to adopt silvopasture is investigated. We find that phosphorus taxes alone would not induce landowners to adopt silvopasture. However, payments to landowners to sequester carbon, alone or in conjunction with phosphorus runoff taxes, can make silvopasture financially competitive with traditional ranching.

The optimal size and location of an invasive species population depend upon spatially differentiated biological growth, economic costs, and damages. Although largely absent from most economic models, spatial considerations matter because the likelihood and magnitude of the invasion vary spatially and the threatened assets may be unevenly distributed across space. We map the current and future populations of an invasive species, Miconia calvescens, on Oahu, Hawaii, and the potential damages to water quantity, quality, and endangered-species habitat, and weigh these against treatment costs. We find that optimal densities vary from approximately 1% to 18% cover throughout the island.

We used the open-ended contingent valuation method to elicit willingness to pay (WTP) for day visitors and extended visitors on the Ocala National Forest (ONF), Florida. A Tobit model specification was applied to account for the issues involved with censored WTP bids. The results reveal that visitors would pay more for improved recreational facilities at the ONF. In particular, our estimates show that visitors would pay $1 million for basic facilities, $1.9 million for moderate improvements, and $2.5 million for more improvements.

Recreational hunting has been an attractive enterprise for some ranchers who are interested in supplementing their income from cattle. Ranchland attributes—such as parcel size, tree cover, and proximity to urban centers—are expected to influence hunters' preferences and, thus, hunting lease payments. We estimated the effects of these attributes on hunting revenues using a hedonic model. The results reveal that trees and vegetation cover on ranchlands have a positive impact on hunting revenues, indicating opportunities for silvopasture practices. Those ranchers in Florida who maintain about 22% trees and other vegetation cover receive $16.15 per acre per year from hunting leases, but doubling the cover would generate only an additional $3.20 per acre per year.