Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T19:32:48.715Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hidden welfare effects of tree plantations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2020

Gustavo Anríquez Nilson Open the ORCID record for Gustavo Anríquez Nilson [Opens in a new window] ,
Gabriela Toledo Roman  and
Rodrigo Arriagada Cisternas
Gustavo Anríquez Nilson
Affiliation:
Department of Agricultural Economics, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile Center for Socioeconomic Impact of Environmental Policies (CESIEP) Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Research (CIIR)
Gabriela Toledo Roman*
Affiliation:
Department of Agricultural Economics, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Research (CIIR)
Rodrigo Arriagada Cisternas
Affiliation:
Center for Socioeconomic Impact of Environmental Policies (CESIEP) Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Research (CIIR) Department of Ecosystems and Environment, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile Center for Applied Ecology and Sustainability (CAPES) Centre for Climate and Resilience Research, CR2, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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.

Keywords

afforestation subsidiesimpact evaluationpovertytree plantations

JEL classification

Q23: Forestry Q56: Environment and Development • Environment and Trade • Sustainability • Environmental Accounts and Accounting • Environmental Equity • Population Growth I32: Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 151 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abadie, A and Imbens, GW (2006) Large sample properties of matching estimators for Average Treatment Effects. Econometrica 74, 235–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alix-Garcia, JM, Sims, KRE and Yañez-Pagans, P (2015) Only one tree from each seed? Environmental effectiveness and poverty alleviation in Mexico's Payments for Ecosystem Services Program. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 7, 1–40.Google Scholar
Andersson, K, Lawrence, D, Zavaleta, J and Guariguata, MR (2016) More trees, more poverty? The socioeconomic effects of tree plantations in Chile, 2001–2011. Environmental Management 57, 123–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Angelsen, A and Wunder, S (2003) Exploring the poverty-forestry link: key concepts, issues and research implications. CIR Occasional Papers, no. 40, Center for International Forestry Research, Bogor, Indonesia.Google Scholar
Anríquez, G and Fuentes, R (2001) Convergencia de producto e ingreso de las regiones en Chile: una interpretación. In Mancha, T and Sotelsek, D (eds), Convergencia Económica e Integración: La Experiencia En Europa y América Latina. Madrid: Ediciones Pirámide, pp. 69–78 (in Spanish).Google Scholar
Aroca, P and Hewings, GJD (2002) Migration and regional labor market adjustment: Chile 1977–1982 and 1987–1992. Annals of Regional Science 36, 197–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arriagada, R and Anríquez, G (2013) Evaluación de Resultados Del Decreto Ley N° 701 de 1974, Ministerio de Agricultura Corporación Nacional Forestal. Santiago Chile. Available at https://www.dipres.gob.cl/597/articles-141195_informe_final.pdf (in Spanish).Google Scholar
Arriagada, R, Sills, E, Ferraro, P and Pattanayak, S (2015) Do payments pay off? Evidence from participation in Costa Rica's PES program. PLoS ONE 10, e0131544.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bull, GQ, Bazett, M, Schwab, O, Nilsson, S, White, A and Maginnis, S (2006) Industrial forest plantation subsidies: impacts and implications. Forest Policy and Economics 9, 13–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carrere, R and Lohmann, L (1996) Pulping the South: Industrial Tree Plantations and the World Paper Economy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Coeymans, JE (1983) Determinantes de la migración rural-urbana en Chile según origen y destino. Cuadernos de Economía: A 20, 43–64, (in Spanish).Google Scholar
Cossalter, C and Pye-Smith, C (2003) Fast-Wood Forestry. Myths and Realities. Jakarta: CIFOR.Google Scholar
Deng, X, Wang, Y, Li, B and An, T (2010) Poverty issues in a national wildlife reserve in China. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology 17, 529–541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diamond, A and Sekhon, J (2012) Genetic matching for estimating causal effects: a general multivariate matching method for achieving balance in observational studies. Review of Economics and Statistics 95, 932–945.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elbers, C, Lanjouw, JO and Lanjouw, P (2003) Micro-level estimation of poverty and inequality. Econometrica 71, 355–364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elliott, C (2000) Forest Certification: A Policy Perspective. Bogor, Indonesia: Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).Google Scholar
Ferraro, PJ and Hanauer, MM (2014) Quantifying causal mechanisms to determine how protected areas affect poverty through changes in ecosystem services and infrastructure. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111, 3909–3910.Google ScholarPubMed
Fonseca, M (2008) Forest Certification in Brazil: Choices and Impacts (M.Sc. thesis). University of Toronto, Toronto.Google Scholar
Food and Agriculture Organization (2016) FAOSTAT – Forestry Production and Trade, 2016. Available at http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/FO.Google Scholar
Gerber, JF (2011) Conflicts over industrial tree plantations in the South: who, how and why? Global Environmental Change 21, 165–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, J (2018) Forest loss and economic inequality in the Solomon Islands: using small-area estimation to link environmental change to welfare outcomes. Ecological Economics 148, 66–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heckman, J, Ichimura, H and Todd, P (1997) Matching as an econometric evaluation estimator. The Review of Economic Studies 64, 605–654.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heckman, J, Urzua, S and Vytlacil, E (2006) Understanding instrumental variables in models with essential heterogeneity. Review of Economics and Statistics 88, 389–432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Instituto Forestal (2009) Superficie de Plantaciones Forestales Regiones de Coquimbo a Aysén; e Inventario Plantaciones PYMP Regiones Bío Bío y Araucanía. Santiago, Chile. Available at https://bibliotecadigital.infor.cl/handle/20.500.12220/17859 (in Spanish).Google Scholar
Kleibergen, F (2007) Generalizing weak instrument robust IV statistics towards multiple parameters, unrestricted covariance matrices and identification statistics. Journal of Econometrics 139, 181–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kröger, M (2014) The political economy of global tree plantation expansion: a review. Journal of Peasant Studies 41, 235–261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lambin, EF and Meyfroidt, P (2010) Land use transitions: socio-ecological feedback versus socio-economic change. Land Use Policy 27, 108–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muhammed, N, Koike, M, Haque, F and Miah, MD (2008) Quantitative assessment of people-oriented forestry in Bangladesh: a case study in the Tangail forest division. Journal of Environmental Management 88, 83–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Müller, D, Epprecht, M and Sunderlin, W (2006) Where are the poor and where are the trees? Targeting of poverty reduction and forest conservation in Vietnam. Working Paper no. 34, Center for International Forestry Research, Bogor, Indonesia.Google Scholar
Robalino, J and Villalobos, L (2015) Protected areas and economic welfare: an impact evaluation of national parks on local workers’ wages in Costa Rica. Environment and Development Economics 20, 283–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robalino, J, Sandoval, C, Villalobos, L and Alpízar, F (2014) Local effects of Payments for Environmental Services on poverty. Discussion papers dp-14–12-efd, Resources for the Future.Google Scholar
Rosenbaum, PR (2002) Observational Studies. New York: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenbaum, PR and Rubin, DR (1983) The central role of the propensity score in observational studies for causal effects. Biometrika 70, 41–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruiz, M, Belcher, B, Fu, M and Yang, X (2004) Looking through the bamboo curtain: an analysis of the changing role of forest and farm income in rural livelihoods in China. International Forestry Review 6, 306–316.Google Scholar
Schirmer, J (2007) Plantations and social conflict: exploring the differences between small-scale and large-scale plantation forestry. Small-Scale Forestry 6, 19–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sekhon, JS (2011) Multivariate and propensity score matching software with automated balance optimization: the matching package for R. Journal of Statistical Software 42, 1–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sims, KR (2010) Conservation and development: evidence from Thai protected areas. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 60, 94–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stock, JH and Yogo, M (2005) Testing for weak instruments in linear IV regression. In Andrews, DWK (ed.), Identification and Inference for Econometric Models. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 80–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suich, H, Howe, C and Mace, G (2015) Ecosystem services and poverty alleviation: a review of the empirical links. Ecosystem Services 12, 137–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sunderlin, WD, Dewi, S, Puntodewo, S, Müller, D, Angelsen, A and Epprecht, M (2008) Why forests are important for global poverty alleviation: a spatial explanation. Ecology and Society 13, 24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, K, Nettle, R and Petheram, RJ (2003) Public response to plantation forestry on farms in South-Western Victoria. Australian Forestry 66, 93–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wooldridge, JM (2010) Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data, 2nd Edn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Zhao, J, Xie, D, Wang, D and Deng, H (2011) Current status and problems in certification of sustainable forest management in China. Environmental Management 48, 1086–1094.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Supplementary material: PDF

Anríquez Nilson et al. supplementary material

Anríquez Nilson et al. supplementary material

Download Anríquez Nilson et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 399.1 KB