More Than Just Carbon: The Socioeconomic Impact of Large-Scale Tree Planting [under review] (with Lorenzo Sileci)
One potential nature-based solution to jointly address poverty and environmental concerns is large-scale tree planting. This study examines the National Greening Program (NGP) in the Philippines, a major tree planting initiative involving 80,522 localized projects that directly or indirectly generated hundreds of thousands of jobs. Utilizing a dynamic difference-in-differences approach that leverages the staggered implementation of the NGP, we find a significant and sizable reduction in poverty, measured via traditional and remotely sensed indicators. The NGP also spurred structural shifts, notably decreasing agricultural employment while boosting unskilled labor and service sector jobs. Our analysis estimates that the NGP sequestered 71.4 to 303 Mt CO2 over a decade, achieving a cost efficiency of $2 to $10 per averted tCO2. These findings underscore the potential of tree planting as a dual-purpose strategy for climate mitigation and poverty alleviation.
[Grantham Research Institute Working Paper] [VoxDev] [World Bank]
Aid Against Trees? Evidence from a Community-Driven Development Program in the Philippines
Community-driven development (CDD) programs are becoming integral components in the development portfolios of major international development agencies, and are further being positioned as a parallel strategy to the sustainable development goals relating to climate change mitigation and adaptation. As this dual positioning occurs, little is known about the environmental effects stemming from such programs, especially in terms of deforestation. Using satellite-generated forest coverage data, this paper aims to address this gap in the literature by examining the impact of CDD programs on deforestation. More specifically, I apply a regression discontinuity design (RDD) and a randomized control trial (RCT) to a large-scale CDD program over two different time periods in the Philippines. Eligible municipalities in the RDD period experienced an average of 236 percent more deforestation and treated municipalities in the RCT period experienced an average of 265 percent more deforestation than the control. I then explore heterogeneous effects on a detailed dataset of the subprojects to show that the greatest impact on deforestation arose from infrastructure subprojects, which include trails, bridges and roads, followed by support, education and health facility subprojects. As international development agencies continue to invest heavily in CDD programs, more focus should be placed on the sustainability of such programs and on how CDD programs can be more in line with forest conservation policy.
A Natural Resource Curse: The Unintended Effects of Gold Mining on Malaria [Forthcoming - Ecological Economics]
This paper studies whether extractive resource activities provoke an ecological response on the emergence and proliferation of malaria by altering the reproductive environment of mosquitoes. In January 2004, the government of the Philippines launched the Minerals Action Plan (MAP) with the goal of revitalizing the mining sector, which significantly reduced the average lag between application and grant of a mining permit. I exploit the timing of the reform and the spatial distribution of mineral endowments through a difference-in-differences (DID) approach that compares provinces with and without gold deposits before and after the reform. After the MAP reform, provinces with deposits of gold had 32 percent more malaria cases relative to provinces without gold deposits. I perform several falsification tests as well as investigate other potential mechanisms to further suggest that the main mechanism is through gold mining’s creation of slow-moving bodies of stagnant water, which provide an ideal breeding site for Anopheles mosquitoes, malaria’s main transmission vector, to propagate and reproduce.
[Grantham Research Institute Working Paper]
Multidimensional Energy Poverty: A Quasi-experimental Approach Applied to Education [submitted]
Energy is interconnected with the socio-economic and human development of the individual, but recent empirical studies have provided inconclusive evidence on the impact energy poverty has on well-being and the mechanisms involved. This empirical study has two main goals. First, it advances the literature’s understanding of energy poverty beyond singular dimensions, by performing a Factor Analysis to quantitatively characterize different types of energy deprivations an individual may experience. More specifically, a multidimensional energy poverty index is calculated for each individual to better illustrate the complementary input mechanisms. The second goal is to analyze how compounding energy deprivations affect different measures of education. This is carried out through an innovative instrumental variable (IV) strategy in the form of the household’s land gradient which is applied to data for rural households in Uganda. In this analysis I compare the effects of the multidimensional energy poverty index on different measures of education with those of access to electricity (the most common measure of energy poverty in the literature). The developed multidimensional framework provides a more robust tool for estimation through the precision of the estimated coefficients and smaller standard errors, along with the ability of the multidimensional energy poverty index to estimate significant results that access to electricity is unable to. The results demonstrate that there are other important energy mechanisms beyond access to electricity that must be considered within an individual’s set of energy capabilities, and this may explain the insignificant or inconsistent findings of previous studies based on simpler indicators (like access to electricity).
Work In Progress:
Tree Planting, Land Use Change and Biodiversity (with Lorenzo Sileci and Charles Palmer)
Mangrove Planting, Changing Fish Markets and Food Security (with Lorenzo Sileci and Charles Palmer)
Pipeline Accidents and Poverty (with Miquel-Àngel Garciá-López)
Deforestation and a Nation-wide Titling Reform
One potential nature-based solution to jointly address poverty and environmental concerns is large-scale tree planting. This study examines the National Greening Program (NGP) in the Philippines, a major tree planting initiative involving 80,522 localized projects that directly or indirectly generated hundreds of thousands of jobs. Utilizing a dynamic difference-in-differences approach that leverages the staggered implementation of the NGP, we find a significant and sizable reduction in poverty, measured via traditional and remotely sensed indicators. The NGP also spurred structural shifts, notably decreasing agricultural employment while boosting unskilled labor and service sector jobs. Our analysis estimates that the NGP sequestered 71.4 to 303 Mt CO2 over a decade, achieving a cost efficiency of $2 to $10 per averted tCO2. These findings underscore the potential of tree planting as a dual-purpose strategy for climate mitigation and poverty alleviation.
[Grantham Research Institute Working Paper] [VoxDev] [World Bank]
Aid Against Trees? Evidence from a Community-Driven Development Program in the Philippines
Community-driven development (CDD) programs are becoming integral components in the development portfolios of major international development agencies, and are further being positioned as a parallel strategy to the sustainable development goals relating to climate change mitigation and adaptation. As this dual positioning occurs, little is known about the environmental effects stemming from such programs, especially in terms of deforestation. Using satellite-generated forest coverage data, this paper aims to address this gap in the literature by examining the impact of CDD programs on deforestation. More specifically, I apply a regression discontinuity design (RDD) and a randomized control trial (RCT) to a large-scale CDD program over two different time periods in the Philippines. Eligible municipalities in the RDD period experienced an average of 236 percent more deforestation and treated municipalities in the RCT period experienced an average of 265 percent more deforestation than the control. I then explore heterogeneous effects on a detailed dataset of the subprojects to show that the greatest impact on deforestation arose from infrastructure subprojects, which include trails, bridges and roads, followed by support, education and health facility subprojects. As international development agencies continue to invest heavily in CDD programs, more focus should be placed on the sustainability of such programs and on how CDD programs can be more in line with forest conservation policy.
A Natural Resource Curse: The Unintended Effects of Gold Mining on Malaria [Forthcoming - Ecological Economics]
This paper studies whether extractive resource activities provoke an ecological response on the emergence and proliferation of malaria by altering the reproductive environment of mosquitoes. In January 2004, the government of the Philippines launched the Minerals Action Plan (MAP) with the goal of revitalizing the mining sector, which significantly reduced the average lag between application and grant of a mining permit. I exploit the timing of the reform and the spatial distribution of mineral endowments through a difference-in-differences (DID) approach that compares provinces with and without gold deposits before and after the reform. After the MAP reform, provinces with deposits of gold had 32 percent more malaria cases relative to provinces without gold deposits. I perform several falsification tests as well as investigate other potential mechanisms to further suggest that the main mechanism is through gold mining’s creation of slow-moving bodies of stagnant water, which provide an ideal breeding site for Anopheles mosquitoes, malaria’s main transmission vector, to propagate and reproduce.
[Grantham Research Institute Working Paper]
Multidimensional Energy Poverty: A Quasi-experimental Approach Applied to Education [submitted]
Energy is interconnected with the socio-economic and human development of the individual, but recent empirical studies have provided inconclusive evidence on the impact energy poverty has on well-being and the mechanisms involved. This empirical study has two main goals. First, it advances the literature’s understanding of energy poverty beyond singular dimensions, by performing a Factor Analysis to quantitatively characterize different types of energy deprivations an individual may experience. More specifically, a multidimensional energy poverty index is calculated for each individual to better illustrate the complementary input mechanisms. The second goal is to analyze how compounding energy deprivations affect different measures of education. This is carried out through an innovative instrumental variable (IV) strategy in the form of the household’s land gradient which is applied to data for rural households in Uganda. In this analysis I compare the effects of the multidimensional energy poverty index on different measures of education with those of access to electricity (the most common measure of energy poverty in the literature). The developed multidimensional framework provides a more robust tool for estimation through the precision of the estimated coefficients and smaller standard errors, along with the ability of the multidimensional energy poverty index to estimate significant results that access to electricity is unable to. The results demonstrate that there are other important energy mechanisms beyond access to electricity that must be considered within an individual’s set of energy capabilities, and this may explain the insignificant or inconsistent findings of previous studies based on simpler indicators (like access to electricity).
Work In Progress:
Tree Planting, Land Use Change and Biodiversity (with Lorenzo Sileci and Charles Palmer)
Mangrove Planting, Changing Fish Markets and Food Security (with Lorenzo Sileci and Charles Palmer)
Pipeline Accidents and Poverty (with Miquel-Àngel Garciá-López)
Deforestation and a Nation-wide Titling Reform
