The unintended impact of Colombia's covid-19 lockdown on forest fires

Mónica Amador-Jiménez, Naomi Millner, Charles Palmer, R. Toby Pennington and Lorenzo Sileci

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The covid-19 pandemic led to rapid and large-scale government intervention in economies and societies. A common policy response to covid-19 outbreaks has been the lockdown or quarantine. Designed to slow the spread of the disease, lockdowns have unintended consequences for the environment. This article examines the impact of Colombia’s lockdown on forest fires, motivated by satellite data showing a particularly large upsurge of fires at around the time of lockdown implementation. We find that Colombia’s lockdown is associated with an increase in forest fires compared to three different counterfactuals, constructed to simulate the expected number of fires in the absence of the lockdown. To varying degrees across Colombia’s regions, the presence of armed groups is correlated with this fire upsurge. Mechanisms through which the lockdown might influence fire rates are discussed, including the mobilisation of armed groups and the reduction in the monitoring capacity of state and conservation organisations during the covid-19 outbreak. Given the fast-developing situation in Colombia, we conclude with some ideas for further research.

Keywords: Covid-19; coronavirus; armed groups; Colombia; deforestation; forest fires; lockdown (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q23 Q56 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/105686/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Unintended Impact of Colombia’s Covid-19 Lockdown on Forest Fires (2020)
Working Paper: The unintended impact of Colombia’s covid-19 lockdown on forest fires (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:105686

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