Migration and Deforestation in Indonesia

Rivayani Darmawan, Stephan Klasen and Nunung Nuryartono ()
Additional contact information
Rivayani Darmawan: Georg-August-University Göttingen

No 187, Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth - Discussion Papers from Courant Research Centre PEG

Abstract: Indonesia now has the highest deforestation rate in the world, with an average increase of about 47,600 ha per year. As a result, the nation is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world and putting its rich biodiversity at risk. Although the literature discussing the political economy of Indonesia commercial’s logging is growing, only a small amount focuses on the relationship between migration and deforestation. Migration may contribute to the forest cover change, as migrants often face serious constraints from the local residents in claiming the land, and thus tend to find new forest land which can be used as a means of living or converted into an agricultural plantation. This paper empirically investigates the relationship between recent in-migration and deforestation in Indonesia. By combining available population census data with the satellite image data MODIS, we find a significant positive relationship between migration and deforestation at the district level using a fixed effects panel econometric framework. The results also suggest that the expanding oil palm production is one significant driver for the fast disappearance of Indonesia’s forest.

Keywords: deforestation; migration; oil palm; Indonesia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J61 Q23 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-09-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-env, nep-mig and nep-sea
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www2.vwl.wiso.uni-goettingen.de/courant-papers/CRC-PEG_DP_187.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Migration and deforestation in Indonesia (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:got:gotcrc:187

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth - Discussion Papers from Courant Research Centre PEG Platz der Goettinger Sieben 3; D-37073 Goettingen, GERMANY.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dominik Noe ().