Forest Protection and Human Health: The Case of Malaria in the Brazilian Amazon

Luiza Karpavicius () and Ariaster Chimeli ()
Additional contact information
Luiza Karpavicius: Department of Environmental Science, Aarhus University (ENVS/AU)
Ariaster Chimeli: Departamento de Economia, Universidade de São Paulo

No 6-2023, TD NEREUS from Núcleo de Economia Regional e Urbana da Universidade de São Paulo (NEREUS)

Abstract: Ecosystem degradation and contact with wildlife is often linked to infectious diseases such as COVID-19 and malaria, a major cause of death and incapacitation worldwide. This paper investigates a quasi-experiment involving two forest protection policies for the Brazilian Amazon region and their consequences to malaria incidence. The first inadvertently increased forest degradation in part of the Amazon, whereas the second curbed deforestation in the entire region. Using actual malaria case data distributed across space and over 17 years, we estimate the causal link between deforestation and malaria. The results imply that effective forest protection reduced malaria incidence by over 50%.

Keywords: Malaria; deforestation; forest protection policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D04 I18 Q23 Q56 Q57 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2023-08-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev, nep-env and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.usp.br/nereus/wp-content/uploads/TD_NEREUS_06_2023.pdf Full text (application/pdf)
ris

Related works:
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:ris:nereus:2023_006

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in TD NEREUS from Núcleo de Economia Regional e Urbana da Universidade de São Paulo (NEREUS) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Eduardo Amaral Haddad ().