Does A Higher Population Growth Cause Deforestation?: A Study of Malawi's Rapid Deforestation

Annie Mwai Mapulanga and Hisahiro Naito

Tsukuba Economics Working Papers from Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba

Abstract: Using Malawi's satellite images of land use/land cover change, weather data and population data at each cluster and Population Housing Census (PHC) data, this paper estimates the causal effect of the growth of population of local residents on deforestation in Malawi. We use the average number of births in the census ten years ago as the instrumental variable to control the endogeneity of population growth. The results illustrate strong empirical evidence that high population growth of local residents increases deforestation through expansion of agricultural land. The results show that a 1 percent increase in population growth increases the deforestation rate by 2.7 percent through the increase in agricultural land. In terms of land use changes, a one hectare gain in agriculture land results in a 0.57 hectare loss in forest land cover.

Date: 2018-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-big and nep-env
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