Local Governance Quality and the Environmental Cost of Forced Migration

Cevat Giray Aksoy and Semih Tumen

Journal of Development Economics, 2021, vol. 149, issue C

Abstract: Can high-quality local governance alleviate the environmental impact of large-scale refugee migration? The recent surge in refugee flows has brought additional challenges to local governments in Europe, the Middle East, and certain regions of Africa and Asia. In this paper, we focus on the case of Syrian refugees in Turkey and show that quality of local governance plays a critical role in mitigating environmental deterioration. Following the World Bank’s Local Governance Performance Index, we employ text analysis methods to construct a unique data set on local governance quality from the independent audit reports on municipalities. Using an instrumental variable strategy, we show that the Syrian refugee influx has worsened environmental outcomes along several dimensions in Turkey. Specifically, we find that the deterioration in environmental outcomes is almost entirely driven by provinces with poor-quality governance. Those provinces fail to invest sufficiently in waste management practices and environmental services in response to increased refugee settlements. We argue that good local governance practices can smooth out the refugee integration process and complement the efforts of central governments.

Keywords: Syrian refugees; Environment; Waste management; Local governance; Text analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 H76 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Working Paper: Local Governance Quality and the Environmental Cost of Forced Migration (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:149:y:2021:i:c:s0304387820301784

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2020.102603

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