 Refugee camps and deforestation in Sub-Saharan AfricaJournal of Development Economics, 2021, vol. 152, issue C Abstract: To date, there have been few quasi-experimental efforts to evaluate the impact of refugee camps on host landscapes. Yet many stakeholders believe refugee camps lead to deforestation in nearby areas. I use data on camp locations and years of operation as well as secondary geospatial data to produce a high-resolution panel dataset of 0.01° tiles. My difference-in-difference specification with tile fixed effects exploits variation in camp openings and tile proximity to camps. F-tests on event study pre-trends provide support for the satisfaction of parallel trends prior to camp exposure. I find that within the rainforest biome, camps are associated with a small reduction in extensive margin forest loss (i.e., land clearing) and a small increase in intensive margin forest loss (i.e., gradual reductions in canopy cover). In the grasslands biome, camps lead to small increases in forest loss at the intensive margin but have no impact on the extensive margin. Keywords: Africa; Refugee camps; Forced displacement; Deforestation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:152:y:2021:i:c:s0304387821000602 DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2021.102682 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier |
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