 The E ect of Forest Access on the Market for Fuelwood in IndiaBranko Bošković, Ujjayant Chakravorty (), Martino Pelli and Anna Risch No 826, Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University from Department of Economics, Tufts University Abstract: Fuelwood collection is often cited as the most important cause of deforestation in devel- oping countries. Use of fuelwood in cooking is a leading cause of indoor air pollution. Using household data from India, we show that households located farther away from the forest spend more time collecting. Distant households are likely to sell more fuel- wood and buy less. That is, lower access to forests increases fuelwood collection and sale. This counter-intuitive behavior is triggered by two factors: lower access to forests (a) increases the xed costs of collecting, which in turn leads to more collection; and (b) drives up local fuelwood prices, which makes collection and sale more pro table. We quantify both these e ects. Using our estimates we show that a fth of the fuelwood collected is consumed outside of rural areas, in nearby towns and cities. Our results imply that at the margin, fuelwood scarcity may lead to increased collection and sale, and exacerbate forest degradation. Keywords: energy access; cooking fuels; deforestation; forest cover; fuelwood collection (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:tuf:tuftec:0826 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University from Department of Economics, Tufts University Medford, MA 02155, USA. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.