Conference Agenda

We analyze if exposure to weather risk affects the tenure security of smallholder farmers in rural Tanzania. Drawing on a household panel survey with three waves and high-resolution weather data, our identification strategy exploits exogenous variation in precipitation across time and space. Results from household fixed effects estimations show that exposure to weather risk significantly lowers farmers’ perceived tenure security, while it increases land conflicts. Moreover, weather risk influences the likelihood that farmers acquire land certificates. These findings suggest that both land formalization and land dispute resolution mechanisms are needed to cushion the impacts of weather risk.

Increasing wildfires exert pressure to balance cost, benefits and risks of wildfire management. Several groups of factors have to be considered in wildfire suppression decisions: loss, expenditure, allocation of resources, environmental and socio-economic parameters. Previous empirical studies on wildfire suppression usually apply simple econometrical models to address the relationship between only two among the factors above. To establish a framework to systematically assess efficiency in wildfire suppression involving all the main factors, we construct a Stochastic Frontier model in the form of Cost-and-Loss Distance Function using cross-sectional data on large wildfires in Sardinia. The model measures whether wildfire suppression cases are efficient in minimizing cost and loss and whether environmental and socio-economic parameters contribute to such efficiency. Fire managers often face trade-offs between environmental/property losses and expenditure spent on fire suppression with constraints on resources (machines, crews, etc.) available at hand. The research outcome will provide a reference to improve this decision process by helping identify where more resource is needed and justifying budget increase since there are locations where potentially require more resource for wildfire suppression. Results show that in overall, efficiency is high in minimizing area burned and expenditure, but improvement is needed in controlling area burned and fire duration. Higher wind speed at the fire location and the "Dispersed in Rural Area" WUI type are likely to increase inefficiency, while higher slope is associated with lower inefficiency, which calls for attention from the fire managers.

By and large, agricultural expansion is the main cause of deforestation, and crop prices are found to be an important driver. Yet, we know very little about how crop prices influence illicit crop cultivation and deforestation. By examining the heroin demand shock from the United States, I investigate the association between the rising demand for opium poppy, higher prices, and their impact on land use decisions and deforestation in Mexico. I employ an empirical strategy borrowed from Daniele et al. (2023), based on exploiting geographic variation in poppy suitability and the timing of the OxyContin reformulation in 2010. The latter led to a substitution between Oxycontin, a widely used recreational painkiller, and street heroin in the United States, increasing opium poppy demand and prices in Mexico—the main supplier of heroin to the United States. The primary findings suggest a negative relationship between the opium poppy suitability index and deforestation during the period of high opium poppy prices. Further analysis shows a decline in agricultural expansion of legal crops and livestock numbers. However, economic activity at the municipal level, approximated by nightlight data, is not associated with the demand shock. Interestingly, I find a heterogeneous effect on household wealth depending on community size. Overall, the results of this study highlight that a positive demand shock for an illegal crop can reduce agricultural activity for legal crops and deforestation. This finding differs from the literature that examines the relationship between legal crop prices and deforestation. My findings are consistent with the Borlaug hypothesis, stating that higher prices reduce land pressure, but this relation holds due to the very specific characteristics of the opium poppy plant.

The literature on land use change following dams construction is quite scarce, and tend to focus on single or regional case studies at a single point in time. Similarly, impact analysis to assess new project feasibility rarely estimate their long-term impact on land use when it driven by indirect factors. Given these limitations, it is therefore difficult to generalise results for the land use dynamics during planning, construction and operation phases. This paper investigates the effects of water flow changes due to dam construction on land use in Sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on agricultural and forested areas. We also test for changes in agricultural productivity and economic activities to assess how dams may affect rural households’ resilience to climate shocks. To run the analysis, we updated the existent databases on dams

for the entire Sub-Saharan Africa, which were partly incomplete, and developed an ad-hoc hydrological model. It was therefore possible to run a sub-continental analysis and generalise the magnitude of the impacts.

Agricultural land is most adversely affected, being replaced by waters and forest in the upstream watershed while by urbanisation and forest in the downstream one. These effects tend to be more consistent when distance from the dam increases, therefore suggesting that dams may not benefit local areas directly but rather the most distant ones, leaving open the question of compensation measures’ effectiveness. We also observe a stronger impact on land-use change in the first 5 years following the dams construction, suggesting that the effectiveness of dams on the area under analysis may decrease over time, potentially due to the embedded characteristics of these infrastructures. Contrary to what found in the literature, we do not observe an increase in agricultural productivity (NPP) but we suggest there is a relocation of activities outside agriculture (increase in nightlights).

The results will be a useful support for policymakers to assess the impact analysis of future projects, as well as to provide more efficient compensations to locals and plan environmental restoration.