Conference Agenda

The Great Fire of 1910 in the northwestern United States burnt more than 1.2 million hectares and stands as one of the largest wildfires ever recorded. This paper examines the short- and long-term impact of fire-sourced smoke pollution on children, combining historical data with an advanced smoke emission and dispersion modelling framework. The econometric results indicate a 119% increase in excess mortality during the fire week and later-life impacts on some socioeconomic status scores in 1930. This research offers novel insights into wildfire smoke repercussions on health and long-run human capital formation in a setting where avoidance behaviour was minimal.

Forest-based carbon offset programs have gained increasing attention, as has the evaluation of their impacts. However, the impacts beyond program borders have been less considered, particularly in subtropical and temperate regions. This study focuses on the local spillover effects of 36 forest offset projects in China’s voluntary carbon market. Using a unique dataset from 1998 to 2019, we compared the forest status of the buffer zones of project areas to the buffer zones of reference areas. Employing a matching approach and a difference-in-difference model, we find average positive forestry spillovers to buffer zones in the project areas, primarily through the learning channel of knowledge diffusion and information flow. Individual projects showed spillovers in multiple directions. Limited evidence of leakage was found, possibly due to land policies and project features. This study provides insights into forest offset projects and their spillover effects, addressing the effectiveness of offset policies in China.

Demand for agricultural products is a major driver of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. However, it is well known that newly deforested land is relatively unproductive, and agricultural products are barred from the predominant agriculture supply chains. An alternative, intermediate channel is the appropriation of unclaimed public land, where forest is cut and agricultural activity feigned to justify claims of ownership. In this paper, we identify the deforestation impacts of expanding agricultural production, differentiating it from other channels with different implications for economic and environmental policy. We use a shift-share design, exploiting international changes in beef consumption, to identify causal effects, and find that pasture and cattle herd expansions are major drivers of deforestation. We also find that these impacts diminished in recent years, indicating that other factors, such as land appropriation motives, have become relatively more important. Our findings suggest that agricultural intensification could help decrease land pressure, and highlight the growing deforestation impacts of an ongoing expansion of infrastructure and legalization of land claims in the Brazilian Amazon.

How has COVID-19 affected the Amazon rainforest? Using an event study design and a difference-in-differences approach, we find that COVID-19 increased deforestation by 35% across the Peruvian Amazon during the first pandemic year. This increased CO2 emissions by over 17 million tons, representing a social cost equivalent to 3 times the national budget for forest management. The main mechanism behind this was reduced monitoring investment and supervision, coupled with a rise in illicit activities tied to coca production and mining. These findings underscore the crucial role of monitoring and enforcement in averting forest loss in countries with weak forest governance.