Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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Daily Overview |
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Biodiversity 2 Location: B002 Session Chair: Brett Day, University of Exeter | |
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Fenced In: Biodiversity Loss, Land Degradation, and Livestock Production in Southern Africa Columbia University, United States of America Biodiversity provides essential ecosystem services to human welfare, yet the topic is understudied in economic literature. This paper estimates the cost of herbivore biodiversity declines in Southern Africa via the mechanism of bush encroachment, a form of land degradation in which trees and shrubs expand into grasslands used to range cattle. Since wild herbivores control encroachment, biodiversity loss potentially decreases cattle production by reducing available rangeland. We exploit the placement of livestock fencing across Namibia and Botswana as a natural experiment in local biodiversity changes. Using these fences to instrument for encroachment induced by biodiversity loss, we estimate causal impacts on cattle density across the region and find that a one square kilometer increase in shrub cover decreases cattle density by around 7 individuals. These estimates suggest there were around 1.5 million fewer cattle in 2020 compared to 2002, equal to more than 30 million USD in lost trade revenue in 2020 alone. Finally, we use a machine learning algorithm to predict species distributions based on observational data and combine this with expert range maps to examine the role of biodiversity as a driving mechanism. | |