Conference Agenda

Indonesia combines high deforestation rates with frequent seismic activity, yet little is known about whether earthquakes influence forest loss. This paper examines the effects of medium-intensity earthquakes on deforestation by exploiting the quasi-random spatial and temporal distribution of seismic events. We construct a village-level panel linking annual forest loss (2001–2014) to local ground shaking from 503 earthquakes, using data from Global Forest Change, the U.S. Geological Survey, and Indonesia’s village census, and estimate causal effects using village and year fixed effects and a panel event study design. We argue that earthquakes generate income shocks by destroying productive assets and restricting economic activity, increasing reliance on forests as informal safety nets for consumption smoothing, reconstruction, and land conversion. Consistent with this mechanism, earthquakes of intensity VII and VIII increase village-level deforestation by approximately 2.5\% on average across post-earthquake years. Event-study estimates show deforestation rising through the fourth post-treatment year and remaining elevated for up to six years, suggesting both short-term forest extraction and medium-run land-use change. The paper contributes to the literature on natural disasters and household coping strategies by identifying forest use as an environmental coping mechanism with policy relevance for forest governance and disaster risk management.

Endangered species face growing threats from climate change and ecosystem degradation, prompting calls to shift from traditional species-specific protections to more holistic, ecosystem-based approaches. This paper evaluates a prominent example of such a shift: the 2011 U.S. Revised Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl (NSO), which relaxed restrictions on fuel treatments in protected habitat to reduce wildfire risk. Using high-resolution spatial data from 2006–2023 and a matched difference-in-differences framework, we find that the policy led to a substantial increase in fuel treatment activity—approximately 91,000 additional acres—within NSO-designated habitat, with no evidence of reallocation away from other areas. These treatments generated over $1 billion in economic benefits, primarily through reduced wildfire suppression costs. However, ecological benefits were limited: the policy prevented moderate- to high-severity fire on only 1,000–2,000 acres of NSO habitat and old-growth forest, reflecting their limited effectiveness in reducing burn severity. These findings underscore the potential for ecosystem-based conservation reforms to deliver economic returns, while highlighting the persistent challenges of meeting ecological objectives under existing regulatory, funding, and capacity constraints.

This paper evaluates whether Finlands forest-policy shift in the mid-2010s is associated

with intensified harvesting consistent with a bioeconomy-oriented strategy. Guided by a

benchmark renewable resource extraction model, the analysis tests three hypotheses: har-

vest intensity should rise in Finnish jurisdiction after the 2015 Forest Act reform; it should

rise further during the 2016-2019 period of explicit bioeconomy prioritization; and the law-

related effect should persist after 2020 despite changing policy agendas. The empirical

design exploits the discontinuous change in national jurisdiction at Finlands border while

holding local geography fixed, using high-resolution satellite-based annual forest cover loss as

a proxy for harvest disturbance. Year-by-year border estimates show a pronounced increase

in the Finland-side discontinuity after 2015, peaking in 2016-2019 and partially attenuating

after 2020. Pooled period estimates confirm a large rise from 2012-2015 to 2016-2019 and

a subsequent decline in 2020-2022. Ownership splits indicate that the post-2015 expan-

sion is concentrated in private forests, while government-managed forests mainly contribute

through time variation in a Finland-wide component. A triple difference-in-discontinuities

decomposition separates this Finland-wide/common shift from a law channel that scales

with private-ownership exposure, helping to overcome compound-treatment concerns when

legal reforms and political prioritization coincide. The 2016–2019 expansion reflects both

channels, with the common component accounting for the larger share of the total increase

at mean exposure, whereas post-2020 dynamics are primarily shaped by a contraction in

the common component alongside a more persistent ownership-linked gradient. Overall, the

results show that bioeconomy-oriented forest policy can measurably increase harvest distur-

bance, raising the likelihood of near-term trade-offs with carbon storage and biodiversity

objectives

Colombia is one of the world’s most biodiverse countries, home to over 10% of the planet’s biodiversity. Much of this richness is found in the Amazon biome, which spans over 43% of the country’s land surface. Despite its ecological importance, the region faces growing threats from deforestation, leading to biodiversity loss and degradation of ecosystem services. Key drivers of this deforestation include socio-environmental conflicts, such as land conversion, coca cultivation, and illegal mining, all of which are compounded by Colombia’s longstanding internal armed conflict. Socioeconomic conditions in local communities add to these drivers, yet a lack of reliable data limits understanding and has led to a gap in the literature. This study explores the links between socioeconomic factors, socio-environmental conflicts, and deforestation in the Colombian Amazon Biome. Using both traditional econometric methods and machine learning (ML) techniques, we analyze a broad set of indicators to identify the main drivers of forest loss. The models reveal that while the impact of coca cultivation on deforestation has decreased, land grabbing and, more recently, illegal mining have become leading contributors. Other consistent predictors include poverty and the presence of basic trails and roads. The analysis further confirms that the northwestern zone remains the most threatened subregion.