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Category: Peru

Forest Concessions and Eco-Certifications in the Peruvian Amazon: deforestation impacts of logging rights and logging restrictions

Published February 1, 2023 by Alex Pfaff
Jimena Rico-Straffon, Zhenhua Wang, Stephanie Panlasigui, Colby J. Loucks, Jennifer Swenson, Alexander Pfaff
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 118 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2022.102780

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Concessions that grant logging rights to firms support economic development based on forest resources. Eco-certifications put sustainability restrictions on the operations of those concessions. For spatially detailed data, including many pre-treatment years, we use new difference-indifferences estimators to estimate 2002–2018 impacts upon Peruvian Amazon forests from both logging concessions and their eco-certifications. We find that the concessions — which in theory could raise or reduce forest loss — did not raise loss, if anything reducing it slightly by warding off spikes in deforestation pressure. Eco-certifications could reduce or raise forest loss, yet we find no significant impacts.

 

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Deforestation dynamics in response to the evolution of the Western Amazonian Inter-Oceanic Highway

Published January 2, 2016 by Alex Pfaff
Cesar Delgado, Dalia Amor Conde, Joseph O. Sexton, Fernando Colchero, Jennifer J. Swenson, Alexander Pfaff
Draft working paper, Duke University.

 

Over the last three decades, the first continuous road has been paved to connect northern  South America’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The final sections of this Inter-Oceanic Highway are now being completed through the western Amazon Basin, a global biodiversity hotspot, at the triple-border of Brazil, Bolivia and Peru. Satellite images from 1989, 2000, and 2007 reveal accelerating clearing across the region, but the countries’ prior infrastructures governed their individual responses to the road. Brazilian deforestation slowed as the frontier expanded away from the highway with a network of capillary roads, but Bolivian clearing accelerated as its urban centers sprawled toward the road. Peru’s forests remain relatively intact, but similar trends isolated from Brazil suggest imminent acceleration as Peruvian infrastructural capacity increases.

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Effective & Equitable Dissemination of Seasonal-to-Interannual Climate Forecasts: policy implications from the Peruvian fishery during El Nino 1997-98

Published January 1, 2002 by Alex Pfaff
Kenneth Broad, Alexander Pfaff, Michael. H. Glantz
Climatic Change 54: 415–438, 2002

PDF link iconThe development of seasonal-to-interannual climate predictions has spurred widespread claims that the dissemination of such forecasts will yield benefits for society. Based on the use as well as non-use of forecasts in the Peruvian fishery during the 1997–98 El Niño event, we identify: (1) potential constraints on the realization of benefits, such as limited access to and understanding of information, and unintended reactions; (2) the need for an appropriately detailed definition of societal benefit, considering whose welfare counts as a benefit among groups such as labor, industry, consumers, citizens of different regions, and future generations. We argue that consideration of who benefits, and an understanding of potential socioeconomic constraints and how they might be addressed, should be brought to bear on forecast dissemination choices. We conclude with examples of relevant dissemination choices made using this process.

 

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Who benefits from seasonal-to-interannual climate forecasts?

Published January 1, 1999 by Alex Pfaff
Alexander Pfaff, Kenneth Broad, Michael H. Glantz
NATURE|VOL 397 | 25 FEBRUARY 1999

PDF link iconThe effective and equitable dissemination of climate forecasts is as important and challenging as their accuracy. During El Niño 1997–98, Peruvian fisheries showed the need to understand forecast use and all parties’ interests.

 

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