University of Hamburg, Germany

Deforestation, Institutions, and Property Rights: Evidence from land titling to indigenous peoples and local communities in Ecuador

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Abstract

Deforestation is a matter of pressing global concern, contributing to declining ecosystem services, biodiversity loss, and ultimately climate change through growing emissions. We evaluate the effect of assigning property rights to local and indigenous peoples in coastal Ecuador on deforestation and the role external institutions play in policy effectiveness. Informed by a theoretical model, we develop an instrumental variable approach and a regression discontinuity design to 1) evaluate changes in forest coverage for the first 12 years of policy adoption, and 2) evaluate the effect of the presence of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on policy permanence. We find that assigning property rights to local and indigenous peoples significantly decreases mangrove deforestation and that the presence of NGOs funded by foreign aid significantly increases the probability of policy adoption and permanence. We assess the positive development implications of the policy concerning fisheries provisioning for local communities and the role of international aid in achieving environmental outcomes. We calculate that the policy prevented additional emission of more than 1.55 million tCO2 and estimate the additional fisheries attributable to assigning property rights. Our work highlights the importance of local and indigenous peoples and civil society as actors for sustainable land stewardship in future climate policy.

Biography

Michael Tanner is an economist from Ecuador, focusing both on environmental and development economics. He completed his MSc in Environmental Economics and Climate Change at the London School of Economics in 2016, and is currently in his final year of a PhD in Economics at the University of Hamburg. He received the Young Leaders of the Americas Fellowship in 2017 by the U.S State department for his work on sustainable supply chains and social entrepreneurship in Ecuador, and the Alexander von Humboldt Climate protection fellowship for his research on nature based solutions for climate change. He has worked as consultant for the Latin American Bank of Development (CAF), private enterprises and NGOs in both the developed and developing world, with his research at the moment focused on environmental policy and economic incentives for conservation in Latin America, and climate change adaptation in Sub-saharan Africa.