IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpl/wpaper/1804.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Unintended Impacts from Forest Certification: Evidence from Indigenous Aka Households in Congo

Author

Listed:
  • Jacqueline Doremus

    (Department of Economics, California Polytechnic State University)

Abstract

Does Forest Stewardship Council certification of \responsible" commercial forestrychange nutrition, health and wealth for indigenous peoples, like the Aka of the Congo Basin? Using hand-collected data from the boundary of a certified and an uncertified forest in the Republic of Congo five years after certification, I compare nutrition, health, and wealth using questions that are locally salient and survey timing designed to reach semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. Though I only observe outcomes after certification, I find suggestive evidence that forest certification may cause increased food insecurity and illness frequency for Aka households. I find no evidence of increased material wealth; instead, the poorest 15th percentile is poorer. Forest certification includes a bundle of activities, including participatory mapping, greater market integration and hunting restrictions, making it difficult to pinpoint the mechanisms driving these results.

Suggested Citation

  • Jacqueline Doremus, 2018. "Unintended Impacts from Forest Certification: Evidence from Indigenous Aka Households in Congo," Working Papers 1804, California Polytechnic State University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpl:wpaper:1804
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11m3Y5v6gGy1i7T8GjSnSCPNNn9vyAIkC/view?usp=drive_link
    File Function: First version, 2018
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marcel Fafchamps & Forhad Shilpi, 2013. "Determinants of the Choice of Migration Destination," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 75(3), pages 388-409, June.
    2. Alberto Abadie & Susan Athey & Guido W Imbens & Jeffrey M Wooldridge, 2023. "When Should You Adjust Standard Errors for Clustering?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 138(1), pages 1-35.
    3. Nebel, Gustav & Quevedo, Lincoln & Bredahl Jacobsen, Jette & Helles, Finn, 2005. "Development and economic significance of forest certification: the case of FSC in Bolivia," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 175-186, February.
    4. A. Colin Cameron & Jonah B. Gelbach & Douglas L. Miller, 2008. "Bootstrap-Based Improvements for Inference with Clustered Errors," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(3), pages 414-427, August.
    5. David Roodman & James G. MacKinnon & Morten Ørregaard Nielsen & Matthew D. Webb, 2019. "Fast and wild: Bootstrap inference in Stata using boottest," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 19(1), pages 4-60, March.
    6. Andrew D. Foster & Emilio Gutierrez, 2013. "The Informational Role of Voluntary Certification: Evidence from the Mexican Clean Industry Program," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 303-308, May.
    7. Olivier Bonroy & Christos Constantatos, 2015. "On the Economics of Labels: How Their Introduction Affects the Functioning of Markets and the Welfare of All Participants," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 97(1), pages 239-259.
    8. James G. MacKinnon & Matthew D. Webb, 2018. "The wild bootstrap for few (treated) clusters," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 21(2), pages 114-135, June.
    9. Melissa Dell & Nathan Lane & Pablo Querubin, 2018. "The Historical State, Local Collective Action, and Economic Development in Vietnam," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(6), pages 2083-2121, November.
    10. Daniel Chiquiar & Gordon H. Hanson, 2005. "International Migration, Self-Selection, and the Distribution of Wages: Evidence from Mexico and the United States," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(2), pages 239-281, April.
    11. Kalonga, Severin Kusonyola & Kulindwa, Kassim Athumani, 2017. "Does forest certification enhance livelihood conditions? Empirical evidence from forest management in Kilwa District, Tanzania," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 49-61.
    12. Joao Pedro Azevedo, 2004. "GRQREG: Stata module to graph the coefficients of a quantile regression," Statistical Software Components S437001, Boston College Department of Economics, revised 17 Mar 2011.
    13. Marie Castaing Gachassin, 2013. "Should I Stay or Should I Go? The Role of Roads in Migration Decisions," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 22(5), pages 796-826, November.
    14. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
    15. Matthew D. Webb, 2023. "Reworking wild bootstrap‐based inference for clustered errors," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(3), pages 839-858, August.
    16. Bocci, Corinne & Fortmann, Lea & Sohngen, Brent & Milian, Bayron, 2018. "The impact of community forest concessions on income: an analysis of communities in the Maya Biosphere Reserve," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 10-21.
    17. Shahidur Khandker & Gayatri Koolwal, 2010. "How Infrastructure and Financial Institutions Affect Rural Income and Poverty: Evidence from Bangladesh," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(6), pages 1109-1137.
    18. James G. MacKinnon & Matthew D. Webb, 2018. "The wild bootstrap for few (treated) clusters," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 21(2), pages 114-135, June.
    19. Godoy, R. & Overman, H. & Demmer, J. & Apaza, L. & Byron, E. & Huanca, T. & Leonard, W. & Perez, E. & Reyes-Garcia, V. & Vadez, V., 2002. "Local financial benefits of rain forests: comparative evidence from Amerindian societies in Bolivia and Honduras," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 397-409, March.
    20. Choy, Yee Keong, 2018. "Cost-benefit Analysis, Values, Wellbeing and Ethics: An Indigenous Worldview Analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 1-9.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Degnet, Mohammed B. & van der Werf, Edwin & Ingram, Verina & Wesseler, Justus, 2022. "Community perceptions: A comparative analysis of community participation in forest management: FSC-certified and non-certified plantations in Mozambique," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    2. Kenneth Houngbedji & Benoit Mertens, 2022. "Plans d'aménagement forestier et conditions de vie des populations des forêts d'Afrique centrale," Post-Print hal-03954488, HAL.
    3. Zapata, Oscar, 2024. "Renewable energy and well-being in remote Indigenous communities of Canada: A panel analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    4. Cole, Matthew T. & Doremus, Jacqueline M. & Hamilton, Stephen F., 2021. "Import restrictions by eco-certification: Quantity effects on tropical timber production," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    5. Nakaishi, Tomoaki & Chapman, Andrew, 2024. "Eco-labels as a communication and policy tool: A comprehensive review of academic literature and global label initiatives," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 202(C).
    6. Xia Li & Timothy Simcoe, 2021. "Competing or complementary labels? Estimating spillovers in Chinese green building certification," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(13), pages 2451-2476, December.
    7. Halalisan, Florin & Romero, Claudia & Popa, Bogdan & Arana Landin, German & Talpa, Nicolae & ABRUDAN, Ioan Vasile, 2023. "Global assessment of FSC forest management certification auditing through analysis of accreditation reports," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    8. Danielle D. Legault & Logan Cochrane, 2021. "Forests to the Foreigners: Large-Scale Land Acquisitions in Gabon," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-22, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. James G. MacKinnon, 2019. "How cluster‐robust inference is changing applied econometrics," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(3), pages 851-881, August.
    2. MacKinnon, James G. & Nielsen, Morten Ørregaard & Webb, Matthew D., 2023. "Cluster-robust inference: A guide to empirical practice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 232(2), pages 272-299.
    3. MacKinnon, James G. & Nielsen, Morten Ørregaard & Webb, Matthew D., 2023. "Testing for the appropriate level of clustering in linear regression models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 235(2), pages 2027-2056.
    4. Carpenter, Christopher S. & Gonzales, Gilbert & McKay, Tara & Sansone, Dario, 2020. "Effects of the Affordable Care Act Dependent Coverage Mandate on Health Insurance Coverage for Individuals in Same-Sex Couples," IZA Discussion Papers 13119, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Lauren E. Jones & Kevin Milligan & Mark Stabile, 2019. "Child cash benefits and family expenditures: Evidence from the National Child Benefit," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 52(4), pages 1433-1463, November.
    6. Dorner, Matthias & Görlitz, Katja, 2020. "Training, wages and a missing school graduation cohort," IAB-Discussion Paper 202028, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    7. James G. MacKinnon & Morten Ørregaard Nielsen & Matthew D. Webb, 2021. "Wild Bootstrap and Asymptotic Inference With Multiway Clustering," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(2), pages 505-519, March.
    8. James G. MacKinnon & Matthew D. Webb, 2020. "When and How to Deal with Clustered Errors in Regression Models," Working Paper 1421, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    9. Damian Clarke & Kathya Tapia-Schythe, 2021. "Implementing the panel event study," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 21(4), pages 853-884, December.
    10. García-Ramos, Aixa, 2021. "Divorce laws and intimate partner violence: Evidence from Mexico," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    11. James G. MacKinnon & Morten {O}rregaard Nielsen & Matthew D. Webb, 2024. "Cluster-robust jackknife and bootstrap inference for binary response models," Papers 2406.00650, arXiv.org.
    12. Kathryn Vasilaky & Sofía Martínez Sáenz & Radost Stanimirova & Daniel Osgood, 2020. "Perceptions of Farm Size Heterogeneity and Demand for Group Index Insurance," Games, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-21, March.
    13. Hagemann, Andreas, 2019. "Placebo inference on treatment effects when the number of clusters is small," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 213(1), pages 190-209.
    14. James G. MacKinnon & Morten Ørregaard Nielsen & Matthew D. Webb, 2023. "Fast and reliable jackknife and bootstrap methods for cluster‐robust inference," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(5), pages 671-694, August.
    15. Arrieta Vidal, Johar & Florián Hoyle, David & López Vargas, Kristian & Morales Vásquez, Valeria, 2022. "Policies for transactional de-dollarization: A laboratory study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 31-54.
    16. MacKinnon, James G., 2023. "Fast cluster bootstrap methods for linear regression models," Econometrics and Statistics, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 52-71.
    17. Hansen, Bruce E. & Lee, Seojeong, 2019. "Asymptotic theory for clustered samples," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 210(2), pages 268-290.
    18. Roth, Jonathan & Sant’Anna, Pedro H.C. & Bilinski, Alyssa & Poe, John, 2023. "What’s trending in difference-in-differences? A synthesis of the recent econometrics literature," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 235(2), pages 2218-2244.
    19. Gröger, André, 2021. "Easy come, easy go? Economic shocks, labor migration and the family left behind," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    20. Sultan Mehmood, 2020. "Judicial Independence and Development: Evidence from Pakistan," Working Papers halshs-03054106, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Forestry; eco-label; sustainability; indigenous peoples;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • Q56 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpl:wpaper:1804. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Matthew Cole (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/decplus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.