Collective property rights lead to secondary forest growth in the Brazilian Amazon.

ABSTRACT: Forests serve a crucial role in our fight against climate change. Secondary forests provide important potential for conservation of biodiversity and climate change mitigation. In this paper, we explore whether collective property rights in the form of indigenous territories (ITs) lead to higher rates of secondary forest growth in previously deforested areas. We exploit the timing of granting of property rights, the geographic boundaries of ITs and two different methods, regression discontinuity design and difference-in-difference, to recover causal estimates. We find strong evidence that indigenous territories with secure tenure not only reduce deforestation inside their lands but also lead to higher secondary forest growth on previously deforested areas. After receiving full property righ

SUBMITTER: Baragwanath K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10235932 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature