Strategic Environmental Commitment and Climate Change in Africa: Evidence on Mining and Deforestation
Date
2021-09-28
Authors
Azomahou, Théophile T.
Ouédraogo, Mahamady
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
African Economic Research Consortium
Abstract
This paper addresses two issues on the link between mining, deforestation and
environmental policy in Africa using a panel data of 35 African countries spanning
over 2001-2017. First, we study the relationship between mining and deforestation.
Our findings suggest that mining increases deforestation while environmental policy
contributes to reduce deforestation in mineral resource-rich countries. An increase in
mineral rent by a one-point percentage of GDP leads to forest loss of about 50 km2
.
Moreover, regional economic community has heterogeneous effects on deforestation
consistent with the coordination policies. Second, we test the implication of these
results for uncoordinated environmental policies using two measures: a de jure and
a de facto environmental policy. Our results support that countries adopt a strategic
behavior in response to the environmental policy of their neighbors. A 1% increase
in neighbors’ environmental commitment increases one’s own environmental
commitment by 0.3% and 0.8% for de jure and de facto respectively. We document
that this strategic behavior leads to a race to the top for de jure environmental
policy and a race to the bottom de facto environmental policy. As African countries
increasingly engage in de jure environmental enforcement, their de facto efforts to
mitigate climate change are slackening.
Description
Keywords
Deforestation, , climate change, , mining, , environmental policy