DETERMINANTS OF DEFORESTATION IN GHANA
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Date
2011-06-06
Authors
MINLAH, MICHAEL KAKU
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Ghana , Legon
Abstract
Deforestation is one of the major environmental challenges facing Ghana. Today, the
impacts of deforestation continue to impinge on livelihoods of rural and urban dwellers,
disrupting important environmental functions and severely destroying forest ecosystems.
Some studies have analyzed factors that influence deforestation in Ghana. However, none
have placed emphasis on the occurrence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve for
deforestation in Ghana. This study employs the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL)
Bounds Testing approach to cointegration to empirically investigate the factors that cause
deforestation in the long and short run as well as investigating the occurrence of the
Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) for deforestation using time series data from 1970
and 2009.
The long run estimation results indicate that variables such as urbanization, rural
population pressure, globalization, Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), and agricultural
technology affect deforestation in Ghana positively, while agricultural production index,
forest exports value as a percentage of GDP, enforcement of property right and forest
protection and exchange rate influence deforestation negatively. The impact of total
external debt on deforestation Ghana was positive but not significant implying a weak
confirmation of the Debt Resource Hypothesis in Ghana. Analysis of the EKC for
deforestation in Ghana indicate that the phenomenon is real in Ghana with the per capita
income turning point being at $ US 364.99 (in constant 2000 $ US) which will occur in
2011 at a deforestation rate of 1.5%. General and specific recommendations aimed at
reducing deforestation are provided.