Identifying the determinants of deforestation and forest disturbances in tropical moist forests.

Abstract

The climatic concern rises every day, and has become one of the most important issues humanity has to deal with. Because of their incredible capacity to store and transform carbon, regulate temperature, and enable the proper functioning of the water cycle, tropical moist forests, and their management, have become a point of focus in this challenge the world has to take up. In this perspective, being able to apprehend factors which drive forest deterioration in tropical regions seems primordial. Works on tropical forest loss have been lacking reliable data for years, weakening results and drawing misleading conclusions. Recently, the dataset made available by the European Commission, and constructed by Vancutsem et al. (2021), has provided a way to overcome this problem, by making available reliable data about tropical moist forests, for the period between 1990 and 2020. The provided dataset, thanks to its unprecedented precision of imagery, allows to distinguish permanent and temporary forest losses, respectively called "deforestation" and "forest degradation" in this work. This thesis conducts an econometric analysis at the continental level using the dataset of Vancutsem et al. (2021). Using fixed effects models, this work tries to empirically assess statements and assertions made in the literature concerning drivers of forest disturbances. It makes the distinction between permanent and temporary forest loss, which constitutes an improvement compared to previous studies on the topic. Among conclusions which have been drawn, the prominence of agriculture has been assessed on each continent. This thesis also highlights the different continental general patterns which drive forest loss. Poverty-related factors seem to bear a major influence on forest deterioration in Africa, while large cattle ranching dominates in America. International trade would be the key factor in Asia. This paper does not intend to provide policy recommendations but aims to help policymakers to focus on evidence-based drivers of tropical moist forest loss.