Abstract
Land use changes are known to account for over 20% of human greenhouse gas emissions and tree cover losses can significantly influence land-climate dynamics. Land-climate feedbacks have been identified and evaluated for a long time. However, in addition to the direct effect of climate change on forest biomes, recent sparse evidence has shown that land use changes may increase as a result of weather shocks. In Western and Central Africa, agriculture is the main source of income and employment for rural populations. Economies rely on agricultural production, which is largely rainfed, and therefore dependent predominantly upon seasonal rainfall. In this article, I explore the impact of seasonal rainfall quality on deforestation, by combining high-resolution remotely-sensed annual tree cover loss, land cover, human activity and daily rainfall data. I show that in poor regions that are mainly reliant on rainfed agriculture, a bad rainy season leads to large deforestation shocks. These shocks notably depend on the proportion of agricultural land and on the remoteness of the areas in question, as remoteness determines the ability to import food and the existence of alternative income sources. In areas with significant forest cover, a short rainfall season leads to a 15% increase in deforestation. In unconnected areas with small proportions of crop area, the increase in deforestation reaches 20%. Findings suggest that a refined understanding of the land use changes caused by rainfall shocks might be used to improve the design and effectiveness of development, adaptation and conservation policies.
Highlights
There is a consensus regarding the impact of deforestation on local climate, namely warmer and drier conditions (Lawrence and Vandecar, 2015; Wolff et al, 2018; LeiteFilho et al, 2019)
The direct effect of rainfall on carbon storage (Brandt et al, 2018) and on forest health (Phillips et al, 2009; Anderegg et al, 2013; Zemp et al, 2017; Verbesselt et al, 2016; Jiang et al, 2019; Aleixo et al, 2019; Brodribb et al, 2020) could create a vicious circle. Another vicious circle could be created by the indirect effects of drought on deforestation, via human activities, with weather variability creating agricultural income shocks that, in turn, affect land use decisions
Baland et al (2010) showed that poorer households in rural Nepal collect significantly less firewood than wealthier households in the same village, and likewise, in the context of poverty alleviation policies in Mexico and Gambia, recent robust evidence confirmed that positive income shocks lead to more environmental degradation and deforestation (Alix-Garcia et al, 2013; Heß et al, 2019)
Summary
D.5 Standard error adjustment for spatial correlation and serial correlation in panel data . . . 39. 2.1 Tree cover losses in a region with a strong pressure on land use Agriculture is the main sector in terms of GDP and labour force in Western and Central Africa (51% of labour force on average in the region, ranging from 25% in Burkina Faso to 76% in Chad, The World Bank (2020)). It is mainly rainfed and largely consists in smallholder agriculture. A large proportion of the area was already impacted by cropping in 2000 (Figure 2(b)), demonstrating intense pressure on land-use
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