PhD defence: Jean-Galbert Ongono Olinga

Protected areas, Deforestation and Agricultural Performances in developing countries

Jury

Pascale MOTEL-COMBES, Professor, Université Clermont-Auvergne
Sonia SCHWARTZ, Professor, Université Clermont-Auvergne
Marie-Hélène HUBERT, MCF-HDR, Université de Rennes 1
Olivier BEAUMAIS, Professor, Université de Rouen
Camelia TURCU, Professor, Université d’Orléans
 

 Abstract

The trade-off between the economic development and the environmental goals is always subject of attention in developing countries. International organizations, national governments and even academic research institutions agree that development countries should implement economic policies that increase people's incomes while minimizing the environmental degradation. This doctoral thesis is part of this reflection on sustainable development through its chapters that focus on protected areas, deforestation and agricultural performance in developing countries. The first chapter presents the contextual and theoretical framework of the study. The second chapter focuses on the effects of the environmental protection instrument - protected areas - on deforestation. Focusing on the case of Brazil in the Legal Amazon, he shows that indigenous and integral protected areas reduce deforestation, which is not the case for sustainable protected areas. The third chapter focuses on the effects of protected areas on agriculture. Contrary to the intuitions that protected areas would hinder the development of agriculture, it shows, in the case of Brazil in the Legal Amazon, that the policy of creating protected areas improves the agricultural performance of producers. The latter employ more practices that allow more yields to be obtained on small areas without degrading the environment or increasing deforestation. The fourth chapter refers to the empirical relationship between agricultural commodity prices and deforestation. It appears that changes in the prices of agricultural raw materials favor the loss of forests in developing countries with large forest areas. In other words, as prices rise, as demand for agricultural raw materials increases with population growth, the deforestation process will also increase, leading to a significant loss of forest in the long term. Finally, the thesis recommends increasing the creation of protected areas to avoid significant deforestation in developing countries. Policies that control and stabilize the price increase effects of agricultural raw materials should also be a key objective in developing countries. We recommend again the adoption of agricultural technologies that allow sufficient production to be obtained on reduced land areas.
 

Keywords

Protected areas, Deforestation, Agricultural performance, Agricultural commodity prices

theses.fr/en/s117437