PhD seminar: Mahamady Ouedraogo

Strategic environmental commitment and climate change in Africa: Evidence on mining and deforestation

Co-author: Théophile Azomahou

Discussants: Isaac Amedanou et Jean-Louis Combes

Abstract

This paper addresses two issues on the link between mining, deforestation and environ-mental 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 thatmining increases deforestation while environmental policy contributes to reduce deforestationin mineral resource-rich countries. An increase in mineral rent by a one-point percentageof GDP leads to forest loss of about 50 km2. Moreover, regional economic community hasheterogeneous effects on deforestation consistent with the coordination policies. Second, wetest the implication of these results for uncoordinated environmental policies using two mea-sures: ade jureand ade factoenvironmental policy. Our results support that countriesadopt a strategic behavior in response to the environmental policy of their neighbors. A 1%increase in neighbors’ environmental commitment increases one’s own environmental com-mitment by 0.3% and 0.8% forde jureandde factorespectively. We document that thisstrategic behavior leads to a race to the top forde jureenvironmental policy and a race to thebottomde factoenvironmental policy. As African countries increasingly engage inde jureenvironmental enforcement, theirde factoefforts to mitigate climate change are slackening.

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