I am a Research Fellow at the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Australian Catholic University, based in Melbourne. I am also an affiliate with the SoDa Labs at Monash University. I received my PhD in political science from the University of California, San Diego in 2021. My research focuses on the political economy of natural resources and environmental politics, with a focus on Latin America, where I am from.
Collective Property Rights Lead to Secondary Forest Growth in the Brazilian Amazon
K. BARAGWANATH, E. BAYI AND N. SHINDE
Australian Catholic University
Forests serve a crucial role in our fight against climate change. Secondary forests in the form of forest restoration and reforestation provide important potential for conservation of biodiversity and climate change mitigation. In this paper, we explore whether collective property rights in the form of Indigenous Territories (ITs) lead to higher rates of secondary forest growth on previously deforested areas. We exploit the timing of granting of property rights as well as the geographic boundaries of ITs and two different methods, regression discontinuity design and difference-in-difference to recover causal estimates. We find strong evidence that homologated Indigenous territories not only reduce deforestation inside their lands, but also lead to higher secondary forest growth on previously deforested areas. After homologation, ITs displayed higher secondary forest growth than land outside ITs with an estimated effect of 2\%. Furthermore, the average age of secondary forests was 2.6 years older inside homologated ITs. Together, these findings provide evidence for the role that collective property rights can play in the push to restore forest ecosystems.