Human–Environment Interactions: Microbes, Forests, and Climate

Antibiotic effectiveness, forests, and climate stability are three of the most endangered public and common goods of the twenty-first century. All three are threatened by individuals ignoring the negative consequences of their actions on society: spreading antibiotic resistance, increasing forest degradation, and accelerating climate change. All these effects are likely to have long-lasting impacts on global health and economic development. This dissertation seeks to understand these human–environment interactions better while evaluating policies promoting sustainable behaviors or improving economic resilience. The first chapter considers the trade-off in prescribing antibiotics: they cure bacterial infections, but they spur antibiotic resistance. I estimate two essential parameters to calibrate any model of antibiotic resistance: the causal impact of prescriptions on antibiotic resistance and the elasticity of demand for an antibiotic. After developing and calibrating a dynamic bio-economic model of the issue, I show that it can be welfare-improving to increase out-of-pocket expenditure on antibiotics used to tackle spreading infections. The second chapter calculates the geographical distribution of people at risk of falling into poverty in the aftermath of droughts and floods in Malawi. Its methods can be expanded to identify the beneficiaries of scalable social safety nets or ex-ante climate insurance. Such programs would increase the resilience of the poor to climate change. The third chapter investigates the potential double dividend of internal migration in terms of poverty alleviation and forest regeneration in Central India. It relies on an innovative index of forest degradation created from high-resolution remote sensing imagery and unique data on internal migration and forest pressure based on a survey of 5,000 households

Replication Data for: "Access to Modern Fuels and Satisfaction with Cooking Arrangements: Survey Evidence from Rural India"

Replication Data for: "Access to Modern Fuels and Satisfaction with Cooking Arrangements: Survey Evidence from Rural India". Citation for the article is the following: Baquié, Sandra and Urpelainen, Johannes, Access to Modern Fuels and Satisfaction with Cooking Arrangements: Survey Evidence from Rural India (March 12, 2017). Energy for Sustainable Development, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2931705 To access the full ACCESS dataset: http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/0NV9LF. If you want to use the full ACCESS dataset, please, cite both of the following: Aklin, Michaël; Cheng, Chao-yo; Ganesan, Karthik; Jain, Abhishek; Urpelainen, Johannes; Council on Energy, Environment and Water. Access to Clean Cooking Energy and Electricity: Survey of States in India (ACCESS). 2016. Harvard Dataverse, V1. http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/0NV9LF. Aklin, Michaël, Chao-yo Cheng, Johannes Urpelainen, Karthik Ganesan, and Abhishek Jain. 2016. "Factors Affecting Household Satisfaction with Electricity Supply in Rural India." Nature Energy 1(16170). DOI: 10.1038/nenergy.2016.170. (http://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy2016170

Improved household living standards can restore dry tropical forests

Despite multiple approaches over the last several decades to harmonize conservation and development goals in the tropics, forest-dependent households remain the poorest in the world. Durable housing and alternatives to fuelwood for cooking are critical needs to reduce multi-dimensional poverty. These improvements also potentially reduce pressure on forests and alleviate forest degradation. We test this possibility in dry tropical forests of the Central Indian Highlands where tribal and other marginalized populations rely on forests for energy, construction materials, and other livelihood needs. Based on a remotely sensed measure of forest degradation and a 5000 household survey of forest use, we use machine learning (causal forests) and other statistical methods to quantify treatment effects of two improved living standards—alternatives to fuelwood for cooking and non-forest-based housing material—on forest degradation in 1, 2, and 5 km buffers around 500 villages. Both improved living standards had significant treatment effects (−0.030 ± 0.078, −0.030 ± 0.023, 95% CI), respectively, with negative values indicating less forest degradation, within 1 km buffers around villages. Treatment effects were lower with increasing distance from villages. Results suggest that improved living standards can both reduce forest degradation and alleviate poverty. Forest restoration efforts can target improved living standards for local communities without conflicts over land tenure or taking land out of production to plant trees

Post-lockdown spread of COVID-19 from cities to vulnerable forest-fringe villages in central India

Background: Seasonal migration of young adult males to cities is a common livelihood strategy for forest-fringe households in central India. With poor health infrastructure, low nutritional status, and high proportions of Scheduled Tribe populations, these households and surrounding villages are highly vulnerable to COVID-19 exposure as seasonal migrants return home. Objective: We identify patterns of seasonal migration in forest-fringe villages of central India, including proportions of households with migrants, their locations, and destination cities, to assess the vulnerability of village populations to COVID-19 exposure from returning migrants. We also compare effectiveness of varying physical distancing strategies to reduce the likelihood of spread between villages after the initial lockdown restrictions lift. Methods: We analyze origins and destinations of seasonal migrants over the last five years from a previously-collected, primary household survey of 5000 households across 500 forest-fringe villages in central India. Based on a median-sized village, we use an SEIR (susceptible, exposed, infectious, recovered) compartmental model to conceptually compare disease spread with varying leniency of movement restrictions within and between adjacent villages as restrictions ease after the lockdown. Results and implications: Villages with seasonal workers are widely dispersed across forest-fringe areas in central India, indicating the vulnerability of these populations to exposure and the need for widespread testing and health facilities. All 32 districts, approximately 75% of surveyed villages, and 18% of households had at least one seasonal migrant living in a city for part of the year during the last five years. 81% of the destination cities had reported COVID-19 cases at the beginning of the lockdown. As authorities ease movement restrictions after the lockdown period, lenient restrictions for people within a village combined with maximal restrictions between villages could be more effective in reducing the number of people exposed compared with moderate restrictions both within and between villages