Lab Seminar: Tropical forest protection and land clearing fires in Indonesia
Yuexuan (Kelly) Wu presented ongoing research on the impact of a deforestation moratorium in Indonesia. Since 2000, Indonesia has seen a 17% reduction in forest cover. Much of the forest loss can be attributed to fires that are used to permanently clear land for agriculture. If the moratorium is effective, we should expect that land-clearing fire activity decreases in areas impacted by the moratorium relative to areas that are not impacted by the moratorium. However, using satellite data on fire hot spots and a matched difference-in-differences design, Kelly illustrates that fire activity in the protected areas does not significantly decrease as a result of the policy.