06/04 Julia Girard, Antoine Leblois et Giuglia Vaglietti

Résumé

Forests provide coping services against extreme events for farmers in vulnerable rural areas of many developing countries. In turn, those events, like droughts, are likely to influence the land-use choices of those agents. This project assesses how droughts can impact land-use change and deforestation. First, we start with a literature review on potential links between droughts and deforestation, depending on several contexts. Then focusing on Western Africa, and using satellite data, we find that where forests can provide safety nets to poor rural households, higher risk of droughts is related to lower agricultural expansion and deforestation. Finally we introduce an application to Democratic Republic of Congo, to focus on the impact of conflit.