October 09, 2008
Trees don’t grow without money?Economics
I wanted to share a couple of maps from The Atlas Of The Real World [via BoingBoing]. The first is a map of net forest depletion, measured as
the dollar value of wood that is not sustainably harvested… Almost half of the world total (46%) occurs in India, where the annual timber depletion exceeds that of the next 25 countries combined, although the population of India is also almost as large as the combined population of those 25 other territories. [Link]
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Forest Depletion: The size of each territory indicates the annual rate of depletion of forests, measured in terms of US dollar value |
The second is a map of poverty around the world, in terms of the number of people living under $2/day
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The size of each territory shows the number of people living on US$2 a day or less, adjusted for local purchasing power: barely enough to survive, let alone thrive |
Three points:
- India has a lot of people, which is part of why it’s on both of these maps. Note, however, that India is far larger than China on both, so sheer population alone doesn’t explain what we’re seeing
- Poor people will cut down trees. If you want a greener world, maybe you need to increase the green in people’s pockets.
- Sadly for the poor, cutting down trees will hurt them in the long term, like eating your seed corn. Forests protect land from erosion, increase the quantity and quality of water resources and decrease landslides [Link]. Unfortunately, overharvesting is a prisoner’s dilemma where overexploitation is individually beneficial but collectively detrimental. You need good governance to overcome a problem like this because of all the externalities involved.
It’s not going to be an easy problem to solve, but since the first world has an interest in third world forests soaking up their carbon emissions, perhaps it can be part of the solution.
ennis on October 9, 2008 12:22 AM in Economics, Environment · T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k address · Direct link · Email post
Yeah, I'm with Vinod--it's more of a 'Tragedy of the Commons' situation than a 'Prisoner's Dilemma.'
Which is where government comes in, since the externalities mean that the market value of a good is priced below its social cost.
In non-econ-geek speak, the problem is that a log that sells for $100 may also have caused $20 of environmental damage in the form of increased risks of landslides, more erosion, and less water. Since those costs get passed on to everybody else, you need the government to step in.
Even libertarians agree that situations with public goods and public bads are when the government must step in.
Rob - tragedy of the commons is one form of a multi-player PD.
Ok. If you want maps of real data categories besides wood-cutting to impress your friends at the next party, check out worldmapper . They'll show you the world from any statistical angle you can think of (e.g. check out map of world Sikh population) .
Yeah, fair enough point, Ennis!
give the poor people plastic saws...that should slow them down
Guess who leads the world in teenage mothers...
I would love to agree with Vinod, but this perplexes me: how can one define property rights for trees? Or the environment at large?
7 · lostone said
All you would really need is saws made in China.....
RP: These maps are from worldmapper :-) They just put them in a book.
If any country needs a green movement for both economic as well as ecological reasons, it's India.
It's funny, I read Gandhi's autobiography when I was I was in college expecting him to drop some knowledge on me regarding non-violence and freedom. Instead, he spent most of the book talking about the need for sanitation and equitable distribution of labor and natural resources. I guess the man really was ahead of his time, in more ways than one.
are strictly defined property rights in a country with such extreme inequality really a good thing
14 · indias not shining said
What if the problem is the reverse? India is so poor with such extreme inequality because property rights are so ridiculously difficult to maintain and hence everything's in the black market?
The first map is misleading, there is more wood cutting in India than China because India has more wood to cut. China almost doesn't have any, so they are cutting Indonesia's, and also India's.
It's wood that's being cut that is not being replaced. Countries not on the map may be cutting more timber, but also replacing more timber as well.
global health facts has up to date info on this and many, many other alarming stats:
http://www.globalhealthfacts.org/topic.jsp?i=88
17 · Ennis said
It's wood that's being cut that is not being replaced. Countries not on the map may be cutting more timber, but also replacing more timber as well.
Sure, still what I said holds. I was only talking about the comparison between India and China. India has more forest than China, which has almost no forest, so it will show up as not cutting wood. While in reality, it is cutting others' wood, particularly in Indonesia. And also killing others; tigers and rhinos and God knows what else.
Some people might actually want to actually check the facts before making an idiot of themselves.
http://www.mongabay.com/deforestation_pcover.htm
Forest coverage according to UN Food and Agricultural Organization as of 2003.
India: forest cover 64,113,000 hectares
China: 163,380,000 hectares
15 · vinod
The one piece missing here is the social structural analysis. In post-independence India, the state has consistently intervened deliberately on behalf of big companies through effective subsidies (like capital industries investments during Nehru or land grabs for SEZs in the post Emergency period) - this is directly tied into the inability of the government to discipline big capital but also to the strength that stronger social classes have over the weakest segments of society in the political order. Hence, property rights are difficult to maintain - because they don't serve the interests of accumulation (in this case, primitive accumulation in the countryside) or those classes. See here for one theory that's been applied to describe this process in India. Not sure if I buy it yet.