More than a safety net: Ethiopia’s flagship publicworks program increases tree cover

Keywords: tree cover, public works programs, difference-in-differences, Ethiopia, MODIS VCF
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 4

Abstract

Reducing poverty while addressing climate change and restoring terrestrial ecosystems are critical challenges that lie at the core of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
More than one billion people worldwide receive cash or in-kind transfers from social
assistance programs. In low-income countries, these transfers are often conditioned on
participation in labor-intensive public works to rehabilitate local infrastructure or natural
resources. Despite their popularity, the environmental impacts of public works programs
remain largely undocumented.

We quantify the impact on tree cover of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP), one of the world’s largest and longest-running public works programs, from its onset in 2005 to 2019. Our methods integrate satellite-based data of tree cover from the MODIS VCF product (among other spatial variables), with a difference-in-differences and inverse probability treatment weighting estimation method. We find that tree cover increased by 3.8% during our study period in the districts participating in the PSNP, with larger increases in less densely populated areas and on steep-sloped terrain. As increasing tree cover is considered an important strategy to mitigate global warming, our results suggest a win-win potential for social safety net programs with an environmental component.