Protected Areas and Deforestation: New Results from High-Resolution Panel Data

This research investigates the effectiveness of protected areas in slowing tropical forest clearing in 64 countries in Asia/Pacific, Africa and Latin America for the period 2001-2012 by comparing deforestation rates within 10km inside and outside of the boundary of protected areas. Annual time series of these deforestation rates were constructed from recently published high-resolution data on forest clearing from Hansen et al (2013), the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA); a shapefile identifying tropical forest areas, drawn from Hansen, et al. (2003); and the database of Global Administrative Areas Version 2.0 maintained by GADM.org.