Rain, forests and farmers: Evidence of drought induced deforestation in Madagascar and its consequences for biodiversity conservation

Cropland expansion is the primary driver of deforestation worldwide. Since land and rainfall are two crucial inputs for agricultural production, a lack of rainfall may have severe consequences on yields, which in turn may lead to a change in cultivated areas, with possible impacts on deforestation rates. Our paper explores this issue of drought induced deforestation that has been largely neglected in the literature. By focusing on Madagascar where agriculture is mostly rainfed, we demonstrate that between 2000 and 2013, clearing additional forests was a strategy that farmers employ to cope with the negative impacts of droughts. Using remote sensing data and fixed-effects panel regressions, we find that droughts increased deforestation by 7.6% compared to years of near normal weather. The impact was most severe in dry and semi-arid areas (up to +17%). When droughts occurred across consecutive years, deforestation declined, a result that is consistent with risk averse behavior of farmers. We show that these results are not driven by ecological mechanisms or by accidental fires. We then study the implication of these outcomes for conservation policy and demonstrate that protected areas were partly effective at buffering against upsurges in deforestation induced by droughts. Our results reinforce the notion that when deforestation is an agricultural problem, agricultural solutions must be combined with conservation policies to decrease deforestation.