Determinants of deforestation in Vietnam, 2008 – 2015

Abstract

New methods including satellite data, geographic information systems (GIS), and remote sensing processing have discovered human expansion over forest areas referred as forest degradation. This study acknowledges these findings but insists on using official data to address some drawbacks of previous studies. These drawbacks include (1) the focusing on limited areas, Central Highlands areas, instead of a national scale, (2) exclusion of resources trade from the analysis, (3) lacking consideration of the spatial and longitudinal autocorrelation, which is overlooked in panel analysis; and (4) the inconsistency of the relation between poverty and deforestation. This research investigated the effects of land-use change from agricultural expansion and timber extraction, resources trade, and community poverty on province-level forest coverage in Vietnam from 2008 to 2015 using panel and spatial autoregressive modelling. After accounting for resources trade, effect of agricultural expansion as well as forest extraction disappear. In addition, panel analysis suggests no covariate along poverty rate affects forest coverage while the spatial analysis suggests literacy rate and agricultural land are also have significant effects.