Impact Evaluation in a Landscape: Protected Natural Forests, Anthropized Forested Lands and Deforestation Leakages in Madagascar's Rainforests

This paper analyzes deforestation leakages from natural rainforests to anthropized habitats following the creation of Protected Areas in Madagascar. A simple theoretical framework highlights that a conservation constraint does not necessarily create deforestation leakages on secondary forests. An original dataset is built combining fine scale vegetation cover images and spatialized census data over the period 2000 to 2012. Cover images allow us to distinguish a mosaic of landscapes. Multilevel panel regressions and matching techniques indicate a causal effect of Protected Areas on deforestation leakages. Though Protected Areas reduce deforestation in protected natural forests, forest clearing is mostly reported on other types of anthropized forests. Our results demonstrate the limitations of Porter-like mechanism in agricultural innovation. They also support the hypothesis of a conservation dilemma: protecting biodiversity may come at the expense of the welfare of locals who rely on local (provisioning) ecosystem services.