Non-Violent Mobilization, Environment, and Poverty

This paper examines the causal relationship between nonviolent protests and environmental performance across 211 countries from 1997 to 2022. We propose a theoretical model predicting a U-shaped relationship between the intensity of protests and environmental performance. At low levels of protest intensity, social mobilization driven by material grievances increases consumption and generates environmental pressures, whereas at higher levels, enhanced political influence of green concerns improves environmental policy and performance. Empirically, we first estimate OLS models to document the correlation between protest intensity (ACLED data) and environmental performance measured by the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), and we show that the adverse environmental consequences of protests are stronger in developing countries. To address endogeneity concerns, we implement an instrumental variable approach, exploiting exogenous variation in protest activity in neighboring countries, defined using direct contiguity from the Correlates of War project. Our IV results provide robust evidence of the predicted U-shaped effect. Our results have important policy implications.