The Community-Driven Development (CDD) project, installed in The Gambia, Africa, led to a 9.2% increase in forest loss in participating and adjacent villages. In the case of Chile, this could happen if agricultural productivity programs in rural areas do not incorporate care for the environment as a relevant element.
The well-being sought by rural development projects is based on needs such as education, health, inputs and infrastructure, to improve the living conditions of the communities. However, a study carried out by a group of academics, including Dany Jaimovich, a researcher at the MIPP Millennium Institute, has shown that this type of project could negatively affect the environment. And deforestation has been one of the consequences.
The study called “Environmental effects of development programs: Experimental evidence from West African dryland forest” developed since 2008 in The Gambia, West Africa, brought to light the impact that certain rural development programs have had on the villages that should be benefited. One of these programs was carried out by the World Bank (WB), called Community-Driven Development (CDD), which sought to favor villages, granting financial support to needs identified by the community itself.
But the side effects did not take long to reach the country. Both the participating villages and the neighboring ones were affected by the deforestation that little by little began to be noticed on the ground. The WB project had an unexpected impact: there was a 9.2% increase in forest loss within 1 km of participating villages. Finally, the CDD was responsible -unintentionally- for more than a quarter of the forest loss in these villages after 2011.
The reasons are associated with “the expansion of livestock and greater consumption of forest resources for house construction, firewood for cooking, among others,” says Jaimovich. The academic assures that this study is “a wake-up call.” Years ago it was thought that this type of action would not be harmful to the environment. However, many have had the opposite effect.
In the case of Chile, there are numerous rural development programs administered by the Institute for Agricultural Development (Indap) and which are a fundamental part of the policies implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture.
The paper -published in the Journal of Development Economics, the most important magazine in the field of Economic Development- reveals that rural development programs must incorporate environmental protection as an integral part of their design. What applies not only to the context of the study, but in a general way.
For example, “if agricultural productivity programs in rural areas of Chile do not incorporate prohibitions to intervene in native forests, use dangerous pesticides and other elements of conservation, it is very likely that they will end up having negative environmental consequences,” Jaimovich establishes.
“This applies to all kinds of rural development programs, both in agricultural producers, indigenous communities, tourism projects and others,” concludes the academic.
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