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Of guns and trees: impact of terrorism on forest conservation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 March 2006

VIVEKANANDA MUKHERJEE  and
GAUTAM GUPTA
VIVEKANANDA MUKHERJEE
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India
GAUTAM GUPTA
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India
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Abstract

Many terrorist organizations around the world seek shelter in forests and this paper tries to address the impact of this phenomenon on forest conservation. We construct a framework to measure the social loss when a terrorist lives in the forest and has full control over the forest resources. We also consider a game between the terrorists and the government when the government tries to combat them to recover the social loss. We characterize the equilibrium of the game in which the terrorist chooses the optimum rotation length of the forest and the government chooses the optimum combat-effort. We derive the impact of two popular policy measures such as strengthening the combat operations and restricting the sale of timber by the terrorist groups in the market, on forest conservation and find both to be negative.

Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , April 2006 , pp. 221 - 233
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The paper has benefited from a discussion with Charles Perrings and his comments. We also thank two anonymous reviewers and the participants of the Conference on ‘Recent Trends in Trade and Environment’ held at Jadavpur University in February 2004, for helpful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.