Forest Concessions & Eco-Certifications in the Peruvian Amazon : Deforestation Impacts of Logging Rights and Restrictions

Concessions that grant logging rights to firms support economic development, based on forest resources. Eco-certifications place sustainability restrictions on the operation of such logging concessions. Using a spatially detailed panel and new DID estimators, we estimate the 2002-2018 impacts on forests in the Peruvian Amazon of both logging concessions and eco-certifications. We find that concessions — which have ambiguous priors —did not raise forest loss and, if anything, reduced it slightly by warding off temporary rises in external deforestation. While eco-certifications could reduce forest loss, we find no significant impact