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Family planning and deforestation: evidence from the Ecuadorian Amazon

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Abstract

Despite an abundant literature exploring the relationship between population growth and forest cover change, comparatively little research has examined the forest cover impacts of family planning use—a key determinant of population growth rates in many developing countries. Using data from a panel survey of farms in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon, this paper explores whether family planning use affects changes in forest cover. After controlling for household life cycle effects, family planning use among female heads of farm households did not have an independent effect on deforestation, reforestation, or net forest loss between 1990 and 2008. Rather, shorter-term drivers of forest change tend to be associated with household life cycles and shifts in production and consumption. However, family planning will continue to improve development and health outcomes for women by reducing unwanted fertility and may offer longer-term environmental benefits.

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Notes

  1. Throughout this paper, the term “farm” refers to the larger finca madres, the boundaries of which do not change during this study. The term “plot” refers to land controlled by a household within a farm, and may change between the two surveys. For example, if a household split, and the son of an existing head of household took control of part of the household’s plot, forming a new household, then the plot size for the original household would decrease, but the overall farm size containing these plots would not change.

  2. Some methods are more effective at preventing pregnancy by design or because of lower rates of user error (Trussell 2011). However, treating family planning use as a continuous variable, weighted by the method’s effectiveness at preventing pregnancy (taken from Trussell 2011), did not significantly change model results presented below and is not shown. Similarly, treating users of traditional family planning methods (rhythm and withdrawal) as nonusers did not affect the significance of the effects of FP use in the models and is also not shown. Frequency or accuracy of family planning use was not measured by the household survey.

  3. As there are a large number of sectors in the survey relative to the number of households, it was not possible to examine differences in family planning access at the sector level (finer resolution than the provincial level).

  4. With regard to female head of household age, a simple regression of female head age on male head age was conducted and used to impute missing values for female heads in households without female heads. This is because households with and without female heads were present on the same farms in some instances and ignoring missing values generated misleading results due to the weighting. An indicator of whether at least one household in the farm lacked a female head is included as a covariate in the longitudinal models below, but not shown.

  5. Of the 358 unique farms included in the study, 314 had observations in both time periods. Of these 314, 18 lacked forest in 1990, and 29 had all forest in 1990, which were dropped from the deforestation and reforestation panel models, respectively.

  6. As noted in Table 1, several of the variables that were summed to the farm level for the forest cover change models were included in the fertility models, but with their household-level values instead.

  7. Due to data limitations, children who moved away from the household or who were born and passed away could not be included in this analysis, though the number of children in each category is only roughly 3% of the total number of children age nine or below living in households in 1999.

  8. In these models, the fixed effects sample was limited to farms with a woman of reproductive age in 1990 and 1999.

  9. One strategy for addressing this problem is by using an instrument, such as distance to clinic, to isolate the family planning use that took place due to clinic distance. However, location information on family planning providers is not available for this time period in the NEA, so this strategy is not possible.

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Acknowledgements

Clark Gray provided key insights and guidance that led to the development of this paper. Richard Bilsborrow and Pamela Jagger also provided feedback on a draft of this manuscript. Brian Frizzelle was instrumental in collecting and processing the farm boundary data that are used in this study. Funding for the Ecuador household surveys was provided by the World Wildlife Fund, the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Mellon Foundation. This research received support from the Population Research Training grant (T32 HD007168) and the Population Research Infrastructure Program (P2C HD050924) awarded to the Carolina Population Center from NIH/NIHCD.

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  1. Curriculum for the Environment and Ecology & Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 206 West Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516, USA

    Samuel Sellers

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Submitted to Population & Environment Special Issue: “The Environmental Dimensions of Fertility Decision-Making”

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Sellers, S. Family planning and deforestation: evidence from the Ecuadorian Amazon. Popul Environ 38, 424–447 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-017-0275-1

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