Resource information
International migration has increased
rapidly in recent decades and this has been accompanied by a
remarkable increase in transfers made by migrants to their
home countries. This paper investigates the effect of the
rural economic growth brought about by migration and
remittances on Nepal's Himalayan forests. The authors
assemble a unique village-panel dataset combining remote
sensing data on land use and forest cover change with data
from the census and multiple rounds of living standards
surveys to test various inter-relationships between
population, economic growth and forests. The results suggest
that rural economic growth spurred by remittances has had an
overall positive impact on forests. The paper also finds
that remittances caused an increase in rural wages and an
increase in income, but a decrease in land prices.
Considered together, however, the relationship between
forests and remittances is driven largely through the income
channel, indicating that the demand for amenities provided
by forests in the rural Nepali setting may have been more
important than factor prices in influencing land use changes
for the period of the study.
