Selling the Forest? Donor-funded Politicians and Deforestation

Abstract

Democracy and election dynamics have an impact on natural resources, sometimes democratic elections have proved to help preserve natural ecosystems, but there is also evidence on the contrary. Despite the numerous studies on the direct effect of elections and democratisation little is said on the underlying factors that could drive the result to either direction; moreover, almost nothing is said about the role of campaign donations as a driver of deforestation, despite the evidence that these contributions play an important role on how the elected politicians behave. Using deforestation data from satellite images and information on campaign funding for the Colombian mayoral elections, we apply a regression discontinuity design and find that municipalities that elected a donor-funded politician exhibit much larger deforestation rates by the end of the government term