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Neha Deopa

Publications and source records attributed to Neha Deopa.

2 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2023

Sacred Ecology

Can religions shape ecosystems? We explore the role religious beliefs play in human-environment interactions by studying African Traditional Religions (ATR), which place forests within a sacred sphere. We focus on the unique case of Benin, whose history is deeply intertwined with traditional religions and where adherence is reliably reported. By exploiting three sources of exogenous variation in Benin's exposure to Charismatic Pentecostalism, we find that increase in ATR adherence yields positive changes in both forest and tree canopy cover. This increase is driven by sustainable land use policies rather than cooperation and shared governance mechanisms. To understand how ATR beliefs shape the way individuals combine the sacred and the ecology in their preferences, we build a theoretical framework of deforestation with heterogeneous pro-environmental attitudes driven by ATR adherence. Bringing the model to the data, we estimate that without any ATR adherence Benin would experience a loss of 10% of its tree canopy area, and would exhibit unsustainable deforestation rates. Our results show how ATR beliefs can play a fundamental role in forest and ecosystem conservation.

econ.GN↗
arXiv2020

Quickest Detection of Ecological Regimes for Natural Resource Management

We study the stochastic dynamics of natural resources under the threat of ecological regime shifts. We establish a Pareto optimal framework of regime shift detection under uncertainty that minimizes the delay with which economic agents become aware of the shift. We integrate ecosystem surveillance in the formation of optimal resource extraction policies. We fully solve the case of a profit-maximizing monopolist, study its response to regime shift detection and show the generality of our framework by extending our results to other decision makers and functional forms.We apply our framework to the case of the Cantareira water reservoir in S\~ao Paulo, Brazil, and study the events that led to its depletion and the consequent water supply crisis.

econ.GN↗