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Savino, Sara

University of British Columbia

Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC) is the high impact component of human-wildlife conflict in India. It involves large scale crop and property damage, and is tragically associated with approximately 400 human and 100 elephant fatalities every year. It has been theorized that the frequency, intensity and outcome of interactions between humans and elephants in India is influenced by anthropogenic destruction of elephant habitat. However, an empirical relationship has not been formally established. In this thesis, I estimate a causal relationship between forest clearing for infrastructure development and fatal HEC. I specify a Two-Way Fixed Effects Poisson Pseudo-likelihood Regression Model and control for the availability of forage for elephants. My results contribute three key findings to the literature on HEC: (1) It robustly establishes an empirical link between the cumulative effects from infrastructure-led forest clearing and elephant fatalities due to HEC; (2) It uncovers heterogeneous effects from linear infrastructure projects on human fatalities due to HEC compared with other forms of infrastructure projects; and (3) It establishes a causal link between infrastructure-led forest clearing and HEC as a whole in India. Between 2014 and 2018, 48 human fatalities can be attributed directly to approvals for linear infrastructure in Indian elephant states, and 10 elephant fatalities can be attributed to approvals for non-linear projects. This thesis contributes to a greater understanding of the unquantified costs of forest clearing, in the context of a stated goal by the Government of India to relax environmental assessment processes, accelerate infrastructure expansion and strip previously protected forests from their status in pursuit of its target to become a developed nation by 2047.

Text

2024-05-16

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88323

Integrated Studies in Land and Food Systems

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/