Paula Sarmiento (4th Year PhD) - UPEP
Assessing the Impacts of Land Rehabilitation in Degraded Mining Areas
Date: 03/07/2025 (Fri)
Time: 2:00pm- 3:00pm
Location: This seminar will be held both on-site and remotely. The on-site location will be: Rubenstein 149- Sanford School. It will also be held remotely via Zoom. (Please sign in to see the link.)
Organizer: Alex Herrera, Paula Sarmiento and Xingchen Chen
Meeting Schedule: (Not currently open for scheduling. Please contact the seminar organizer listed above.)
All meetings will be held in the same location as the seminar unless otherwise noted.
2:00pm - Seminar Presentation (2:00pm to 3:00pm)
Additional Comments: Abstract: Artisanal small-scale gold mining (ASGM) provides employment for millions of economically disadvantaged individuals worldwide. However, it also contributes significantly to environmental degradation. The recent surge in gold prices has fueled a boom in mining activities across various countries, particularly in Colombia, exacerbating health and environmental issues. In response, USAID has launched ambitious initiatives to rehabilitate land degraded by past illegal mining and to prevent remining. The Oro Legal program, which ran from September 2015 to April 2021, represents USAID's largest bilateral effort to support ASGM, specifically in Colombia’s mining regions of Antioquia and Chocó. This paper aims to estimate the impacts of USAID's rehabilitation on environmental indicators. I use forest cover and mining data (2000-2022) classified from satellite images by Mapbiomas, and I apply a Staggered Difference-in-Differences approach to estimate the impact of USAID's efforts on forest cover. Besides, I analyze the policy implications of treatment allocation. Stage: Results. Practicing a 30 min presentation for seminar. Feedback: all feedback welcome