Chrissie Pantoja Vallejos (2nd Year PhD) - UPEP
Upstream Forest Loss Threatens Children’s Health Downstream: Evidence for Climate Resilience from Peru
Date: 03/28/2025 (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: Peru is vulnerable to climate shifts, yet its extensive forests help mitigate downstream costs from rainfall extremes, as seen during El Niño events. Resilience-driven policies focus on conserving these forests, so for policy evaluation, we rigorously quantify the downstream health costs of upstream forest losses using Peru's exceptional suite of DHS surveys. Geography and development create heterogeneity: the Amazon, Andean, and Coastal regions differ, and within each, rural and urban areas exhibit variation. Our metrics for upstream forest loss assume river-based impact mechanisms. Using 2004-2020 geospatial data, we estimate the effects of upstream forest losses alongside other demographic factors, including downstream water access. Preliminary results indicate the strongest effects on the Coast, moderate effects in the Highlands, and smallest effects in the Amazon due to its extensive watershed availability. When examining downstream access to improved water, we find no significant effects in rural areas, except in the urban areas of the Andes, across various improved water indicators.