Howard E. Woodin ES Colloquium Series

Soil and forest resources in Sub-Saharan Africa
Julia Berazneva, Assistant Professor of Economics, Middlebury College

Most of the world’s poorest billion people live in rural areas, where their livelihoods depend directly on natural capital: soils, forests, and waterways. While these resources are often renewable, overuse or mismanagement leads to their depletion and deterioration. Soil degradation, overfishing and overgrazing, deforestation, and loss of biodiversity are widespread. For the poor in fragile environments in Sub-Saharan Africa, the reduced stocks of natural resources and the deteriorated ecosystem services they provide lead to lower land productivity, stagnating incomes, and poor health. In this talk I will present several of my projects that study soil and forest resources. In one we investigate the effects of changes in agricultural practices on maize yields and soil carbon sequestration in Kenya; and in the other, we examine the links between deforestation, malaria, and child health in Nigeria.