The Only Asset Left: Forest Cover and Fiscal Pressure in Highland Districts
Keywords:
forest cover loss, ecological fiscal transfer, fiscal termination, highland districts, land-use pressureAbstract
When a large fiscal transfer ends on a statutory date, the jurisdictions losing it must find revenue elsewhere, and where the remaining monetisable asset is standing forest, termination becomes land-use policy whether or not anyone intends it. This study assembles published forest cover and cover loss for twenty-one districts, with allocation, poverty, stunting and human development data, read against a transfer schedule reaching zero in two budget years. The central highlands hold 1.11 million hectares, 37.7 per cent of provincial forest cover, and record the lowest loss rate of the three analytical regions at 0.1025 per cent against 0.4466 per cent on the opposite coast, a ratio of 4.4. The same region carries the highest poverty at 13.76 per cent, the highest stunting at 35.08 per cent and the lowest human development index, 75.64. Depletion concentrates where least remains: the two districts with the smallest cover lose 284 and 250 hectares per ten thousand hectares, against a next-highest value of 64. Forest cover is the one characteristic predicting transfer allocation, at a rank correlation of 0.514, while predicting poverty not at all. Recognising a protected ecosystem without a financing pathway leaves conversion as the only revenue instrument these districts hold.References
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