Sacred Ecology

Can religions shape ecosystems? We explore the role religious beliefs play in human environment interactions by studying African Traditional Religions (ATR), which place forests within a sacred sphere. We focus on the unique case of Benin, whose history is deeply intertwined with traditional religions and where adherence is reliably reported. By exploiting three sources of exogenous variation in Benin’s exposure to Charismatic Pentecostalism, we find that increase in ATR adherence yields positive changes in both forest and tree canopy cover. This increase is driven by sustainable land use policies rather than cooperation and shared governance mechanisms. To understand how ATR beliefs shape the way individuals combine the sacred and the ecology in their preferences, we build a theoretical framework of deforestation with heterogeneous pro-environmental attitudes driven by ATR adherence. Bringing the model to the data, we estimate that without any ATR adherence Benin would experience a loss of 10% of its tree canopy area, and would exhibit unsustainable deforestation rates. Our results show how ATR beliefs can play a fundamental role in forest and ecosystem conservation

The seminar series is organized by the Section Economics of Wageningen University (consisting of the groups Agricultural Economics and Rural Policy, Development Economics, Urban Economics, Environmental Economics and Natural Resources, and Economic and Environmental History).

The seminar is aiming to foster the exchange on recent topics in the field of economics. We consider contributions from all fields of economic research and invite speakers from Wageningen, the Netherlands and abroad.

The seminar is organized as a weekly lunch seminar taking place on campus. Meetings are between 12:00 and 13:00 hours. Lunch is served. 

All staff and students are welcome!