CRPR-LEEP Seminar: Fire, tractors and health in the Amazon by Thiago Morello

Fire, tractors and health in the Amazon: a stated preference-based cost-benefit analysis of externality policy. Every year residents of the urban area of Rio Branco, a western Amazon town with 330,000 inhabitants, have their respiratory health threatened by smoke from fires set to prepare land for agriculture. This remains true even with remarkable policy efforts to diffuse fire-free agriculture, monitor fire use and fine non-authorized burnings. The current fire policy is evaluated with a cost-benefit analysis fully based in stated-preference valuation. Potential externality generators (smallholders) and potential victims (urban dwellers) were surveyed with, respectively, discrete choice experiment and contingent valuation methods. An efficiency metric that convoys variance of individual values is proposed and compared to traditional average-based aggregation. Physical impact of pollution in health was estimated with sub-municipal level GIS data for traditional aggregation.