The Ecological Impact of Transportation Infrastructure

Asher, Sam ; Garg, Teevrat ; Novosad, Paul

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: TRANSPORT;    INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT;    ROAD CONSTRUCTION;    ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT;    RURAL ROADS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8507
RP-ID  :  WPS8507

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

There is a long-standing debate overwhether new roads unavoidably lead to environmental damage,especially forest loss, but causal identification has beenelusive. Using multiple causal identification strategies,this paper studies the construction of new rural roads toover 100,000 villages and the upgrading of 10,000 kilometersof national highways in India. The new rural roads hadprecise zero effects on local deforestation. In contrast,the highway upgrades caused substantial forest loss, whichappears to be driven by increased timber demand along thetransportation corridors. In terms of forests, last mileconnectivity had a negligible environmental cost, whileexpansion of major corridors had important environmental impacts.