Join us on Thursday for the Baker Center Interdisciplinary Group on Energy and 
Environmental Policy Forum, March 8, 2012, at 3.30 pm in the Toyota 
Auditorium in the Baker Center.

Alex Pfaff, from Duke University will give a 45 minute presentation and then 
lead a discussion with participants. His talk is titled:

“Avoided Amazonian Deforestation and Policy Design”

Description: We examine how protection type, specifically variation in 
permission for local livelihoods, interacts with protection location so different 
types have different impacts on deforestation.  We study 2000-2004 and 2004-
2008 deforestation for Acre State, in the Brazilian Amazon, using matching to 
improve baselines. This control for site features lowers estimates by half. 
Sustainable-use areas avoid more clearing, despite the most clearing inside 
their boundaries. One reason is that on average other protection types are 
located further from deforestation, for instance further from roads and further 
from cities, implying little pressure to be blocked.

Alex Pfaff is is Associate Professor of Public Policy, Economics and Environment 
and an environmental and natural resource economist focused upon how 
economic development and the environment & natural resources affect each 
other. His research examines: impacts on deforestation of roads, protected 
areas and ecopayments (Brazil's Amazon, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico and 
US); influences on harmful exposures (stove emissions in China and Pakistan, 
drinking arsenic in Bangladesh); responses to climate and water shocks in 
production and bargaining under water policies (Brazil's NE and Colombia); and 
how U.S. regulators might shift the incentives for firms to audit and provide 
information. This applied research aims to raise the chance that interventions 
have their intended impacts upon the environment and natural resources while 
benefiting all the people and groups they are designed to help.
 
The Baker Center discussion forum is an opportunity for academics to share 
their research findings to a broad set of academics, researchers, and students 
from outside their own discipline but who have a common interest in 
environmental and energy issues. For more information about the Baker Center 
Interdisciplinary Group on Energy and Environmental Policy visit the forum’s 
website: http://web.utk.edu/~jlarivi1/bcinter.html. 

Please join us for what promises to be a very interesting discussion and 
presentation.

Paul Armsworth, College of Arts and Sciences
Jacob LaRiviere, College of Business Administration 
Becky Jacobs, College of Law
Chris Clark, College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources