Pub Date : 2025-11-21DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107248
Olivier Bargain , H. Xavier Jara , David Rivera
Latent feelings of economic vulnerability and social stagnation may have catalyzed the unprecedented uprisings that shook Latin America and other parts of the world in 2018–2019. We document this process in the context of Chile, leveraging survey data on protest participation and its potential determinants. Specifically, we construct a “social gap” index, measuring the disconnect between objective and perceived social status. Our findings suggest that this status misperception predicts protest involvement beyond factors such as perceived living costs, the subjective value of public services, peer influence, redistributive views and political demands. Notably, the social gap operates independently of broader feelings of unfairness and anger toward inequalities in explaining protests.
{"title":"Social gaps, perceived inequality and protests","authors":"Olivier Bargain , H. Xavier Jara , David Rivera","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107248","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107248","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Latent feelings of economic vulnerability and social stagnation may have catalyzed the unprecedented uprisings that shook Latin America and other parts of the world in 2018–2019. We document this process in the context of Chile, leveraging survey data on protest participation and its potential determinants. Specifically, we construct a “social gap” index, measuring the disconnect between objective and perceived social status. Our findings suggest that this status misperception predicts protest involvement beyond factors such as perceived living costs, the subjective value of public services, peer influence, redistributive views and political demands. Notably, the social gap operates independently of broader feelings of unfairness and anger toward inequalities in explaining protests.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107248"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145570203","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-19DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107219
Soeren J. Henn , Aimable Lameke , Mastaki Mugaruka , Vincent Tanutama
How are rural towns governed in a context of fragility? This paper provides descriptive evidence to describe and quantify urbanization and the local organization of the state in 67 rural towns in four provinces of the Democratic Republic and the Congo. We present rich data on urbanization, state and local governance, taxation, public good provision, and citizens’ perceptions of governance. Three stories emerge. First, rural towns are growing, boosting high levels of ethnic diversity, and local trust, but are still largely agrarian and with unclear property rights. Second, a recent decentralization reform has been poorly implemented ten years on. Less than half the towns have a state administrators, no local elections took place, and revenue sharing is limited. Third, the governance goals of the reform remain largely unfulfilled. We observe a lack of democratic accountability, high levels of corruption, and an acute gap in financing. Finally, we find that these governance challenges are not correlated with levels of urbanization, implementation of the reforms, or levels of state capacity.
{"title":"Urbanization and decentralization in the Congo: Examining governance in rural towns","authors":"Soeren J. Henn , Aimable Lameke , Mastaki Mugaruka , Vincent Tanutama","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107219","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107219","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>How are rural towns governed in a context of fragility? This paper provides descriptive evidence to describe and quantify urbanization and the local organization of the state in 67 rural towns in four provinces of the Democratic Republic and the Congo. We present rich data on urbanization, state and local governance, taxation, public good provision, and citizens’ perceptions of governance. Three stories emerge. First, rural towns are growing, boosting high levels of ethnic diversity, and local trust, but are still largely agrarian and with unclear property rights. Second, a recent decentralization reform has been poorly implemented ten years on. Less than half the towns have a state administrators, no local elections took place, and revenue sharing is limited. Third, the governance goals of the reform remain largely unfulfilled. We observe a lack of democratic accountability, high levels of corruption, and an acute gap in financing. Finally, we find that these governance challenges are not correlated with levels of urbanization, implementation of the reforms, or levels of state capacity.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107219"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145570205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-17DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107238
Anbang Wang , Junqiao Ma , Ke He
Amid global income inequality, identity liberalization presents a viable solution. Overcoming traditional data acquisition limitations, this study integrated geographic information systems and gridded satellite dataset, utilizing 1 km-resolution nighttime light intensity, population and township-level administrative data. Theil index quantifies county-level urban–rural income inequality, while the generalized difference-in-differences method, using China’s reform of hukou system as a quasi-experiment, demonstrates that citizenization significantly mitigates urban–rural income inequality, especially under institutional discrimination. The underlying mechanisms operate through two channels: First, dismantling identity barriers enhances rural residents’ access to health security and social mobility, fostering their market integration capacity; Second, eliminating regional constraints optimizes regional market absorption capacity by facilitating the farmland marketization, technology diffusion, and job opportunities. As a complement to informal institutions, regions with deep-rooted Confucian and clan cultures exhibit stronger reform synergy, whereas pronounced dialect barriers hinder effectiveness. Over time, citizenization mitigates urban–rural income inequality exacerbated during early urbanization, accelerates income convergence, and advances the inflection point of urban–rural disparity, fostering societal income equalization.
{"title":"Citizenization and urban–rural income inequality: Evidence from the reform of hukou system in China","authors":"Anbang Wang , Junqiao Ma , Ke He","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107238","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107238","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Amid global income inequality, identity liberalization presents a viable solution. Overcoming traditional data acquisition limitations, this study integrated geographic information systems and gridded satellite dataset, utilizing 1 km-resolution nighttime light intensity, population and township-level administrative data. Theil index quantifies county-level urban–rural income inequality, while the generalized difference-in-differences method, using China’s reform of hukou system as a quasi-experiment, demonstrates that citizenization significantly mitigates urban–rural income inequality, especially under institutional discrimination. The underlying mechanisms operate through two channels: First, dismantling identity barriers enhances rural residents’ access to health security and social mobility, fostering their market integration capacity; Second, eliminating regional constraints optimizes regional market absorption capacity by facilitating the farmland marketization, technology diffusion, and job opportunities. As a complement to informal institutions, regions with deep-rooted Confucian and clan cultures exhibit stronger reform synergy, whereas pronounced dialect barriers hinder effectiveness. Over time, citizenization mitigates urban–rural income inequality exacerbated during early urbanization, accelerates income convergence, and advances the inflection point of urban–rural disparity, fostering societal income equalization.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107238"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145570206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-17DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107220
Sunil Mitra Kumar, Soumya Mishra, Louise Tillin
{"title":"Introductory essay for special issue: future of work and welfare in India’s halting structural transition","authors":"Sunil Mitra Kumar, Soumya Mishra, Louise Tillin","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107220","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107220","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"198 ","pages":"Article 107220"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145694180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We investigate how foreign media influenced political mobilization during the Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Focusing on two prominent transnational networks, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, we use Arab Barometer survey data to track political mobilization and media use indicators in Jordan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Territories. To address potential endogeneity, we use the frequency of lightning strikes and submarine cable seaquake shocks as instrumental variables, which help isolate exogenous variation in access to foreign media. Our results show that access to foreign media has a positive and statistically significant effect on political mobilization. A one-standard-deviation increase corresponds to a rise in the likelihood of participating in protests of approximately 6.5 percentage points, a gain of approximately 39% at the sample mean. We argue that this effect is primarily driven by the informational dimension of foreign media, rather than its ideological content.
{"title":"The impact of foreign media on political mobilization during the Arab Spring","authors":"Laura Angelini , Luisito Bertinelli , Rana Cömertpay , Jean-François Maystadt","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107218","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107218","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We investigate how foreign media influenced political mobilization during the Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Focusing on two prominent transnational networks, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, we use Arab Barometer survey data to track political mobilization and media use indicators in Jordan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Territories. To address potential endogeneity, we use the frequency of lightning strikes and submarine cable seaquake shocks as instrumental variables, which help isolate exogenous variation in access to foreign media. Our results show that access to foreign media has a positive and statistically significant effect on political mobilization. A one-standard-deviation increase corresponds to a rise in the likelihood of participating in protests of approximately 6.5 percentage points, a gain of approximately 39% at the sample mean. We argue that this effect is primarily driven by the informational dimension of foreign media, rather than its ideological content.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107218"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145521260","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Increasing land tenure security has been advocated as a critical policy to reduce deforestation and promote sustainable development in the developing world. We evaluate the extent to which rural properties with secure land tenure are less prone to deforestation and more likely to comply with environmental rules in the Brazilian Amazon. We use a unique dataset with property-level information for the entire population of private rural properties registered in the state of Acre, Brazil. Our proxy for land tenure security is the absence of overlapping claims to property rights when a landowner registers their land in the federal Environmental Rural Registry. We evaluate the impacts of secure land rights on (i) the property’s share of the deforested area, and (ii) the likelihood that farmers comply with the Brazilian Forest Code, which defines a limit of 20% of deforested area in each property. The non-randomness between the treatment (land tenure security) and control (land tenure insecurity) groups is controlled by using various empirical strategies, including within-landholder fixed effects and matching strategies. Our results demonstrate that land tenure security significantly reduces deforestation and increases compliance with the Forest Code. We also show that even legally titled properties exhibit higher deforestation rates when land tenure rights are not effectively supported by land governance mechanisms.
{"title":"Does land tenure security reduce deforestation? Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon","authors":"Joao Paulo Santos Mastrangelo , Alexandre Gori Maia , Stella Zucchetti Schons","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107233","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107233","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Increasing land tenure security has been advocated as a critical policy to reduce deforestation and promote sustainable development in the developing world. We evaluate the extent to which rural properties with secure land tenure are less prone to deforestation and more likely to comply with environmental rules in the Brazilian Amazon. We use a unique dataset with property-level information for the entire population of private rural properties registered in the state of Acre, Brazil. Our proxy for land tenure security is the absence of overlapping claims to property rights when a landowner registers their land in the federal Environmental Rural Registry. We evaluate the impacts of secure land rights on (i) the property’s share of the deforested area, and (ii) the likelihood that farmers comply with the Brazilian Forest Code, which defines a limit of 20% of deforested area in each property. The non-randomness between the treatment (land tenure security) and control (land tenure insecurity) groups is controlled by using various empirical strategies, including within-landholder fixed effects and matching strategies. Our results demonstrate that land tenure security significantly reduces deforestation and increases compliance with the Forest Code. We also show that even legally titled properties exhibit higher deforestation rates when land tenure rights are not effectively supported by land governance mechanisms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107233"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145521244","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-14DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107228
Joan Martínez-Alier , Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos
Poverty is multidimensional. Economic growth often implies environmental impoverishment and hence diminished options to choose valuable lives. People who are deprived of access to land, clean water and air because of extractive industries or as victims of waste disposal, often complain accordingly. They have lost freedom of choice regardless possible income increases, if they get them at all. We illustrate this with examples of ecological distribution conflicts collected in the EJAtlas. If you get some extra money but lose access to land, water and clean air because extractive industries grab your place and pollute your family, you are poorer in some dimensions than before, and poverty estimates need to take this into account.
{"title":"Development as multidimensional environmental impoverishment","authors":"Joan Martínez-Alier , Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107228","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107228","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Poverty is multidimensional. Economic growth often implies environmental impoverishment and hence diminished options to choose valuable lives. People who are deprived of access to land, clean water and air because of extractive industries or as victims of waste disposal, often complain accordingly. They have lost freedom of choice regardless possible income increases, if they get them at all. We illustrate this with examples of ecological distribution conflicts collected in the EJAtlas. If you get some extra money but lose access to land, water and clean air because extractive industries grab your place and pollute your family, you are poorer in some dimensions than before, and poverty estimates need to take this into account.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107228"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145521258","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A large body of research has illustrated how inequalities in educational achievements globally are rooted in a range of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. However, the sources of educational disadvantages are too often considered in isolation, without addressing how they interplay with one another. Building upon the intersectionality and multiple jeopardy frameworks, in this paper we employ a sequential mixed-methods approach to analyse the role played by economic status, gender and race in shaping education attainment in Brazilian high-stakes secondary education exams. Our specific focus is on how economic status, conceptualised as comprising an absolute and a relative facet, interplays with gender and race. Our quantitative analysis reveals that the two components of economic status interplay symmetrically with gender but asymmetrically with race. Gender attainment gaps shrink with higher absolute and relative status. Race attainment gaps also shrink with higher absolute status, but they expand with higher relative status. We use the insights obtained from the literature as well as from our qualitative interviews to situate and explain these findings. Our work improves the understanding of the multifaceted disadvantage experienced by students from underprivileged households in Brazil, highlighting how economic inequality and discrimination hinder educational attainment and jeopardise social mobility.
{"title":"Gender, race and their interplay with economic status: intersectionality and asymmetric jeopardies in Brazilian education","authors":"Sunil Mitra Kumar , Lucio Esposito , Adrián Villaseñor , Sandra Macedo","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107232","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107232","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A large body of research has illustrated how inequalities in educational achievements globally are rooted in a range of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. However, the sources of educational disadvantages are too often considered in isolation, without addressing how they interplay with one another. Building upon the intersectionality and multiple jeopardy frameworks, in this paper we employ a sequential mixed-methods approach to analyse the role played by economic status, gender and race in shaping education attainment in Brazilian high-stakes secondary education exams. Our specific focus is on how economic status, conceptualised as comprising an absolute and a relative facet, interplays with gender and race. Our quantitative analysis reveals that the two components of economic status interplay symmetrically with gender but asymmetrically with race. Gender attainment gaps shrink with higher absolute and relative status. Race attainment gaps also shrink with higher absolute status, but they expand with higher relative status. We use the insights obtained from the literature as well as from our qualitative interviews to situate and explain these findings. Our work improves the understanding of the multifaceted disadvantage experienced by students from underprivileged households in Brazil, highlighting how economic inequality and discrimination hinder educational attainment and jeopardise social mobility.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107232"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145521257","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-13DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107239
Joseph A Kilgallen , Alexander M Ishungisa , Pius Charles , Theresia Marco Chizi , Anuarite John , Israel Nicholaus , Ernest Sebarua , Mark Urassa , David W Lawson
Achieving gender equality requires the support of all genders, but efforts to engage men in women’s empowerment initiatives have been fraught with resistance. Existing research demonstrates that men often anticipate negative consequences for opposing patriarchal norms but has less frequently addressed variability in such perceptions within communities and their modification by socioecological change. Here, we examine the ramifications men face when deemed supportive of women’s empowerment with regard to their social status and prospects for marriage and reproduction, and how these ramifications are shifting with urbanization. Data come from a Tanzanian community, selected because it combines patriarchal norms, with shifting gender roles accompanying urbanization, offering a relevant case for understanding gender norm change in similar low and middle-income settings. Focus groups and in-depth interviews with community members (young men, young women, and elders) confirm severe social costs for men who support women’s empowerment, primarily in the form of reputational damage and social ostracism. Both men and women also frequently question the sexuality, desirability, and reproductive prospects of men engaging in gender atypical behaviors that support women. However, these costs are giving way to emerging incentives for a subset of supportive men who gain social prestige, at least among relatively well-educated peers, via their association with ‘modern’ values, attractiveness to women, access to novel employment opportunities, and adaptability to urban life. Through identifying entrenched costs for supportive men and emerging incentives accompanying urbanization, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the barriers and pathways to effectively engaging men in women’s empowerment.
{"title":"“A snake with no teeth”: Urbanization shifts perceptions of men who support women’s empowerment in Northwestern Tanzania","authors":"Joseph A Kilgallen , Alexander M Ishungisa , Pius Charles , Theresia Marco Chizi , Anuarite John , Israel Nicholaus , Ernest Sebarua , Mark Urassa , David W Lawson","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107239","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107239","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Achieving gender equality requires the support of all genders, but efforts to engage men in women’s empowerment initiatives have been fraught with resistance. Existing research demonstrates that men often anticipate negative consequences for opposing patriarchal norms but has less frequently addressed variability in such perceptions within communities and their modification by socioecological change. Here, we examine the ramifications men face when deemed supportive of women’s empowerment with regard to their social status and prospects for marriage and reproduction, and how these ramifications are shifting with urbanization. Data come from a Tanzanian community, selected because it combines patriarchal norms, with shifting gender roles accompanying urbanization, offering a relevant case for understanding gender norm change in similar low and middle-income settings. Focus groups and in-depth interviews with community members (young men, young women, and elders) confirm severe social costs for men who support women’s empowerment, primarily in the form of reputational damage and social ostracism. Both men and women also frequently question the sexuality, desirability, and reproductive prospects of men engaging in gender atypical behaviors that support women. However, these costs are giving way to emerging incentives for a subset of supportive men who gain social prestige, at least among relatively well-educated peers, via their association with ‘modern’ values, attractiveness to women, access to novel employment opportunities, and adaptability to urban life. Through identifying entrenched costs for supportive men and emerging incentives accompanying urbanization, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the barriers and pathways to effectively engaging men in women’s empowerment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107239"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145521259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-13DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107229
Luca Raineri
The role of natural parks and protected areas in fostering peace or exacerbating conflict has gained increasing attention. While early scholarship emphasized their potential in post-conflict peacebuilding, political ecology has highlighted how the securitization of environmental concerns may clash with local resource management, fuelling hidden resistance or overt violence. Specific outcomes arguably depend on contextual features and eschew generalised answers, yet French-speaking West Africa remains underexplored in this debate. This article addresses that gap by focusing on the W-Arly-Pendjari (WAP) transboundary park complex across Burkina Faso, Niger, and Benin. Noting the expansion of jihadist groups in this area, this case selection further helps bridge the divide between conflict studies and political ecology literatures, including conservation amidst counterinsurgency.
The article explores three hypotheses to understand why jihadist groups have expanded in the WAP area: (H1) leveraging local grievances over environmental governance and restricted resource access to mobilize local populations against the states; (H2) exploitation of conflict economies like trafficking, poaching, and gold mining for greed and economic gain; and (H3) capitalize on the military potential of forested areas to provide safe havens.
Qualitative evidence – including interviews and surveys with local stakeholders and park rangers – is mobilized to assess the purchase of these hypotheses. Findings suggest that, contrary to earlier claims, the politicization of environmental grievances plays a limited role. Instead, jihadist presence in the WAP complex is more convincingly explained by economic motivations linked to illicit activities and, most critically, by military considerations, with protected forest areas offering strategic advantages.
{"title":"Grievances, greed or tactics? The political ecology of jihadist expansion in West Africa’s WAP complex","authors":"Luca Raineri","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107229","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107229","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The role of natural parks and protected areas in fostering peace or exacerbating conflict has gained increasing attention. While early scholarship emphasized their potential in post-conflict peacebuilding, political ecology has highlighted how the securitization of environmental concerns may clash with local resource management, fuelling hidden resistance or overt violence. Specific outcomes arguably depend on contextual features and eschew generalised answers, yet French-speaking West Africa remains underexplored in this debate. This article addresses that gap by focusing on the W-Arly-Pendjari (WAP) transboundary park complex across Burkina Faso, Niger, and Benin. Noting the expansion of jihadist groups in this area, this case selection further helps bridge the divide between conflict studies and political ecology literatures, including conservation amidst counterinsurgency.</div><div>The article explores three hypotheses to understand why jihadist groups have expanded in the WAP area: (H1) leveraging local grievances over environmental governance and restricted resource access to mobilize local populations against the states; (H2) exploitation of conflict economies like trafficking, poaching, and gold mining for greed and economic gain; and (H3) capitalize on the military potential of forested areas to provide safe havens.</div><div>Qualitative evidence – including interviews and surveys with local stakeholders and park rangers – is mobilized to assess the purchase of these hypotheses. Findings suggest that, contrary to earlier claims, the politicization of environmental grievances plays a limited role. Instead, jihadist presence in the WAP complex is more convincingly explained by economic motivations linked to illicit activities and, most critically, by military considerations, with protected forest areas offering strategic advantages.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107229"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145521261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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