More than just carbon: the socioeconomic co-benefits of large-scale tree planting

Abstract

We evaluate the poverty impacts of the Philippines’ National Greening Program, a large-scale tree planting initiative that generated hundreds of thousands of jobs. Exploiting the program’s staggered roll-out, a dynamic difference-in-differences strategy reveals significant gains in tree cover and reductions in poverty between 2011 and 2018. Poverty reduction is channeled through labor market shifts reducing agricultural work while increasing unskilled and service jobs, in turn generating gains in income, consumption, and assets. While payments have short-term effects, combining them with income-generating forest assets yields longer-lasting effects, highlighting how nature-based, multifaceted interventions can support rural economies.