Person:
Damania, Richard

Sustainable Development Practice Group, The World Bank
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Development Economics, Environmental Economics, Natural Resource Economics, Agricultural Economics, Water Economics, Game Theory
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Last updated: November 29, 2023
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Richard Damania is the Chief Economist of the Sustainable Development Practice Group. He has held several positions in the World Bank including as Senior Economic Advisor in the Water Practice, Lead Economist in the Africa Region’s Sustainable Development Department, in the South Asia and Latin America and Caribbean Regions of the World Bank. His work has spanned across multiple sectors and has helped the World Bank become an acknowledged thought-leader on matters relating to environment, water and the economy. Prior to joining the World Bank he held positions in academia and has published extensively with over 100 papers in scientific journals.
Citations 33 Scopus

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    Is Natural Capital a Complement to Human Capital?: Evidence from 46 Countries
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-11-29) Herrera Garcia , Luis Diego; Damania, Richard; Kim, Hyungju; Viotti, Leonardo; Zaveri, Esha; Onder, Stefanie; Pantoja, Chrissie
    The environment has long been the foundation of human flourishing, but its continued degradation is threatening to reverse recent development gains, especially in human health. This paper analyzes the possible complementarity between natural and human capital by linking high-resolution deforestation data with health outcomes for 0.7 million children across 46 countries. Forest loss is often a consequence of economic activities that may confer market and other benefits. At the same time, it can adversely affect the provision of forest ecosystem services and reduce the associated socioeconomic and environmental benefits for rural communities. The net effect is thus ambiguous. The paper focuses on the hydrological services provided by forests and exploits quasi-random variation in deforestation upstream to assess the impacts on waterborne disease outcomes for rural households downstream. The results not only indicate increases in diarrheal disease incidence among children under 5 years old, but also offer new evidence of early-life exposure to deforestation on childhood stunting, a well-known indicator of later-life productivity. A case study for Peru shows similar results for diarrheal disease, but a weaker effect of forest loss on stunting. The paper concludes that maintaining natural capital has the potential to generate meaningful improvements in long-run human capital.