Guwahati, Sept. 15 -- By Arathi Menon/Mongabay

The gender of elected representatives can influence forest-cover growth, indicates a study that examines the causal impact of female elected representatives on forest conservation in India. The study concludes that electing a female MLA increased annual forest-cover growth by about six percentage points in constituencies reserved for historically marginalised communities such as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The study titled Female legislators and forest conservation in India was published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization early this year.

The authors adopted a regression discontinuity design (RDD) strategy, in which they compared forest-cover growth in constituenc...