This paper investigates the effectiveness of protected areas in slowing tropical forest clearing in 64 countries in Asia/Pacific, Africa and Latin America during the period of 2001–2012 by comparing deforestation rates inside and within 10 km outside of the boundaries of protected areas. Annual time series of these deforestation rates were constructed from recently published high‐resolution data on forest clearing from Hansen et al. (2013). For 4,028 parks, panel estimation based on a variety of park characteristics was conducted to test if deforestation was lower in protected areas because of their protected status, or if other factors explained the difference. From a sample of 726 parks established since 2002, a test was also conducted to investigate the effect of park establishment on protection. Findings suggest park size, national park status and management by indigenous people all are significantly associated with effective protection across regions. For the Asia/Pacific region, the test offers compelling evidence that park establishment has a near‐immediate and powerful effect.

Data scarcity has hindered studies on the impacts of climate change on land prices in the coastal regions of developing countries. Focused on the Indian Sundarbans, this paper is at the forefront of such research. Market conditions in the region feature unregulated transactions, unenforced zoning, and a lack of disaster insurance. For many residents with hereditary land ownership, stark poverty eliminates any risk buffer provided by savings or other non-essential liquid assets. Using new household surveys and environmental data, our study hypothesizes that salinization and cyclone strikes have already adversely affected land prices. We quantify such impacts using a georeferenced panel of 342 salinity monitoring stations and a spatial raster database on all cyclonic storm strikes since 1970. Our econometric results reveal highly significant negative impacts for both factors. We use the regression results to predict land prices for the most and least favourable environmental conditions recorded in our database. The results show that these climate change–related conditions account for spatial differentials greater than an order of magnitude in land prices. Such extreme risk differentials suggest high financial and fiscal stakes, underscoring the critical importance of appropriately targeted adjustment policies.