Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2024-2025

Ph.D. Student, Department of Economics

Research Summary: Debt-for-nature swaps were proposed in the 1980s to simultaneously address the debt crisis and forest loss. They aim to mitigate the ecological pressures arising from debt burdens by redirecting debt servicing funds into nature protection programs. The recent debt crisis and exacerbating environmental outcomes have led to renewed interest in debt-for-nature swaps as a policy tool. My research makes use of the 30 years of implementation experience to study the outcomes of implemented debt-for-nature swaps across countries. I use a cross-national framework to examine if debt-for-nature swaps have had a positive effect on reducing deforestation.