India, Repression, and Ecologically Unequal Exchange of Wood: A Cross-National Analysis of Forest Loss

A recent cross-national article by Sommer, Restivo, and Shandra finds that wood exports to India from peripheral nations are related to levels of forest loss in the peripheral nations. While it suggests new insights into how semi-peripheral nations engage in ecologically unequal exchange, we contend this finding is incomplete and offers only a partial explanation of forest loss. We draw on Evans’s idea of a “triple alliance” to argue that in an effort to promote industrialization, repressive nations in the periphery try to create a “good business climate” for foreign firms by offering investors economic incentives, regulatory concessions, and (imposed) political stability. Thus we hypothesize that greater wood exports to India are related to forest loss in peripheral nations with worse repression. We find support for this hypothesis by regressing data on 67 peripheral nations.