DFG Funding

Off the coast of West Africa, fish stocks are dwindling; in the Mekong, so much sand is being extracted that riverbanks are eroding and salt water is encroaching on the delta – and in both cases, the demand originates far from where the damage is being done: industrial trawlers flying foreign flags fish for export, whilst the sand from the Mekong is used, amongst other things, to fuel the construction boom in China. The costs – less fish on the plate, higher prices, loss of income, crop failures, and possibly migration and conflicts – are borne by the local people.

The research project ‘Distant Demand, Local Damage: Causal Evidence on Industrial Fishing in West Africa and Sand Mining in the Mekong’ aims to quantify these local consequences reliably for the first time. As fishing and sand mining are scarcely recorded and often take place illegally, they are made visible using satellite data: radar images also detect vessels that switch off their radio transmitters, whilst Sentinel satellite images reveal dredgers, shoreline changes and water turbidity. These measurements are linked to household surveys, market prices, conflict data and local monitoring stations.

The German Research Foundation (DFG) is funding Dr Carlo Birkholz’s project over three years with a grant of 276,940 euros. Carlo Birkholz holds a postdoc position ("Akademischer Rat auf Zeit") at the Chair of Development Economics and Global Political Economy (Prof. Dr Andreas Fuchs).