Authors: Cosmopolis-del-Carpio, Caterina; Tsuchiya, Aki ;Oldekop, Johan;

Most research on forest-poverty dynamics has studied the effect of forest-related policies on monetary poverty, ecosystem services, agricultural productivity, and food security. These policies modify and shape forest landscapes; however, the effect of forest configuration on eradication and/or poverty alleviation remains unknown. Here, we estimate the impact of forest cover and forest configuration on poverty, for which we use a series of cross-sectional data that integrate multidimensional poverty (MPI) values with high-resolution forest cover data for more than 3000 rural households in Peru. Our results show 1) the effect of the forest on overall multidimensional poverty and 2) its effect on each MPI dimension: health, education, and standard of living. We find that the effect of forest cover and forest configuration on poverty depends on the outcome. Forest cover and the number of patches are positively associated with levels of deprivation in education and standard of living, but show a negative relationship with levels of deprivation in health, specifically child nutrition. Thus, clusters with a larger amount of forest will present a better level of child nutrition. These results demonstrate the complexity of forest-poverty dynamics and highlight the links between forest conservation and human well-being.