A special thank-you to the editors and referees, whose thoughtful suggestions greatly improved the rigor and clarity of the paper.

🙏 I am deeply grateful for the generous comments, guidance, and feedback from Fernando Aragon, Jane Friesen, Josh Merfeld, Kevin Schnepel, Vis Taraz, Hendrik Wolff, and participants at: EfD 14th Annual Meeting • SEEDS 2020 • 2021 CEA • NAREA 2021 • 2021 CIREQ Climate Change Symposium • LAERE 2025.

3️⃣ No “make-up” effect.
Workers do not compensate for lost hours in subsequent weeks. Heat leads to persistent, not temporary, reductions in labor supply.

These findings suggest that climate change will amplify existing inequalities in labor markets across the Global South.

2️⃣ Informal workers are hit hardest.
The reduction in hours is concentrated entirely among informal workers, regardless of whether jobs are indoors or outdoors. This reflects structural vulnerabilities — lower access to cooling, electricity, childcare flexibility, and social protection.

🌡️ What did we find? In simple terms:
1️⃣ Hotter days make people work less.
Every additional day above 27°C reduces weekly hours worked by 0.63 hours (≈40 minutes), even after controlling for relative humidity, rainfall, and daylight.

5/
🔍 What explains this?
Our findings suggest 2 key mechanisms:

- A sharp drop in forest monitoring & enforcement

- Expansion of illicit economic activities

4/
💨 The environmental cost?
An additional 8 million metric tons of CO₂ emissions, equivalent to:
– 💵 $220 million in social costs
– 🔥 5× Peru’s annual budget for forest conservation

3/
📈 The relationship is causal:
A 10% increase in COVID-19 cases caused a 1.5% increase in deforestation.
This effect was strongest in areas with illegal mining and coca cultivation, where governance is already fragile.

2/
🌲 Deforestation rose sharply in 2020.
Our data show that COVID-19 accounted for 1/3 of this increase—about 47,000 extra hectares lost.
Why? Institutional capacity for forest protection declined just as illegal activity surged.

1/
Why did deforestation spike during COVID-19 in the Peruvian Amazon?
In our new paper (w/ Jerico Fiestas & Javier Montoya), we find that the pandemic didn’t just threaten health—it fueled environmental degradation too.
Here’s what we found 👇