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🌍 With ~60 countries still contaminated by landmines, our findings from Colombia offer a roadmap. Demining is more than removing hidden explosives—it’s unlocking human and economic potential.

📄 Full paper at @jpube.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1016/j.jpub…

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🧠 Policy implications:
Demining is expensive, but it pays for itself many times over!
📌 Target demining near roads and schools
📌 Pair demining with development (e.g. crop substitution)
📌 Frame demining as a long-term investment, not just post-conflict cleanup 👇🏽

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⚖️ Demining also reduces inequality.
Redistributed gains benefit the broader community—not just elites. This underscores its value not just as a safety measure, but as a powerful and inclusive development policy. 👇🏽

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🌳 Any unintended consequences?
No! We found no increase in deforestation or illegal gold mining—meaning that economic gains weren’t captured by extractive or illegal industries. And with complementary crop substitution programs, coca cultivation fell even further. 👇🏽

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🛣️ Which areas benefit more?
Connectivity matters. Areas with better road access see stronger gains.
We simulate the national economic impact using a general equilibrium model: Without demining, Colombia’s GDP would’ve been 0.7% lower per year (2013–2019). 👇🏽

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📚 Education improves immediately after demining:
•Schools reopen
•Enrollment surges
•Student-teacher ratios fall
•More students advance grades
It’s like giving children an extra year of school—just by clearing the ground they walk on. 👇🏽

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💥 Key findings:
✅ Nightlights (a proxy for economic activity) ↑ 11.5% ➡️ municipal GDP ↑ 0.7% ➡️ $1 spent on demining yields ~$6 in benefits.
✅ Population density ↑ 2.6%
✅ Math test pass rate ↑ 6.2 p.p.
✅ Reading test pass rate ↑ 7.5 p.p.
✅ Coca cultivation ↓ 9.9%

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💡Methodology:
We used geolocated data on 294 demined areas and compared them to regions not yet demined (but eventually would be). Using modern DiD methods (e.g. Callaway & @pedrosantanna.bsky.social 2021), we identified the causal effects of demining on local development. 👇🏽

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Context: Colombia has one of the highest numbers of landmine victims globally—top 3 for homemade mines. But in 2013, amid peace talks with FARC, Colombia began a large-scale humanitarian demining campaign. We analyzed its impact. 👇🏽

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🚫💣 Landmines silently continue to threaten lives long after conflicts end. But what happens when we remove them? In the paper, we study the economic and social effects of humanitarian demining in Colombia 🇨🇴. The results are, I think, quite powerful.
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Very moving piece. Thank you for sharing it.