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Abstract
Collaborative management partnerships (CMPs) between state wildlife authorities and nonprofit conservation organizations to manage protected areas (PAs) have been used increasingly across Sub-Saharan Africa since the 2000s. They aim to attract funding, build capacity, and increase the environmental effectiveness of PAs. Our study documents the rise of CMPs, examines their current extent, and measures their effectiveness in protecting habitats. We combine statistical matching and Before-After-Control-Intervention regressions to quantify the impact of CMPs, using tree cover loss as a proxy. We identify 127 CMPs located in 16 countries. CMPs are more often located in remote PAs, with habitats that are least threatened by human activity. Our results indicate that, on average, each year in a CMP results in an annual decrease in tree cover loss of about 55% compared to PAs without CMPs. Where initial anthropogenic pressure was low, we measure no effect. Where it was high, we see a 66% decrease in tree cover loss. This highly heterogeneous effect illustrates the importance of moving beyond average effect size when assessing conservation interventions, as well as the need for policy makers to invest public funds to protect the areas the most at risk.
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are a cornerstone of marine conservation efforts, with the potential to protect biodiversity and provide socioeconomic benefits. We quantified the effect of MPAs on fishing outcomes, economic activities, and material living standards in 24 coastal villages of Tanzania over two decades. We accessed original data from a study conducted in 2003 that found no effect of MPAs 3–8 years after their creation. Eighteen years later, we replicated the survey and used a Before‐After Control‐Intervention design to quantify the effect of MPAs. We found that villages near MPAs experienced a 50% higher improvement in living standards compared to those further from MPAs. This benefit is not related to higher fishing outcomes but to a diversification of economic sectors. Our findings highlight a decoupling between fish catches and economic benefits, revealing that socio‐economic outcomes can be observed for MPAs whose ecosystems’ productivity has declined.
Protected areas can conserve wildlife and benefit people when managed effectively. African governments increasingly delegate the management of protected areas to private, nongovernmental organizations, hoping that private organizations’ significant resources and technical capacities actualize protected areas’ potential. Does private sector management improve outcomes compared to a counterfactual of government management? We leverage the transfer of management authority from governments to African Parks (AP)—the largest private manager of protected areas in Africa—to show that private management significantly improves wildlife outcomes via reduced elephant poaching and increased bird abundances. Our results also suggest that AP’s management augments tourism, while the effect on rural wealth is inconclusive. However, AP’s management increases the risk of armed groups targeting civilians, which could be an unintended outcome of AP’s improved monitoring and enforcement systems. These findings reveal an intricate interplay between conservation, economic development, and security under privately managed protected areas in Africa.
More than a quarter of the world’s tropical forests are exploited for timber¹. Logging impacts biodiversity in these ecosystems, primarily through the creation of forest roads that facilitate hunting for wildlife over extensive areas. Forest management certification schemes such as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) are expected to mitigate impacts on biodiversity, but so far very little is known about the effectiveness of FSC certification because of research design challenges, predominantly limited sample sizes2,3. Here we provide this evidence by using 1.3 million camera-trap photos of 55 mammal species in 14 logging concessions in western equatorial Africa. We observed higher mammal encounter rates in FSC-certified than in non-FSC logging concessions. The effect was most pronounced for species weighing more than 10 kg and for species of high conservation priority such as the critically endangered forest elephant and western lowland gorilla. Across the whole mammal community, non-FSC concessions contained proportionally more rodents and other small species than did FSC-certified concessions. The first priority for species protection should be to maintain unlogged forests with effective law enforcement, but for logged forests our findings provide convincing data that FSC-certified forest management is less damaging to the mammal community than is non-FSC forest management. This study provides strong evidence that FSC-certified forest management or equivalently stringent requirements and controlling mechanisms should become the norm for timber extraction to avoid half-empty forests dominated by rodents and other small species.
Understanding the effectiveness of conservation interventions during times of political instability is important given how much of the world’s biodiversity is concentrated in politically fragile nations. Here, we investigate the effect of a political crisis on the relative performance of community managed forests versus protected areas in terms of reducing deforestation in Madagascar, a biodiversity hotspot. We use remotely sensed data and statistical matching within an event study design to isolate the effect of the crisis and post-crisis period on performance. Annual rates of deforestation accelerated at the end of the crisis and were higher in community forests than in protected areas. After controlling for differences in location and other confounding variables, we find no difference in performance during the crisis, but community-managed forests performed worse in post-crisis years. These findings suggest that, as a political crisis subsides and deforestation pressures intensify, community-based conservation may be less resilient than state protection.
Protected areas (PAs) are the primary strategy for slowing terrestrial biodiversity loss. Although expansion of PA coverage is prioritized under the Convention on Biological Diversity, it remains unknown whether PAs mitigate declines across the tetrapod tree of life and to what extent land cover and climate change modify PA effectiveness1,2. Here we analysed rates of change in abundance of 2,239 terrestrial vertebrate populations across the globe. On average, vertebrate populations declined five times more slowly within PAs (−0.4% per year) than at similar sites lacking protection (−1.8% per year). The mitigating effects of PAs varied both within and across vertebrate classes, with amphibians and birds experiencing the greatest benefits. The benefits of PAs were lower for amphibians in areas with converted land cover and lower for reptiles in areas with rapid climate warming. By contrast, the mitigating impacts of PAs were consistently augmented by effective national governance. This study provides evidence for the effectiveness of PAs as a strategy for slowing tetrapod declines. However, optimizing the growing PA network requires targeted protection of sensitive clades and mitigation of threats beyond PA boundaries. Provided the conditions of targeted protection, adequate governance and well-managed landscapes are met, PAs can serve a critical role in safeguarding tetrapod biodiversity.
The United Nations recently agreed to major expansions of global protected areas (PAs) to slow biodiversity declines1. However, although reserves often reduce habitat loss, their efficacy at preserving animal diversity and their influence on biodiversity in surrounding unprotected areas remain unclear2-5. Unregulated hunting can empty PAs of large animals6, illegal tree felling can degrade habitat quality7, and parks can simply displace disturbances such as logging and hunting to unprotected areas of the landscape8 (a phenomenon called leakage). Alternatively, well-functioning PAs could enhance animal diversity within reserves as well as in nearby unprotected sites9 (an effect called spillover). Here we test whether PAs across mega-diverse Southeast Asia contribute to vertebrate conservation inside and outside their boundaries. Reserves increased all facets of bird diversity. Large reserves were also associated with substantially enhanced mammal diversity in the adjacent unprotected landscape. Rather than PAs generating leakage that deteriorated ecological conditions elsewhere, our results are consistent with PAs inducing spillover that benefits biodiversity in surrounding areas. These findings support the United Nations goal of achieving 30% PA coverage by 2030 by demonstrating that PAs are associated with higher vertebrate diversity both inside their boundaries and in the broader landscape.
Co-management has been widely promoted in protected area management on the premise that it may simultaneously enhance biodiversity conservation outcomes and improve the livelihoods of the park-border communities. However, the success of this management approach remains a growing debate raising the question of its effectiveness. To contribute to this debate, we used local community perceptions and secondary ecological data to assess the extent to which co-management has effectively contributed to biodiversity conservation in the Vwaza Marsh Wildlife Reserve. Face-to-face individual interviews using a semi-structured questionnaire were used to collect data on the perceptions of co-management from 160 purposively selected heads of households. A desk study was used to collect data on trends in animal populations, animal mortality, and prohibited activities, covering a period of the past 30 years (pre-and post-introduction of co-management). Results showed that local communities have positive perceptions of the conservation work in the Vwaza Marsh Wildlife Reserve, thus partly demonstrating the success of co-management in the area. Further, there was an improved people-park relationship and a recovery of animal populations in the reserve after the introduction of co-management. However, misunderstandings over revenue sharing were still a thorny issue, somehow creating mistrust between parties. We concluded that while it may still be early to achieve more demonstrable conservation outcomes, co-management appears to bring hope for biodiversity conservation in the Vwaza Marsh Wildlife Reserve. Moving forward, participatory evaluation of co-management involving key stakeholders is recommended in the Vwaza Marsh Wildlife Reserve based on the findings of this study and lessons learnt over the years.
Forests play a critical role in stabilizing Earth’s climate. Establishing protected areas (PAs) represents one approach to forest conservation, but PAs were rarely created to mitigate climate change. The global impact of PAs on the carbon cycle has not previously been quantified due to a lack of accurate global-scale carbon stock maps. Here we used ~412 million lidar samples from NASA’s GEDI mission to estimate a total PA aboveground carbon (C) stock of 61.43 Gt (+/− 0.31), 26% of all mapped terrestrial woody C. Of this total, 9.65 + /− 0.88 Gt of additional carbon was attributed to PA status. These higher C stocks are primarily from avoided emissions from deforestation and degradation in PAs compared to unprotected forests. This total is roughly equivalent to one year of annual global fossil fuel emissions. These results underscore the importance of conservation of high biomass forests for avoiding carbon emissions and preserving future sequestration.
Protected areas (PAs) are essential for biodiversity conservation but are threatened by cropland expansion. Recent studies have only reported global cropland expansion in large PAs between 1990 and 2005. However, the amount of cropland expansion in global PAs (including relatively small PAs) since the 2000s is unclear. Using 30-m cropland maps, we find that the cropland expansion in PAs accelerated dramatically from 2000 to 2019, compared with that of global croplands. The areal expansion was mainly in large PAs, less-strict PAs and Afrotropical PAs, which also matches the higher species extinction risks. Such PAs appear to be less effective due to greater threats, such as higher background cropland expansion rate. Notably, some PAs with the highest conservation levels failed to prevent cropland expansion. This new picture of cropland dynamics in PAs illustrates that cropland expansion is an ongoing intractable global conservation challenge that will impinge on the aspirations of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.
To protect nature, African parks must contribute to human well‐being, overcome threats, and secure reliable funding sources. The first Africa Protected Areas Congress (APAC) held in Kigali, Rwanda from July 18 to 23, 2022 has reaffirmed the need to re‐imagine the role of protected and conserved areas (PCAs) in safeguarding wildlife and biodiversity on the continent. Conservation strategies in Africa must be driven by the urgency to make PCAs people centered, advance integrated approaches to tackle drivers of biodiversity loss, and to promote sustainable and innovative financing for PCAs. This paper discusses how African countries can address these needs to harness the full potential of PCAs and ensure their long‐term sustainability.
In early May 2022, Eklund and colleagues published an article in Nature Sustainability in which they attempted to demonstrate that the early 2020 lockdown imposed in Madagascar by the emerging COVID-19 pandemic had a direct impact on Protected Areas (PAs), with an increase in the number of fires, which then stabilized once the lockdown was over. The authors, undoubtedly in good faith but based on an incomplete understanding of the situation on the ground, were attempting to draw the attention of the international community and donors to the need to maintain and strengthen PA management efforts. Their contribution, while highlighting a real and urgent need, does not, however, do justice to Madagascar's PA managers, who, in collaboration with the populations living in the vicinity of parks and reserves, maintained and in some instances increased efforts to ensure the integrity of parks and reserves during the COVID-19 period. Following the publication of this paper, we contacted the authors as well as the editors of Nature Sustainability in a collegial effort to draw their attention to the errors identified in the analysis and to point out how this led to a misinterpretation of what actually transpired during the lockdown. We submitted a carefully worded and argued rebuttal for possible publication in Nature Sustainability, which we regarded as justified given the nature and significance of the considerations we had carefully presented. Unfortunately, after several exchanges with the editor and indirectly with the authors, during which we made an honest and concerted effort to explain the problems identified and their reputational implications for PA managers in Madagascar, the journal ultimately declined to publish our response, to our considerable surprise. In order to ensure that these issues are shared with the diverse stakeholder groups involved in conservation and PA management, in Madagascar and elsewhere, we feel that it is our duty to draw attention to their potential consequences , rather than adopting the questionable strategy of sitting back and hoping they will somehow self-correct themselves (see Vazire 2019).
RÉSUMÉ Début mai 2022, Eklund et ses collègues publiaient un article dans Nature Sustainability dans lequel ils ont tenté de démontrer que le confinement de début 2020 imposé à Madagascar par la pandémie naissante du COVID-19 a eu un impact direct sur les aires protégées (AP) avec une augmentation du nombre de feux qui s'est stabilisée dès la fin du confinement. Les auteurs, certainement de bonne foi mais sur la base d'une compréhension incomplète de la situation sur le terrain, tentaient d'attirer l'attention de la communauté internationale et des bailleurs sur la nécessité de maintenir et renforcer les efforts de gestion dans les AP. Leur contribution, même si elle souligne un besoin réel et urgent ne fait en revanche pas justice aux gestionnaires des AP qui, en collaboration avec les populations riveraines des AP, ont maintenu, parfois accru leurs efforts pour maintenir l'intégrité des AP pendant la période COVID-19. Suite à la publication de l'article, nous avons contacté les auteurs ainsi que les éditeurs de Nature Sustainability dans un effort collégial pour attirer leur attention sur les erreurs identifiées dans leur analyse et pour souligner la msure dans laquelle elles ont mené à une interprétation totalement erronée de la situation qui prévalait pendant le confinement. Nous avons soumis une réfutation soigneusement formulée et argumentée à Nature Sustainability que nous estimions largement justifiée compte tenu de la nature et de l'importance des considérations présentées, mais après plusieurs échanges avec le rédacteur en chef et indirectement avec les auteurs au cours desquels nous présentions de manière honnête et concertée les problèmes que nous avions identifiés avec leurs les implications sur la réputation des gestionnaires des AP à Madagascar, le journal a finalement refusé de publier notre réponse, à notre grand étonnement. Pour nous assurer que ces questions soient partagées avec tous les acteurs et parties prenantes impliqués dans la conservation et la gestion des AP, à Madagascar et ailleurs, nous estimons qu'il est de notre devoir d'attirer l'attention sur les problèmes que nous avons identifiés ainsi que sur leurs conséquences éventuelles plutôt que d'attendre que les pro-blèmes se règlent d'eux-mêmes (voir Vazire 2019).
There is little robust, quantitative information on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the extinction crisis. Focusing on Madagascar, one of the world’s most threatened biodiversity hotspots, we explore whether the cessation of on-site protected-area management activities due to the pandemic were associated with increased burning inside protected areas. We identify monthly excess fire anomalies by comparing observed fires with those predicted on the basis of historical and contemporary fire and weather data for all of Madagascar’s protected areas for every month 2012–2020. Through to 2019, excess fire anomalies in protected areas were few, short in duration and, in some years, coincident with social disruption linked to national elections. By contrast, in 2020, COVID-19 meant on-site management of Madagascar’s protected areas was suspended from March to July. This period was associated with 76–248% more fires than predicted, after which burning returned to normal. At a time when international biodiversity conservation faces unprecedented challenges, our results highlight the importance of on-site management for maintaining protected-area integrity. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected a range of human activities, but its effect on land management is less clear. This study finds an increase in fires inside Madagascar’s protected areas during periods when management stopped due to COVID-19 lockdowns.
International policy is focused on increasing the proportion of the Earth’s surface that is protected for nature1,2. Although studies show that protected areas prevent habitat loss3–6, there is a lack of evidence for their effect on species’ populations: existing studies are at local scale or use simple designs that lack appropriate controls7–13. Here we explore how 1,506 protected areas have affected the trajectories of 27,055 waterbird populations across the globe using a robust before–after control–intervention study design, which compares protected and unprotected populations in the years before and after protection. We show that the simpler study designs typically used to assess protected area effectiveness (before–after or control–intervention) incorrectly estimate effects for 37–50% of populations—for instance misclassifying positively impacted populations as negatively impacted, and vice versa. Using our robust study design, we find that protected areas have a mixed impact on waterbirds, with a strong signal that areas managed for waterbirds or their habitat are more likely to benefit populations, and a weak signal that larger areas are more beneficial than smaller ones. Calls to conserve 30% of the Earth’s surface by 2030 are gathering pace14, but we show that protection alone does not guarantee good biodiversity outcomes. As countries gather to agree the new Global Biodiversity Framework, targets must focus on creating and supporting well-managed protected and conserved areas that measurably benefit populations. Using a combined before–after control–impact approach shows that existing studies using either before–after or control–intervention methods incorrectly estimate the effectiveness of protected areas in maintaining waterbird populations.
Protected areas (PAs) are important policy instruments for forest conservation, but it is unclear if improved management can increase PA effectiveness. In Brazil, formal management plans are required to be in place shortly after the creation of a PA. This requirement is rarely enforced and, as a result, several PAs undergo many years without approved plans. We take advantage of this variation among PAs to study the impact of management plans on deforestation. We provide estimates from two quasi-experimental evaluation approaches based on the generalization of the difference-in-differences estimator: (1) matching-based methods for time-series cross-sectional data analysis and (2) the generalized synthetic control (GSC) method. We find weak, yet generally consistent, evidence across these two methods suggesting that PAs with approved management plans protect forests more effectively over time. Significant impact estimates from the matching-based approach ranged more widely than the GSC method (0.01%–0.09% versus 0.04%–0.05% of avoided deforestation per year, respectively). The effect size of these impacts is relatively substantial given that the average annual forest loss from our PA sample was 0.07% (±0.40%). To the extent that PAs with approved management plans reflect actual differences in PA management quality, our findings suggest that investments in improving PA management could result in positive conservation gains over time.
Spatiotemporally consistent data on global cropland extent is essential for tracking progress towards sustainable food production. In the present study, we present an analysis of global cropland area change for the first two decades of the twenty-first century derived from satellite data time-series. We estimate that, in 2019, the cropland area was 1,244 Mha with a corresponding total annual net primary production (NPP) of 5.5 Pg C year ⁻¹ . From 2003 to 2019, cropland area increased by 9% and cropland NPP by 25%, primarily due to agricultural expansion in Africa and South America. Global cropland expansion accelerated over the past two decades, with a near doubling of the annual expansion rate, most notably in Africa. Half of the new cropland area (49%) replaced natural vegetation and tree cover, indicating a conflict with the sustainability goal of protecting terrestrial ecosystems. From 2003 to 2019, global per-capita cropland area decreased by 10% due to population growth. However, the per-capita annual cropland NPP increased by 3.5% as a result of intensified agricultural land use. The presented global, high-resolution, cropland map time-series supports monitoring of natural land appropriation at the local, national and international levels.
Calls to increase the global area under protection for conservation assume existing conservation areas are effective but, without adequate investment, they may not be. We collected survey data from expert respondents on perceived budgets, management, and threats for 516 protected areas and community conservation areas in savannah Africa to create a Conservation Area Performance Index. Combining this index with an indicative biodiversity outcome—population status of African lion, Panthera leo—we found that 82% of the sampled area was in a state of failure or deterioration, with only 10% in a state of success or recovery. A large proportion of succeeding or recovering conservation areas received external support through collaborative management partnerships. That Africa's current conservation area network—the foundation of conservation efforts—is crumbling complicates proposed strategies to protect additional land. We contend that investing in the effective management of existing conservation areas—potentially through well‐structured collaborative management partnerships—should be prioritized urgently.
Area-based protection is the cornerstone of international conservation policy. The contribution of Indigenous Lands (ILs)—areas traditionally owned, managed, used or occupied by Indigenous Peoples—is increasingly viewed as critical in delivering on international goals. A key question is whether deforestation and degradation are reduced on ILs pan-tropically and their effectiveness relative to Protected Areas (PAs). We estimate deforestation and degradation rates from 2010 to 2018 across 3.4 millon km² (Mkm²) ILs, 2 Mkm² of PAs and 1.7 Mkm² of overlapped Protected Indigenous Areas (PIAs) relative to matched counterfactual non-protected areas. Deforestation is reduced in ILs relative to non-protected areas across the tropics, avoiding deforestation comparably to PAs and PIAs except in Africa, where they avoid more. Similarly, degradation is reduced in ILs relative to non-protected areas, broadly performing comparably to PAs and PIAs. Indigenous support is central to forest conservation plans, underscoring the need for conservation to support their rights and recognize their contributions.
When in 2010 the world's governments pledged to increase protected area coverage to 17% of the world's land surface, several Central African countries had already set aside 25% of their northern savannas for conservation. To evaluate the effectiveness of this commitment, we analyzed the results of 68 multispecies surveys conducted in the seven main savanna national parks in Central Africa (1960–2017). We also assembled information on potential drivers of large herbivore population trends (rainfall and number of rangers) and on tourist numbers and revenues. In six out of the seven parks, wild large herbivore populations declined dramatically over time, livestock numbers increased severalfold, and tourism, the pillar under a once thriving local wildlife industry, collapsed. Zakouma National Park (Chad) stood out because its large herbivore populations increased, an increase that was positively correlated with rainfall and number of rangers (a proxy for management inputs). With increasing insecurity and declining revenues, governments find themselves confronted with too few resources to protect vast areas. To deal with this conversation overstretch, we propose to extend the repeatedly promoted solutions––scaled up funding, enhanced management––with a strategic retreat, focusing scarce resources on smaller areas to save wildlife in the Central African savannas.
Arbitrary modeling choices are inevitable in scientific studies. Yet, few empirical studies in conservation science report the effects these arbitrary choices have on estimated results. I explored the effects of subjective modeling choices in the context of counterfactual impact evaluations. Over 5000 candidate models based on reasonable changes in the choice of statistical matching algorithms (e.g., genetic and nearest distance mahalanobis matching), the parametrization of these algorithms (e.g., number of matches), and the inclusion of specific covariates (e.g., distance to nearest city, slope, or rainfall) were valid for studying the effect of Virunga National Park in Democratic Republic of the Congo on changes in tree cover loss and carbon storage over time. I randomly picked 2000 of the 5000 candidate models to determine how much and which subjective modeling choices affected the results the most. All valid models indicated that tree cover loss decreased and carbon storage increased in Virunga National Park from 2000 to 2019. Nonetheless, the order of magnitude of the estimates varied by a factor of 3 (from −4.78 to −13.12 percentage points decrease in tree cover loss and from 20 to 46 t Ce/ha for carbon storage). My results highlight that modeling choices, notably the choice of the matching algorithm, can have significant effects on point estimates and suggest that more structured robustness checks are a key step toward more credible findings in conservation science.
Accurate characterization of tropical moist forest changes is needed to support conservation policies and to quantify their contribution to global carbon fluxes more effectively. We document, at pantropical scale, the extent and changes (degradation, deforestation, and recovery) of these forests over the past three decades. We estimate that 17% of tropical moist forests have disappeared since 1990 with a remaining area of 1071 million hectares in 2019, from which 10% are degraded. Our study underlines the importance of the degradation process in these ecosystems, in particular, as a precursor of deforestation, and in the recent increase in tropical moist forest disturbances (natural and anthropogenic degradation or deforestation). Without a reduction of the present disturbance rates, undisturbed forests will disappear entirely in large tropical humid regions by 2050. Our study suggests that reinforcing actions are needed to prevent the initial degradation that leads to forest clearance in 45% of the cases.
Humanity’s impact on the environment is increasing, as are strategies to conserve biodiversity, but a lack of understanding about how interventions affect ecological and conservation outcomes hampers decision-making. Time series are often used to assess impacts, but ecologists tend to compare average values from before to after an impact; overlooking the potential for the intervention to elicit a change in trend. Without methods that allow for a range of responses, erroneous conclusions can be drawn, especially for large, multi-time-series datasets, which are increasingly available. Drawing on literature in other disciplines and pioneering work in ecology, we present a standardised framework to robustly assesses how interventions, like natural disasters or conservation policies, affect ecological time series.
Humanity will soon define a new era for nature-one that seeks to transform decades of underwhelming responses to the global biodiversity crisis. Area-based conservation efforts, which include both protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, are likely to extend and diversify. However, persistent shortfalls in ecological representation and management effectiveness diminish the potential role of area-based conservation in stemming biodiversity loss. Here we show how the expansion of protected areas by national governments since 2010 has had limited success in increasing the coverage across different elements of biodiversity (ecoregions, 12,056 threatened species, 'Key Biodiversity Areas' and wilderness areas) and ecosystem services (productive fisheries, and carbon services on land and sea). To be more successful after 2020, area-based conservation must contribute more effectively to meeting global biodiversity goals-ranging from preventing extinctions to retaining the most-intact ecosystems-and must better collaborate with the many Indigenous peoples, community groups and private initiatives that are central to the successful conservation of biodiversity. The long-term success of area-based conservation requires parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity to secure adequate financing, plan for climate change and make biodiversity conservation a far stronger part of land, water and sea management policies.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus and COVID-19 illness are driving a global crisis. Governments have responded by restricting human movement, which has reduced economic activity. These changes may benefit biodiversity conservation in some ways, but in Africa, we contend that the net conservation impacts of COVID-19 will be strongly negative. Here, we describe how the crisis creates a perfect storm of reduced funding, restrictions on the operations of conservation agencies, and elevated human threats to nature. We identify the immediate steps necessary to address these challenges and support ongoing conservation efforts. We then highlight systemic flaws in contemporary conservation and identify opportunities to restructure for greater resilience. Finally, we emphasise the critical importance of conserving habitat and regulating unsafe wildlife trade practices to reduce the risk of future pandemics.
For most of the Democratic Republic of the Congo quantitative data on bushmeat exploitation are scarce. We conducted focus group discussions on preferred species for household consumption and income generation in 24 villages around Lomami National Park, created in 2016. We also carried out a bushmeat market survey in Kindu, a major town in the study area, to estimate annual sales volumes and retail values. Villagers reported household consumption of 22 mammal species, with the most important being the African brush-tailed porcupine, Peters's duiker, bay duiker and red river hog. The latter three were also the most important for income generation. A greater number of smaller species were consumed at the household level, compared with those traded. A total of 17 mammal and one reptile species were traded in Kindu. Those traded in greater numbers were the African brush-tailed porcupine, blue and bay duiker, red river hog, red-tailed monkey and the sitatunga. We estimated > 40,000 carcasses were traded in Kindu annually, with a retail value of USD 725,000. Several species of conservation concern, such as the bonobo, were mentioned or observed. Few rodents and numerous large animals were traded in Kindu, suggesting resources have not yet been depleted. However, both villagers and urban vendors perceived a decline of many species and reported an increase in the use of firearms and the number of foreign hunters in the area. Among other interventions, we discuss how local communities could be encouraged to help preserve wildlife in the Park's buffer zone.
The awareness of the need for robust impact evaluations in conservation is growing and statistical matching techniques are increasingly being used to assess the impacts of conservation interventions. Used appropriately matching approaches are powerful tools, but they also pose potential pitfalls. We outlined important considerations and best practice when using matching in conservation science. We identified 3 steps in a matching analysis. First, develop a clear theory of change to inform selection of treatment and controls and that accounts for real‐world complexities and potential spillover effects. Second, select the appropriate covariates and matching approach. Third, assess the quality of the matching by carrying out a series of checks. The second and third steps can be repeated and should be finalized before outcomes are explored. Future conservation impact evaluations could be improved by increased planning of evaluations alongside the intervention, better integration of qualitative methods, considering spillover effects at larger spatial scales, and more publication of preanalysis plans. Implementing these improvements will require more serious engagement of conservation scientists, practitioners, and funders to mainstream robust impact evaluations into conservation. We hope this article will improve the quality of evaluations and help direct future research to continue to improve the approaches on offer.
Good access to resources and opportunities is essential for sustainable development. Improving access, especially in rural areas, requires useful measures of current access to the locations where these resources and opportunities are found. Recent work has developed a global map of travel times to cities with more than 50,000 people in the year 2015. However, the provision of resources and opportunities will differ across the broad spectrum of settlements that range from small towns to megacities, and access to this spectrum of settlement sizes should also be measured. Here we present a suite of nine global travel-time accessibility indicators for the year 2015, at approximately one-kilometre spatial resolution, for a range of settlement size classes. We validated the travel-time estimates against journey times from a Google driving directions application across 1,511 2° × 2° tiles representing 47,812 journeys. We observed very good agreement, though our estimates were more frequently shorter than those from the Google application with a median difference of −13.7 minutes and a median percentage difference of −16.9%.
Significance
Protected areas (PAs) are the cornerstone of conservation yet face funding inadequacies that undermine their effectiveness. Using the conservation needs of lions as a proxy for those of wildlife more generally, we compiled a dataset of funding in Africa’s PAs with lions and estimated a minimum target for conserving the species and managing PAs effectively. PAs with lions require 2.4 billion or 2,000/km ² annually, yet receive just 200/km ² (median) annually. Nearly all PAs with lions are inadequately funded; deficits total 2.1 billion. Governments and donors must urgently and significantly invest in PAs to prevent further declines of lions and other wildlife and to capture the economic, social, and environmental benefits that healthy PAs can confer.
An assessment of poaching and wildlife trafficking in the Garamba-Bili-Chinko transboundary landscape of southeastern Central African Republic and northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo. TRAFFIC and IUCN
The creation of the protected areas (PAs) of restricted use dominates conservation policies throughout the world and reflects the western idea of separation between pristine nature and human-modified habitats. However, this conservation strategy has caused the proliferation of environmental conflicts involving territorial rights of traditional peoples and local communities throughout the world. Our study aims to analyze the impacts of the creation of a system of PAs of restricted use on the livelihoods and well-being of traditional communities in the north of Minas Gerais State, in Brazil. We analyzed the conflicts emerging in the study region from the perspective of the environmental justice paradigm. We used the extended-case method, conducting fieldwork to observe and register the movements of social resistance of traditional communities, and interviews with key stakeholders. Between 1970-1990, the Jaíba irrigation project was implemented in the north of Minas Gerais and, to compensate for the huge environmental impact of the project, several PAs of restricted use were created, disregarding the traditional peoples that inhabited the region. As a consequence, these populations were expelled from their territories without compensation or resettlement, causing severe restrictions to their traditional livelihoods and well-being, including access to natural resources such as water, fisheries and timber, and nontimber products, jeopardizing their food security, cultural identity, and social integrity. They initiated the “Movement of the People Cornered by Parks,” lately evolving to “Vazanteiros in Movement,” incorporating elements of the environmental arena to politically dispute alternative conservation projects. Sustainable development policies that incorporate the “economy of repair,” expressed as environmental compensation strategies, are intrinsically contradictory and inappropriate from the perspective of environmental justice. Inclusive conservation planning must account for historical, social, and cultural contexts of the affected region and prioritize the preservation of rights and well-being of local communities.
We assess progress toward the protection of 50% of the terrestrial biosphere to address the species-extinction crisis and conserve a global ecological heritage for future generations. Using a map of Earth's 846 terrestrial ecoregions, we show that 98 ecoregions (12%) exceed Half Protected; 313 ecoregions (37%) fall short of Half Protected but have sufficient unaltered habitat remaining to reach the target; and 207 ecoregions (24%) are in peril, where an average of only 4% of natural habitat remains. We propose a Global Deal for Nature—a companion to the Paris Climate Deal—to promote increased habitat protection and restoration, national-and ecoregion-scale conservation strategies, and the empowerment of indigenous peoples to protect their sovereign lands. The goal of such an accord would be to protect half the terrestrial realm by 2050 to halt the extinction crisis while sustaining human livelihoods.
Access to high quality spatial data raises fundamental questions about how to select the appropriate scale and unit of analysis. Studies that evaluate the impact of conservation programs have used multiple scales and areal units: from 5x5 km grids; to 30m pixels; to irregular units based on land uses or political boundaries. These choices affect the estimate of program impact. The bias associated with scale and unit selection is a part of a well-known dilemma called the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP). We introduce this dilemma to the literature on impact evaluation and then explore the tradeoffs made when choosing different areal units. To illustrate the consequences of the MAUP, we begin by examining the effect of scale selection when evaluating a protected area in Mexico using real data. We then develop a Monte Carlo experiment that simulates a conservation intervention. We find that estimates of treatment effects and variable coefficients are only accurate under restrictive circumstances. Under more realistic conditions, we find biased estimates associated with scale choices that are both too large or too small relative to the data generating process or decision unit. In our context, the MAUP may reflect an errors in variables problem, where imprecise measures of the independent variables will bias the coefficient estimates toward zero. This problem may be pronounced at small scales of analysis. Aggregation may reduce this bias for continuous variables, but aggregation exacerbates bias when using a discrete measure of treatment. While we do not find a solution to these issues, even though treatment effects are generally underestimated. We conclude with suggestions on how researchers might navigate their choice of scale and aerial unit when evaluating conservation policies.
The Climate Hazards group Infrared Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS) dataset builds on previous approaches to ‘smart’ interpolation techniques and high resolution, long period of record precipitation estimates based on infrared Cold Cloud Duration (CCD) observations. The algorithm i) is built around a 0.05° climatology that incorporates satellite information to represent sparsely gauged locations, ii) incorporates daily, pentadal, and monthly 1981-present 0.05° CCD-based precipitation estimates, iii) blends station data to produce a preliminary information product with a latency of about 2 days and a final product with an average latency of about 3 weeks, and iv) uses a novel blending procedure incorporating the spatial correlation structure of CCD-estimates to assign interpolation weights. We present the CHIRPS algorithm, global and regional validation results, and show how CHIRPS can be used to quantify the hydrologic impacts of decreasing precipitation and rising air temperatures in the Greater Horn of Africa. Using the Variable Infiltration Capacity model, we show that CHIRPS can support effective hydrologic forecasts and trend analyses in southeastern Ethiopia.
Governments recently adopted new global targets to halt and reverse the loss of biodiversity. It is therefore crucial to understand the outcomes of conservation actions. We conducted a global meta-analysis of 186 studies (including 665 trials) that measured biodiversity over time and compared outcomes under conservation action with a suitable counterfactual of no action. We find that in two-thirds of cases, conservation either improved the state of biodiversity or at least slowed declines. Specifically, we find that interventions targeted at species and ecosystems, such as invasive species control, habitat loss reduction and restoration, protected areas, and sustainable management, are highly effective and have large effect sizes. This provides the strongest evidence to date that conservation actions are successful but require transformational scaling up to meet global targets.
We study treatment-effect estimation using panel data. The treatment may be non-binary, non-absorbing, and the outcome may be affected by treatment lags. We make a parallel-trends assumption, and propose event-study estimators of the effect of being exposed to a weakly higher treatment dose for ℓ. periods. We also propose normalized estimators, that estimate a weighted average of the effects of the current treatment and its lags. We also analyze commonly-used two-way-fixed-effects regressions. Unlike our estimators, they can be biased in the presence of heterogeneous treatment effects. A local-projection version of those regressions is biased even with homogeneous effects.
This paper summarizes what is known about the impact of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in the three sectors where they have been used intensively: infrastructure (energy, transport, water and sanitation, and telecommunications), education, and health. It lays out the main elements of economic theory relevant to analyzing the trade-off between PPPs and the public provision of complex projects. It places PPPs within a historical perspective. It reviews empirical evaluations of the effectiveness of PPPs and, whenever possible, the implications for social outcomes. Finally, it draws conclusions on cross-cutting issues that influence the efficiency of PPPs, from contract design and regulation to renegotiations and institutional issues. The paper straightens out and qualifies the record of existing evidence and signals some of the main areas and topics for future fruitful research. (JEL D04, H54, I11, I21, L33)
A common strategy to counteract global biodiversity loss is sustainable management of protected areas. However, as protection of nature sometimes conflicts with human livelihoods and involves stakeholders with different interests, conservation conflict is globally on the rise. These conflicts can hamper sustainable development, social equity and effective biodiversity conservation. Understanding perceptions of different stakeholders and mapping discourses is key in this respect. In this study, we investigated conservation conflict in the Pendjari National Park in Benin, West Africa. The conservation conflict was fueled in part by a shift from state-led collaborative management to a public-private partnership. Pendjari is the largest remaining savannah ecosystem in West Africa and home to several threatened megafauna species. Using Q methodology, we identified two distinct discourses among stakeholders. The first discourse, supported mainly by formally educated people with non-agricultural jobs, focuses on the limitation of anthropogenic activities in favor of biodiversity conservation. The second discourse is mostly supported by people with a lower education level and a direct dependency on the land. They agree there is a need for conservation but even more so for viable alternatives to ensure people's livelihoods. The identification of these discourses and their underlying drivers can be included into future decision-making processes and management of the Pendjari National Park.
Conservation programmes of recent decades aimed to adopt an approach that addresses biodiversity conservation goals through socio-economic tools and to better integrate the human dimension into biodiversity conservation. Yet, to analyse this complex conservation-development nexus, studying conservation perceptions of local populations are crucial to understand the dynamics and establish sound conservation-development management policies. Therefore, we aim to identify the key determinants of conservation perceptions in the Central African context in order to implement successful local and regional conservation strategies. Conservation perceptions of two national parks’ adjacent populations were examined through household surveys, adapted from the Poverty-Environment Network (PEN), in Rwanda and Republic of Congo. Outcomes were statistically analysed to identify the most important factors affecting perceptions about conservation measures. Using a nonlinear canonical correlation analysis, we found that economic factors (e.g. salary, savings, cattle size) and education positively affect conservation perceptions while ecosystem-dependent factors such as hunting and gathering other non-timber forest products have negative effects. Though, we identified a significant difference between two sites, whereby, conservation perceptions are negatively affected by bushmeat factors in Republic of Congo, and NTFP in Rwanda. In addition, our study showed that resource use and rights play a major role in communities’ perceptions and that revenue-sharing projects have a key impact on the perceptions. To ensure sound conservation and development measures, revenue-sharing schemes focusing on material benefits and alternative livelihoods may provide the best approach if participation of communities in the decision-making process is ensured. In this optic, improving education levels will raise awareness and positive perceptions of conservation measures. Development measures should target poor households as they appear to be more conservation-adverse. We conclude that in depth research on local demands for ecosystem products, relationships among stakeholders and community decision power are crucial factors to understand the complexity of the conservation-development nexus.
Africa's Protected Area (PA) estate includes some of the world's most iconic wildlife and wildlands and preserves ecosystem services upon which people depend. However, Africa's PAs are facing a growing array of threats resulting in significant degradation, factors compounded by chronic funding shortages. In this opinion piece, drawing from the available literature and collective experience of the author group, we look at the potential for collaborative management partnerships (CMPs) between state wildlife agencies and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to attract investment and technical capacity to improve PA performance. The three main CMP models—financial and technical support, co-management, and delegated management—yield median funding that is 1.5, 2.6 and 14.6 times greater than baseline state budgets for PA management. However, several factors limit the scaling of CMPs in Africa. Significant barriers include concerns from African governments, such as reluctance to engage in co-management and delegated CMPs due to perceptions that such partnerships may represent an admission of failure, result in a loss of revenues for government, or undermine sovereignty. There are also constraints associated with NGOs and donors that limit scaling of CMPs. We discuss how these issues might be addressed and propose a reframing of the discourse around CMPs. Specifically, we recommend that governments view CMPs as strategic, proactive tools that will enable them to unlock funding, investment and expertise for conservation and make recommendations to attract such investment. Preliminary evidence and the experience of the author group suggests that expanding CMPs for PAs could; improve PA management; share the costs of protecting Africa's PAs with the global community; build local capacity; help protect the ecosystem services upon which Africa's economies depend; stimulate rural development; and benefit local communities.
To estimate the dynamic effects of an absorbing treatment, researchers often use two-way fixed effects regressions that include leads and lags of the treatment. We show that in settings with variation in treatment timing across units, the coefficient on a given lead or lag can be contaminated by effects from other periods, and apparent pretrends can arise solely from treatment effects heterogeneity. We propose an alternative estimator that is free of contamination, and illustrate the relative shortcomings of two-way fixed effects regressions with leads and lags through an empirical application.
One-sixth of the global terrestrial surface now falls within protected areas (PAs), making it essential to understand how far they mitigate the increasing pressures on nature which characterize the Anthropocene. In by far the largest analysis of this question to date and not restricted to forested PAs, we compiled data from 12,315 PAs across 152 countries to investigate their ability to reduce human pressure and how this varies with socioeconomic and management circumstances. While many PAs show positive outcomes, strikingly we find that compared with matched unprotected areas, PAs have on average not reduced a compound index of pressure change over the past 15 y. Moreover, in tropical regions average pressure change from cropland conversion has increased inside PAs even more than in matched unprotected areas. However, our results also confirm previous studies restricted to forest PAs, where pressures are increasing, but less than in counterfactual areas. Our results also show that countries with high national-level development scores have experienced lower rates of pressure increase over the past 15 y within their PAs compared with a matched outside area. Our results caution against the rapid establishment of new PAs without simultaneously addressing the conditions needed to enable their success.
Protected areas (PAs) are a cornerstone of conservation policy. While evidence shows that, overall, PAs have contributed to preserving forests, their impact varies greatly depending on the institutional context. This paper provides new evidence on the mechanisms through which local institutions shape the effectiveness of PAs. We use high-resolution satellite imagery of deforestation and illicit activities in Colombia and spatial regression discontinuity methods to estimate the causal effect of PAs in different institutional contexts. Our main results indicate that PAs significantly reduce deforestation, with larger effects for collective lands than national (strict-use) PAs, and no impact for regional (multiple-use) PAs. However, national PAs are only effective near human settlements, in municipalities that provide more public goods and are less violent. In remote areas, national PAs are particularly vulnerable to the expansion of coca crops and gold mining. In contrast, collective lands reduce coca crops and avoid deforestation in remote, less developed regions. These results highlight the extent to which natural PAs rely on the institutional capacity of the national and local governments, while collective lands protect forests even when state presence is weak.
Significance
As protected areas (PAs) are a leading conservation strategy, understanding what conditions affect their impacts is critical. We expect different government agencies to vary in their PA locations and management. We offer a test of whether PA impacts vary across agencies. For the Brazilian Amazon, we compare deforestation impacts for 3 types of agencies: federal indigenous lands, federal PAs, and state PAs. Across states within the “arc of deforestation,” internal PA impacts are higher for indigenous lands and federal PAs than for state PAs. In Pará State, federal agencies also have spillover impacts: Indigenous lands raise deforestation nearby, and federal PAs lower deforestation nearby. Agencies’ objectives and capacities affect impacts, and thereby are important considerations for implementing international environmental agreements.
Differences-in-differences evaluates the effect of a treatment. In its basic version, a “control group” is untreated at two dates, whereas a “treatment group” becomes fully treated at the second date. However, in many applications of this method, the treatment rate increases more only in the treatment group. In such fuzzy designs, de Chaisemartin and D’Haultfœuille (2018b, Review of Economic Studies 85: 999–1028) propose various estimands that identify local average and quantile treatment effects under different assumptions. They also propose estimands that can be used in applications with a nonbinary treatment, multiple periods, and groups and covariates. In this article, we present the command fuzzydid, which computes the various corresponding estimators. We illustrate the use of the command by revisiting Gentzkow, Shapiro, and Sinkinson (2011, American Economic Review 101: 2980–3018).
This article investigates whether protected areas are efficient instruments against deforestation in the Brazilian Amazônia. A Dynamic Spatial Durbin Model taking into account both the location bias and the spatial spillover effects between municipalities allows to assess the impact of the different types of protected areas (integral protected areas, sustainable protected areas and indigenous lands) on deforestation. We show that deforestation decisions are strategic complements. The econometric results differ according to the type of protected area. It is shown that: i) integral protected areas and indigenous lands allow for reducing deforestation; ii) sustainable use areas do not help to reduce deforestation; and iii) the spillover effects generated by integral protected areas and indigenous lands lead a reduction in deforestation in their vicinity. A 10% increase in the surface area of integral protected areas (indigenous lands) allows an estimated 9.32 sq. km (10.08 sq. km) of avoided deforestation.
In the evaluation of public programs, experimental designs are rare. Researchers instead rely on observational designs. Observational designs that use panel data are widely portrayed as superior to time-series or cross-sectional designs because they provide opportunities to control for observable and unobservable variables correlated with outcomes and exposure to a program. The most popular panel data evaluation designs use linear, fixed-effects estimators with additive individual and time effects. To assess the ability of observational designs to replicate results from experimental designs, scholars use design replications. No such replications have assessed popular, fixed-effects panel data models that exploit repeated observations before and after treatment assignment. We implement such a study using, as a benchmark, results from a randomized environmental program that included effective and ineffective treatments. The popular linear, fixed-effects estimator fails to generate impact estimates or statistical inferences similar to the experimental estimator. Applying common flexible model specifications or trimming procedures also fail to yield accurate estimates or inferences. However, following best practices for selecting a nonexperimental comparison group and combining matching methods with panel data estimators, we replicate the experimental benchmarks. We demonstrate how the combination of panel and matching methods mitigates common concerns about specifying the correct functional form, the nature of treatment effect heterogeneity, and the way in which time enters the model. Our results are consistent with recent claims that design trumps methods in estimating treatment effects and that combining designs is more likely to approximate a randomized controlled trial than applying a single design.