BackgroundWhile the importance of conserving ecosystems for sustainable development is widely recognized, it is increasingly evident that despite delivering global benefits, conservation often comes at local cost. Protected areas funded by multilateral lenders have explicit commitments to ensure that those negatively affected are adequately compensated. We make the first comparison of the magnitude and distribution of the local costs of a protected area with the magnitude and distribution of the compensation provided under the World Bank social safeguard policies (Performance Standard 5).MethodsIn the Ankeniheny-Zahamena Corridor (a new protected area and REDD+ pilot project in eastern Madagascar), we used choice experiments to estimate local opportunity costs (n = 453) which we annualized using a range of conservative assumptions concerning discount rates. Detailed surveys covering farm inputs and outputs as well as off-farm income (n = 102) allowed us to explore these opportunity costs as a proportion of local incomes. Intensive review of publically available documents provided estimates of the number of households that received safeguard compensation and the amount spent per household. We carried out a contingent valuation exercise with beneficiaries of this compensation two years after the micro-development projects were implemented (n = 62) to estimate their value as perceived by beneficiaries.ResultsConservation restrictions result in very significant costs to forest communities. The median net present value of the opportunity cost across households in all sites was US$2,375. When annualized, these costs represent 27–84% of total annual income for median-income households; significantly higher proportionally for poorer households. Although some households have received compensation, we conservatively estimate that more than 50% of eligible households (3,020 households) have not. Given the magnitude of compensation (based both on amount spent and valuation by recipients two years after the compensation was distributed) relative to costs, we argue that no one was fully compensated. Achieving full compensation will require an order of magnitude more than was spent but we suggest that this should be affordable given the global value of forest conservation.DiscussionBy analyzing in unprecedented depth both the local costs of conservation, and the compensation distributed under donor policies, we demonstrate that despite well-intentioned policies, some of the poorest people on the planet are still bearing the cost of forest conservation. Unless significant extra funding is provided by the global beneficiaries of conservation, donors’ social safeguarding requirements will not be met, and forest conservation in developing countries will jeopardize, rather than contribute to, sustainable development goals.

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Human migration is often considered an important driver of land use change and a threat to protected area integrity, but the reasons for in‐migration, the effectiveness of conservation restrictions at stemming migration, and the extent to which migrants disproportionately contribute to land use change has been poorly studied, especially at fine spatial scales. Using a case study in eastern Madagascar (603 household surveys, mapping agricultural land for a subset of 167 households, and 49 focus group discussions and key informant interviews), we explore the patterns and drivers of migration within the lifetime of those currently alive. We investigate how this influences forest conversion on the border of established protected areas and sites without a history of conservation restrictions. We show that in‐migration is driven, especially in sites with high migration, by access to land. There is a much higher proportion of migrant households at sites without a long history of conservation restrictions than around long‐established protected areas, and migrants tend to be more educated and live closer to the forest edge than non‐migrants. Our evidence supports the engulfment model (an active forest frontier later becoming a protected area); there is no evidence that protected areas have attracted migrants. Where there is a perceived open forest frontier, people move to the forest but these migrants are no more likely than local people to clear land (i.e., migrants are not “exceptional resource degraders”). In some parts of the tropics, out‐migration from rural areas is resulting in forest regrowth; such a forest transition is unlikely to occur in Madagascar for some time. Those seeking to manage protected areas at the forest frontier will therefore need to prevent further colonisation; supporting tenure security for existing residents is likely to be an important step.

Nepal's greater one-horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) faces serious threats from poaching. Poaching of these rhinos is a complex problem, influenced by such diverse factors as the price of rhino horn on the international market, local socioeconomic factors, and the population dynamics of the species. Few studies have attempted to address this complexity. In this study, we model the poaching and population dynamics of the one-horned rhinoceros within an integrated framework of ecological, socioeconomic, political, and legal dimensions. The poaching model for rhinos in Royal Chitwan National Park (RCNP) in Nepal is combined with the population model for the species within a simulation framework and explored under various alternative policy scenarios with differing external socioeconomic and political conditions as well as internal policy response. We predict that, under the current (2003-2005) rhino conservation strategy, poaching would continue to be a major threat to the rhino population in RCNP. Furthermore, the internal policy response must begin to consider external factors such as socioeconomic conditions within the park buffer zone to be more effective in the long run. Finally, we find that, for long-run control, antipoaching policies should be directed at increasing the opportunity costs of poaching by creating better alternative economic opportunities, and at antipoaching enforcement.