Estimating the Impacts of Bolivia’s Protected Areas on Poverty

Canavire‐Bacarreza, Gustavo; Hanauer, Merlin M.

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2012.06.011

Cited by 96 publications

(91 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Four studies reported poverty-related measures (human development measure outcomes) as either poverty index or poverty headcount. All four studies found significant beneficial impacts of protected areas on poverty alleviation in Costa Rica [67], Thailand [66,67] and Bolivia [68]. The study by Andam et al [67] involved subsequent in-depth reanalysis in two later publications [8,69].…”

Section: Livelihood Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human well-being impacts of terrestrial protected areas

et al. 2013

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Background: Establishing Protected Areas (PAs) is among the most common conservation interventions. Protecting areas from the threats posed by human activity will by definition inhibit some human actions. However, adverse impacts could be balanced by maintaining ecosystem services or introducing new livelihood options. Consequently there is an ongoing debate on whether the net impact of PAs on human well-being at local or regional scales is positive or negative. We report here on a systematic review of evidence for impacts on human well-being arising from the establishment and maintenance of terrestrial PAs. Methods: Following an a priori protocol, systematic searches were conducted for evidence of impacts of PAs post 1992. After article title screening, the review was divided into two separate processes; a qualitative synthesis of explanations and meaning of impact and a review of quantitative evidence of impact. Abstracts and full texts were assessed using inclusion criteria and conceptual models of potential impacts. Relevant studies were critically appraised and data extracted and sorted according to type of impact reported. No quantitative synthesis was possible with the evidence available. Two narrative syntheses were produced and their outputs compared in a metasynthesis.

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Section: Livelihood Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human well-being impacts of terrestrial protected areas

et al. 2013

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“…Most studies tend to either focus on the impacts of protected areas on socioeconomic outcomes (e.g. [5][6][7][8]) or environmental outcomes (e.g. [9 -13]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In doing so, we build from two previous studies which found that Bolivia's protected areas avoided a modest amount of deforestation [18] and reduced poverty in surrounding communities [6]. 1 The motivation to move beyond the average impacts estimated in these previous studies is twofold.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implications of heterogeneous impacts of protected areas on deforestation and poverty

Hanauer

Canavire‐Bacarreza

2015

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Protected areas are a popular policy instrument in the global fight against loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, the effectiveness of protected areas in preventing deforestation, and their impacts on poverty, are not well understood. Recent studies have found that Bolivia's protected-area system, on average, reduced deforestation and poverty. We implement several non-parametric and semi-parametric econometric estimators to characterize the heterogeneity in Bolivia's protected-area impacts on joint deforestation and poverty outcomes across a number of socioeconomic and biophysical moderators. Like previous studies from Costa Rica and Thailand, we find that Bolivia's protected areas are not associated with poverty traps. Our results also indicate that protection did not have a differential impact on indigenous populations. However, results from new multidimensional non-parametric estimators provide evidence that the biophysical characteristics associated with the greatest avoided deforestation are the characteristics associated with the potential for poverty exacerbation from protection. We demonstrate that these results would not be identified using the methods implemented in previous studies. Thus, this study provides valuable practical information on the impacts of Bolivia's protected areas for conservation practitioners and demonstrates methods that are likely to be valuable to researchers interested in better understanding the heterogeneity in conservation impacts.

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“…12 and 13). Recent studies have estimated that protected areas reduced poverty in neighboring communities in Bolivia, Costa Rica, and Thailand (12,14,15). These studies, however, do not elucidate the specific mechanisms through which the protected areas reduced poverty.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying causal mechanisms to determine how protected areas affect poverty through changes in ecosystem services and infrastructure

Ferraro

Hanauer

2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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252

170

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To develop effective environmental policies, we must understand the mechanisms through which the policies affect social and environmental outcomes. Unfortunately, empirical evidence about these mechanisms is limited, and little guidance for quantifying them exists. We develop an approach to quantifying the mechanisms through which protected areas affect poverty. We focus on three mechanisms: changes in tourism and recreational services; changes in infrastructure in the form of road networks, health clinics, and schools; and changes in regulating and provisioning ecosystem services and foregone production activities that arise from landuse restrictions. The contributions of ecotourism and other ecosystem services to poverty alleviation in the context of a real environmental program have not yet been empirically estimated. Nearly two-thirds of the poverty reduction associated with the establishment of Costa Rican protected areas is causally attributable to opportunities afforded by tourism. Although protected areas reduced deforestation and increased regrowth, these land cover changes neither reduced nor exacerbated poverty, on average. Protected areas did not, on average, affect our measures of infrastructure and thus did not contribute to poverty reduction through this mechanism. We attribute the remaining poverty reduction to unobserved dimensions of our mechanisms or to other mechanisms. Our study empirically estimates previously unidentified contributions of ecotourism and other ecosystem services to poverty alleviation in the context of a real environmental program. We demonstrate that, with existing data and appropriate empirical methods, conservation scientists and policymakers can begin to elucidate the mechanisms through which ecosystem conservation programs affect human welfare.parks | mediator | impact evaluation | quasi-experimental | matching

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Estimating the Impacts of Bolivia’s Protected Areas on Poverty

Cited by 96 publications

References 31 publications

Human well-being impacts of terrestrial protected areas

Human well-being impacts of terrestrial protected areas

Implications of heterogeneous impacts of protected areas on deforestation and poverty

Quantifying causal mechanisms to determine how protected areas affect poverty through changes in ecosystem services and infrastructure

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