Protected areas reduced poverty in Costa Rica and Thailand

Andam, Kwaw S.; Ferraro, Paul J.; Sims, Katharine R. E.; Healy, Andrew; Holland, Margaret B.

doi:10.1073/pnas.0914177107

Cited by 400 publications

(396 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…reducing deforestation) has been the objective of a variety of tenure reforms, which have often been costly and have taken long periods of time to yield results. Evidence of the success of these programs is limited, with some studies finding success in tenure devolution programs [12] and others finding they may not have had their desired effects [13]. Property rights schemes inappropriate to particular resources or social-ecological context may cause tenure insecurity and other undesired outcomes as assessed through analysis of local conflict, policy enforcement, displacement, or incidence of squatting [14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What are the environmental impacts of property rights regimes in forests, fisheries and rangelands?

et al. 2017

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Background: Property rights to natural resources comprise a major policy instrument in efforts to advance sustainable resource use and conservation. Debate over the relative effectiveness of different property rights regimes in reaching these goals remains controversial. A large, diverse, and rapidly growing body of literature investigates the links between property rights regimes and environmental outcomes, but has not synthesized theoretical and policy insights within specific resource systems and especially across resource systems. Methods:We conducted a systematic review following CEE Guidelines in which we collected empirical evidence from the past two decades on the environmental impacts of property rights regimes in fisheries, forests and rangelands in developing countries. We used a bundle of rights approach to assess the impacts of state, private, and community property regimes, as well as mixed regimes and open access conditions. Outcomes were classified as positive, negative, neutral or undetermined. We also collected information on contextual and other factors thought to influence effect of property rights regimes on environmental outcomes. The search covered 90 online databases and three languages, resulting in a total of 34,984 screened titles.Results: This review identified 103 articles consisting of 374 property regime studies: 55% of the studies related to forestry, 31% to fisheries, and 14% to rangelands. The majority of the studies comprised case-control studies but presented limited information on the baseline condition of the resource system. Only 26 studies used before-aftercontrol-impact (BACI) design. We found that property regime comparisons differed across resource domains with, for example, the majority of fisheries studies using comparison to an open access situation while forest and rangeland studies were more mixed in regime comparisons. After critical appraisal of included studies, only 80 studies were accepted for the narrative synthesis. The key contextual factors largely associated with reported positive environmental outcomes across the three resource systems included monitoring and enforcement systems, resource use pressure, and the presence or absence of clear, stable and legitimate rights (i.e. 'positive regime characteristics').

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What are the environmental impacts of property rights regimes in forests, fisheries and rangelands?

et al. 2017

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“…In Thailand, protected areas reduced poverty by about 30% (10). We use data from these studies to explore the heterogeneity of protected areas' impacts.…”

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“…More optimistically, they might push local economies out of poverty traps by providing tourism business opportunities, improved infrastructure, or enhanced supplies of ecosystem services. For example, evidence from Costa Rica and Thailand suggests that protected areas in these two countries have, on average, reduced local poverty (10,11).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Unfortunately, there is little scientific evidence on the nature of this heterogeneity or the potential tradeoffs between environmental and socioeconomic outcomes (3,12). Retrospective causal analysis of the socioeconomic impacts of developing country protected areas is limited (6,10,11,13,14). Only the work in Thailand and Costa Rica (10,11,13) also included information on environmental outcomes.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Retrospective causal analysis of the socioeconomic impacts of developing country protected areas is limited (6,10,11,13,14). Only the work in Thailand and Costa Rica (10,11,13) also included information on environmental outcomes. However, those previous studies do not include sufficiently detailed analysis of heterogeneity in impacts to assess potential tradeoffs between ecosystem protection and poverty alleviation (15,16).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Conditions associated with protected area success in conservation and poverty reduction

Ferraro

Hanauer²,

Sims³

2011

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

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249

183

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Protected areas are the dominant approach to protecting biodiversity and the supply of ecosystem services. Because these protected areas are often placed in regions with widespread poverty and because they can limit agricultural development and exploitation of natural resources, concerns have been raised about their potential to create or reinforce poverty traps. Previous studies suggest that the protected area systems in Costa Rica and Thailand, on average, reduced deforestation and alleviated poverty. We examine these results in more detail by characterizing the heterogeneity of responses to protection conditional on observable characteristics. We find no evidence that protected areas trap historically poorer areas in poverty. In fact, we find that poorer areas at baseline seem to have the greatest levels of poverty reduction as a result of protection. However, we do find that the spatial characteristics associated with the most poverty alleviation are not necessarily the characteristics associated with the most avoided deforestation. We show how an understanding of these spatially heterogeneous responses to protection can be used to generate suitability maps that identify locations in which both environmental and poverty alleviation goals are most likely to be achieved.

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Protected Areas – What People Say about Well‐Being

Holmes

Brockington

2012

Biodiversity Conservation and Poverty Alleviation: Exploring the Evidence for a Link

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Protected areas reduced poverty in Costa Rica and Thailand

Cited by 400 publications

References 43 publications

What are the environmental impacts of property rights regimes in forests, fisheries and rangelands?

What are the environmental impacts of property rights regimes in forests, fisheries and rangelands?

Conditions associated with protected area success in conservation and poverty reduction

Protected Areas – What People Say about Well‐Being

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