Who bears the cost of forest conservation?

Abstract

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.

Forest Conservation: A Potential Nutrition-Sensitive Intervention in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

“…Different levels of restrictions on use of forest resources by different types of forest conservation interventions can block, to a various degree, some of the mechanisms through which forests affect nutritional status. These restrictions, for example, include limited access to forest food products and non-food products important for income (Poudyal et al, 2018) and therefore may negatively affect nutritional status. On the other hand, forest conservation interventions can also generate benefits through improved ecosystem services, tourism and infrastructure development (Andam et al, 2010).…”

Capabilities Under Telecoupling: Human Well-Being Between Cash Crops and Protected Areas in North-Eastern Madagascar

“…In these villages, the closest to the respective PAs, populations rely more strongly on shifting cultivation for subsistence rice production and less on cash crop production, suggesting a lack of alternative non-forest-dependent livelihoods, and potentially a stronger impact of PA restrictions compared to Morafeno and Mahalevona. This was recently found for other conservation interventions in Eastern Madagascar (Rasolofoson et al, 2018), where it was also shown that a proportionally larger burden was borne by poorer populations due to restrictions in access to forest land (Poudyal et al, 2018). Restrictions imposed by the PAs might also have an impact on access to bushmeat for households relying on this source of protein, an issue brought up in one of the FGDs and also found in other African settings (Nguiffo, 2003).…”

“…Many of these new PAs are largely designed, implemented, and managed by international conservation non-governmental organizations (NGOs). While PAs are showing some success in preventing forest loss in the country (Eklund et al, 2016), forest conservation mostly benefits the global community, with local populations incurring large costs (Neudert et al, 2016;Poudyal et al, 2018). In terms of a more comprehensive perspective on well-being, research revealed that community forest management, and strict conservation measures may have a similar magnitude of influence on local subjective well-being, although they may have different effects on individual well-being domains such as livelihood activities or health (Rasolofoson et al, 2018).…”

The Amazonia Third Way Initiative: The Role of Technology to Unveil the Potential of a Novel Tropical Biodiversity-Based Economy

“…Imposing strict conservation to protect large swathes of the forest has had clear successes over the last decades in the Amazon-about 50% of the Amazon forest is under some kind of protection. However, that in itself does not guarantee protection forever for tropical forests and eventually may affect the livelihoods of local population as is the case documented for Madagascar [69] who may bear a high cost for forest conservation.…”