Evaluating the impacts of protected areas on human well-being across the developing world

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Abstract

Protected areas positively affect several aspects of human well-being across the developing world.

Abstract

Protected areas (PAs) are fundamental for biodiversity conservation, yet their impacts on nearby residents are contested. We synthesized environmental and socioeconomic conditions of >87,000 children in >60,000 households situated either near or far from >600 PAs within 34 developing countries. We used quasi-experimental hierarchical regression to isolate the impact of living near a PA on several aspects of human well-being. Households near PAs with tourism also had higher wealth levels (by 17%) and a lower likelihood of poverty (by 16%) than similar households living far from PAs. Children under 5 years old living near multiple-use PAs with tourism also had higher height-for-age scores (by 10%) and were less likely to be stunted (by 13%) than similar children living far from PAs. For the largest and most comprehensive socioeconomic-environmental dataset yet assembled, we found no evidence of negative PA impacts and consistent statistical evidence to suggest PAs can positively affect human well-being.

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Policy: Map the interactions between Sustainable Development Goals.

Måns Nilsson, Dave Griggs, Martin Visbeck (2016)

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Biodiversity conservation and the eradication of poverty.

William M Adams, Ros Aveling, Dan Brockington … (2004)

It is widely accepted that biodiversity loss and poverty are linked problems and that conservation and poverty reduction should be tackled together. However, success with integrated strategies is elusive. There is sharp debate about the social impacts of conservation programs and the success of community-based approaches to conservation. Clear conceptual frameworks are needed if policies in these two areas are to be combined. We review the links between poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation and present a conceptual typology of these relationships.

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High and Far: Biases in the Location of Protected Areas

Lucas Joppa, Alexander Pfaff (2009)

Background About an eighth of the earth's land surface is in protected areas (hereafter “PAs”), most created during the 20th century. Natural landscapes are critical for species persistence and PAs can play a major role in conservation and in climate policy. Such contributions may be harder than expected to implement if new PAs are constrained to the same kinds of locations that PAs currently occupy. Methodology/Principal Findings Quantitatively extending the perception that PAs occupy “rock and ice”, we show that across 147 nations PA networks are biased towards places that are unlikely to face land conversion pressures even in the absence of protection. We test each country's PA network for bias in elevation, slope, distances to roads and cities, and suitability for agriculture. Further, within each country's set of PAs, we also ask if the level of protection is biased in these ways. We find that the significant majority of national PA networks are biased to higher elevations, steeper slopes and greater distances to roads and cities. Also, within a country, PAs with higher protection status are more biased than are the PAs with lower protection statuses. Conclusions/Significance In sum, PAs are biased towards where they can least prevent land conversion (even if they offer perfect protection). These globally comprehensive results extend findings from nation-level analyses. They imply that siting rules such as the Convention on Biological Diversity's 2010 Target [to protect 10% of all ecoregions] might raise PA impacts if applied at the country level. In light of the potential for global carbon-based payments for avoided deforestation or REDD, these results suggest that attention to threat could improve outcomes from the creation and management of PAs.

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Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Sci Adv

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Sci Adv

Journal ID (publisher-id): SciAdv

Journal ID (hwp): advances

Title: Science Advances

Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science

ISSN (Electronic): 2375-2548

Publication date Collection: April 2019

Publication date (Electronic): 03 April 2019

Volume: 5

Issue: 4

Electronic Location Identifier: eaav3006

Affiliations

[1 ]WWF-US, Washington, DC, USA.

[2 ]Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

[3 ]Anthropology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA.

[4 ]Conservation International, Washington, DC, USA.

[5 ]Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.

[6 ]Duke Clinical Research Institute, Durham, NC, USA.

[7 ]Harvard School of Public Health, Cambridge, MA, USA.

[8 ]Environmental Defense Fund, Washington, DC, USA.

[9 ]United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Washington, DC, USA.

[10 ]Department of Geography, King’s College London, London, UK.

[11 ]Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA.

Author notes

[* ]Corresponding author. Email: robin.naidoo@ 123456wwfus.org

[†]

Disclaimer: The findings and interpretations in this paper do not necessarily reflect the view of the US Agency for International Development, the US Department of Agriculture, or the United States government.

Author information

R. Naidoo http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3872-0962

D. Gerkey http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3254-649X

D. Hole http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9117-2956

A. Pfaff http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6886-6906

A. M. Ellis http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4980-4523

C. D. Golden http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2258-7493

K. Johnson http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7609-802X

T. H. Ricketts http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9688-7977

B. Fisher http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6560-9093

Article

Publisher ID: aav3006

DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aav3006

PMC ID: 6447379

PubMed ID: 30949578

SO-VID: 59aaf173-5665-447e-8799-2e078de961b0

Copyright © Copyright © 2019 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).

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This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.

History

Date received : 03 September 2018

Date accepted : 08 February 2019

Funding

Funded by: National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC);

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Copyeditor Jeanelle Ebreo

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Evaluating the impacts of protected areas on human well-being across the developing world

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Most cited references 36

Policy: Map the interactions between Sustainable Development Goals.

Biodiversity conservation and the eradication of poverty.

High and Far: Biases in the Location of Protected Areas

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