What influences the effectiveness of forest conservation interventions in tropical regions? A systematic review

Recent decades have witnessed a proliferation of forest conservation interventions in tropical developing countries. Impact evaluations most frequently report statistically significant but modest conservation results. As tropical deforestation has persisted, how to increase the effectiveness of interventions is an important empirical question. In this article, we reviewed the English-language, peer-reviewed literature about the heterogeneous impacts of forest conservation interventions. Our goal was to synthesize the experimental and quasi-experimental evidence about how two main factors shaped forest conservation outcomes: 1) the design and implementation characteristics that create heterogeneous treatments; and 2) the characteristics of the context that act as moderators of treatment effects. After screening 1,486 studies, we selected 47 papers conducting robust heterogeneity analysis, showing an emerging trend in the literature. We found interventions generally achieve greater conservation results where forests are under higher deforestation pressure or risk. This implies the protection of forests that are most under threat should be prioritized. As the number of heterogenous assessments is limited, it is still difficult to draw other valid lessons about how and under what conditions interventions may be more effective. We thus renew the calls for more rigorous evaluations of forest conservation interventions that go beyond estimating average effects.

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