Aim: The establishment of protected areas is among the most widespread responses to mitigate species loss. Although protected areas are often assumed to have conservation benefits, negative impacts have also been documented. One potential negative outcome is leakage, whereby protected areas displace land-use activities harmful to conservation into adjacent areas. This can undermine protection by accelerating loss of species or skewing judgements of effectiveness. This study assessed the prevalence of deforestation leakage in a pan-tropical and subtropical selection of 120 protected areas. Location: Tropical and subtropical forest regions of America, Africa and Asia. Time period: 2001–2017. Major taxa studied: Threatened species of amphibians, birds and terrestrial mammals. Methods: We used Global Forest Change data to assess the average yearly rate of deforestation in protected areas, protected area buffer zones and statistically matched, unprotected control areas. We calculated and compared irreplaceability of habitat for threatened amphibian, bird and terrestrial mammal species between protected areas and buffer zones. Results: In 55 cases, deforestation rates were higher in buffer zones than in protected and control areas, suggesting a relatively high prevalence of deforestation leakage stemming from protected areas. In 78.2% of documented leakage cases, reduced deforestation in protected areas was not sufficient to offset the amount of deforestation in 10 km buffer zones to a level that would be expected without protection. In 90.9% of leakage cases, the irreplaceability of species in the 10 km buffer zone was greater than that of the protected area, implying a negative impact of leakage on threatened species. Main conclusions: The results suggest that protected areas are generally effective at preventing deforestation within their jurisdiction; however, leakage patterns can undermine conservation success because buffer zones often contain habitat for threatened species. We recommend accounting for the possibility of leakage when designing new protected areas and networks. © 2020 The Authors. Global Ecology and Biogeography published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Tag: deforestation
DriveNet: A methodology for participatory analysis of the causes and causal mechanisms of deforestation and land-use change
DriveNet is an innovative tool that enables such understanding. It was developed by World Agroforestry (now CIFOR-ICRAF) under the project Building concerted Low Emissions Rural Development through Integrated Analysis of the Causes of Deforestation and Land Use Change in Six Regions of Peru (GCF-TF Peru Window A*), implemented in partnership with the Earth Innovation Institute. It showed itself to be a potent methodology that helps policy makers to think in terms of systems: of interconnected processes, causes, and causal mechanisms. In doing so, it makes it possible to identify entry- and leverage-points for effecting real change on the ground.
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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.
Sustained participation in a Payments for Ecosystem Services program reduces deforestation in a Mexican agricultural frontier
Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) provide conditional incentives for forest conservation. PES short-term effects on deforestation are well-documented, but we know less about program effectiveness when participation is sustained over time. Here, we assess the impact of consecutive renewals of PES contracts on deforestation and forest degradation in three municipalities of the Selva Lacandona (Chiapas, Mexico). PES reduced deforestation both after a single 5-year contract and after two consecutive contracts, but the impacts are only detectable in higher deforestation-risk parcels. Enrollment duration increases PES impact in these parcels, which suggests a positive cumulative effect over time. These findings suggest that improved spatial targeting and longer-term enrollment are key enabling factors to improve forest conservation outcomes in agricultural frontiers.
A Tentative Theory of Change to Evaluate Jurisdictional Approaches to Reduced Deforestation
Sub-national jurisdictions are promoted as strategic levels of governance for achieving reduced deforestation objectives. Jurisdictional approaches (JA) emerged as government-led, holistic approaches to forest and land use management across one or more legally defined territories. Despite increasing popularity amongst the science and practitioner communities, there is a lack of robust empirical data documenting their effectiveness in delivering environmental, social and economic outcomes. In this paper, we contend that further clarification of the JA concept would help its evaluation. More specifically, we suggest that current evaluation practices of JA would be strengthened if they were based on a theory of change clarifying the causal linkages between the interventions associated with a given JA and their effects. By integrating select empirical knowledge on JA with a selection of middle-range theories from the literature on collective environmental governance, we design a generic theory of change for JA, which is articulated around two intermediary outcomes, namely the emergence of collaboration and social learning. We also formulate hypotheses regarding the conditions that enable or hinder these collective intermediary outcomes of JAs. We acknowledge that another fundamental challenge for JAs is to remove or block the external contradicting signals that still fundamentally drive deforestation. Thus, JA interventions need to operate not only at the jurisdictional level, but also beyond.
The context of REDD+ in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Drivers, agents and institutions, 2nd edition
DRC has committed to reduce its emissions effectively, efficiently, and equitably from deforestation and degradation (REDD+). The country experiences complex relationships between drivers, agents, and institutions of deforestation nationally. The REDD+ policy arena is influenced by both governmental and non-governmental actors whose number have increased in the policy arena over the years; however, weak coordination among these actors remains an issue. Since 2009, the DRC has announced several reforms relating to land tenure, land-use planning and agricultural policy, to create an institutional environment that motivates the implementation of REDD+ in the DRC. By 2019, none of these reforms had materialized, due to both political changes and a lack of finance, capacity, and political will. Between 2013 and 2019, little progress has been made on REDD+ in the DRC, as a result of conflicting interests among actors both at national and decentralized levels; information asymmetry; elite capture and corruption; and the pre- and post-election situation. To date, the effectiveness of REDD+ activities in the DRC remain unclear, due to the absence of rigorous impact assessment. However, efforts can be observed on the field where there is increased number of participants to forest policy process compared to REDD+ early years; and several ongoing projects are testing policy options within and across levels. If these efforts are sustained, they can contribute in putting in place conditions to achieve REDD+ objectives.
Integrated assessment of deforestation drivers and their alignment with subnational climate change mitigation efforts
Efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and enhancing forest carbon stocks (REDD+) have evolved over the past decade. Early REDD+ programs and local/subnational projects used various interventions (i.e. enabling measures, disincentives and incentives), implemented by government, the commercial and non-commercial private sector, but are currently understudied vis-à-vis their effectiveness to address site-specific drivers of deforestation and forest degradation (DD). We assess how well REDD+ interventions addressed DD at five project sites in Peru (1), Brazil (1), Vietnam (1) and Indonesia (2). Our study design includes an integrated assessment of remotely sensed, spatially modelled, and locally reported drivers. First, we observe follow-up land use from high resolution imagery as proxy for direct deforestation drivers. Second, spatial Random Forest modelling of DD drivers allows for influence quantification of topographic, climatic and proximity variables at each site. Third, we report direct and indirect DD drivers from pre-intervention surveys and semi-structured interviews with five REDD+ implementers, 40 villages and 1200 households. Data gathered included perceived changes in forest cover and quality, and their causes. We found general agreement between observed, modelled and reported local DD drivers, yet some were inadequately addressed by interventions. Intra-site differences in drivers underscores the importance of analysing micro-level DD drivers. Our interdisciplinary approach reveals the complexities of local direct and indirect DD drivers, and the complementarity of remotely sensed, spatially modelled and locally reported methods for driver identification. A better understanding of the alignment between DD drivers and REDD+ interventions is vital for practitioners and policy makers to enhance the effectiveness, efficiency, equity and co-benefits of REDD+ at the local level.
Spatial distribution of degradation and deforestation of palm swamp peatlands and associated carbon emissions in the Peruvian Amazon
The vast peat deposits in the Peruvian Amazon are crucial to the global climate. Palm swamp, the most extensive regional peatland ecosystem faces different threats, including deforestation and degradation due to felling of the dominant palm Mauritia flexuosa for fruit harvesting. While these activities convert this natural C sink into a source, the distribution of degradation and deforestation in this ecosystem and related C emissions remain unstudied. We used remote sensing data from Landsat, ALOS-PALSAR, and NASA’s GEDI spaceborne LiDAR-derived products to map palm swamp degradation and deforestation within a 28 Mha area of the lowland Peruvian Amazon in 1990–2007 and 2007–2018. We combined this information with a regional peat map, C stock density data and peat emission factors to determine (1) peatland C stocks of peat-forming ecosystems (palm swamp, herbaceous swamp, pole forest), and (2) areas of palm swamp peatland degradation and deforestation and associated C emissions. In the 6.9 ± 0.1 Mha of predicted peat-forming ecosystems within the larger 28 Mha study area, 73% overlaid peat (5.1 ± 0.9 Mha) and stored 3.88 ± 0.12 Pg C. Degradation and deforestation in palm swamp peatlands totaled 535,423 ± 8,419 ha over 1990–2018, with a pronounced dominance for degradation (85%). The degradation rate increased 15% from 15,400 ha y−1 (1990–2007) to 17,650 ha y−1 (2007–2018) and the deforestation rate more than doubled from 1,900 ha y−1 to 4,200 ha y−1. Over 1990–2018, emissions from degradation amounted to 26.3 ± 3.5 Tg C and emissions from deforestation were 12.9 ± 0.5 Tg C. The 2007–2018 emission rate from both biomass and peat loss of 1.9 Tg C yr−1 is four times the average biomass loss rate due to gross deforestation in 2010–2019 reported for the hydromorphic Peruvian Amazon. The magnitude of emissions calls for the country to account for deforestation and degradation of peatlands in national reporting.
Can REDD+ succeed? Occurrence and influence of various combinations of interventions in subnational initiatives
The institutional predecessor of REDD+ is the integrated conservation and development project (ICDP) that combines restrictions on forest access and conversion (negative interventions) with non-conditional direct benefits (positive interventions) to compensate local stakeholders for income losses from those restrictions. The idea of REDD+ was to improve on the ICDP model with a different kind of positive intervention: conditional direct benefits, often known as payments for environmental services or PES. How has this idea played out in reality? In a sample of 17 (out of 377) active REDD+ initiatives across the global South, we identified the combinations of interventions actually deployed and elicited household assessments of how those interventions affected their land use decisions with respect to forests. We found that 71 % of the households in our sample had participated in some number of forest interventions ranging from one to ten. About a quarter of those households were offered conditional direct benefits, most often in combination with non-conditional direct benefits. Nearly half of the households had received only non-conditional direct benefits. Many of those households were also subject to restrictions of various kinds. Thus, rather than abandoning the well-established ICDP approach in favor of the conditional incentives that conceptually define REDD+, most initiative proponents opted to deploy multiple interventions. Their approach is validated by our finding that the likelihood a household reports that the interventions caused them to adopt land use changes that could be classified as reducing carbon emissions is positively and significantly related to the number of interventions that they experienced, but not affected by whether any of those interventions are conditional. We also find that restrictions play an important role: 37 % of the households were subject to at least one negative intervention, and those households were significantly more likely to report that the interventions had induced land use changes that could be classified as reducing carbon emissions.
Lessons for jurisdictional approaches from municipal-level initiatives to halt deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon
Jurisdictional approaches have become popular in international forums as promising strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation and to guarantee sustainable commodity supply. Yet, despite their growing popularity, up to now, there is little consensus on how such approaches should move forward in specific jurisdictions. In this paper we examine two contrasting municipal-level case studies in the eastern Amazonian state of Pará where jurisdiction-wide efforts are underway to reduce deforestation. By developing detailed forest governance intervention timelines since 2005, conducting semi-structured interviews with key informants, analyzing municipal deforestation trends, plus extensive examination of project reports, governmental documents and other secondary sources, this paper performs two main analyses. First, it characterizes the processes in each municipality by linking context and forest governance intervention timelines to deforestation trends. Second it provides a systematic comparison of processes based on (1) the role of the government, (2) multi-stakeholder participation and inclusiveness, (3) adaptive management, (4) horizontal and vertical coordination, and (5) alignment of public and private (supply-chain) initiatives. In so doing, this article answers some of the imperative questions on how to implement and improve jurisdictional approaches aimed at halting deforestation in the tropics.