How does conservation impact local people’s well-being

Julia P G Jones, School of Environment, Natural Resources and Geography, Bangor University@juliapgjones, [email protected]

How does conservation impact local people’s well-being (and how can we know)?

2

“Poverty is not the lack of money it is the lack of opportunity to realize ones full potential as a human being”Amartya Sen

Well-being is the absence of poverty

3

4

If conservation is so important to human wellbeing-how come there isn’t more of correlation between ecosystem condition and poverty?

The environmentalist paradox………

▪ BUT things are getting better (for most people) by most measures

5

www.gapminder.org

google images

Life

expe

ctan

cy

(yea

rs)

Income per capita Income per capitaLife

expe

ctan

cy

(yea

rs)

6

The rural poor (especially the poorest) have high dependence on ecosystem services.

Conservation efforts can have negative local welfare impacts.

Does this mean that those of us who care about poverty reduction needn’t be interested in conservation?

7

Conservation efforts can have negative local welfare impacts

Timothy Njagi

Anna Kika

8

How does conservation impact local people’s well-

being?

(and how can we know?)

“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it”

Georges Santayana 1906

A simple comparison of outcomes in units before and after exposure to an intervention is invalid without a control

before after

Stat

us in

out

com

e of

inte

rest

Why is impact evaluation hard?

A simple comparison of outcomes in units before and after exposure to an intervention is invalid without a control

before after

Stat

us in

out

com

e of

inte

rest


A simple comparison of units exposed and not exposed to an intervention is also invalid

Not exposed exposed

Stat

us in

out

com

e of

inte

rest


A simple comparison of units exposed and not exposed to an intervention is also invalid

Not exposed exposed

Stat

us in

out

com

e of

inte

rest


3 specific questions

14

1) What is the impact of Payment for Ecosystem Services on water quality (experimental approach)?2) What is the impact of community forest management on economic well-being? (quasi-experimental)3) What is the impact of community forest management on subjective well-being? (participatory impact evaluation)

1) What is the impact of Payment for Ecosystem Services on water quality?

15

Edwin Pynegar

Experimental

16

Has the scheme improved water quality?

Intervention

Control

Random allocation of population to treatment and control

Experimental approach: units are randomly allocated to treatment of control (so only difference is the treatment)

Therefore simple comparison of treatment and control needed

Intervention

Control

Random allocation of population to treatment and control

Experimental approach: units are randomly allocated to treatment of control (so only difference is the treatment)

Therefore simple comparison of treatment and control needed

19

120 communities allocated to control or intervention

Water quality measured before the intervention (2010) and after (2015)

20

2010 2015

Treatment Control ControlTreatment

mea

n co

lifor

m n

umbe

r (in

5m

l)

21

mea

n co

lifor

m n

umbe

r (in

5m

l) 2010 2015

Treatment Control ControlTreatment

22

23

Edwin Pynegar

▪ The experiment revealed no measurable affect of the scheme on water quality.▪ The baseline data was needed

to reveal this.▪ Of course large scale

randomised experiments like this are seldom possible in the field……

What is the impact of Payment for Ecosystem Services on water quality?

Experimental

Source: Pynegar submitted

24

Ranaivo Rasolofoson

2) What has been the net impact of Community Forest Management on economic well-being in Madagascar?

By 2014 CFM covered nearly 15% of Madagascar’s forests.

Quasi-experimental

CFM has twin aims: conservation & improving local wellbeing

Intervention

Control

Pre-matching comparisonPost-matching comparison

Matching

Quasi-experimental approach: units in intervention group are “matched” with control units which are as similar as possible

Source: Rasolofoson et al (2016)

Matching should be done on conditions at baseline

Intervention: those households within a commune that has 10% or more of its area covered by CFM (+ sensitivity test using a threshold of 25%)

Control: those households within a commune that has less than 1% of its area covered by CFM

Outcome measure: Household consumption

Dataset: National Statistics agency surveys

Source: Rasolofoson et al (2016)

Household characteristics

Site characteristics

Age of HH head

Roadless volume

Gender of HH head

Population density

Literacy of HH head

Presence of children <5 years

Suitability for irrigated rice

Elevation

Matched on a range of HH and site (commune) characteristics

2005

We dealt with the missing baseline using ‘falsification test’

Baseline (3096 HH) Endline (4117 HHs)

All CFM established by 2007

▪ Compared HH in 2005 dataset which would later become CFM HH with those who wouldn’t.▪ Matched ‘soon to be’ CFM HHs with ‘never to be’ CFM HH using same matching procedure.▪ If matching is sufficient, consumption in post matched groups should be similar.

2010 2012

No measurable overall affect of CFM on living standards. BUT impact varies with education

29Source: Rasolofoson et al (in press) Education of HH head (years)Eff

ect o

n an

nual

con

sum

ptio

n ($

)

30

What is the net impact of Community Forest Management on economic well-being in Madagascar?

No measureable net impact BUT there are winners and losers

This type of evaluation gives a result attractive to policy makers BUT can only look at very narrow range of outcomes.

3) What is the impact of Community Forest Management on subjective well-being?

31

Ranaivo Rasolofoson

Participatory impact evaluation

32

What are the 3 most important priorities in your life?

What is the relative importance of each priority?

Please rate your performance in each priority (very bad, bad, good, very good)

Participatory impact evaluationDoes working for ICRAF contribute positively, negatively or have no influence?

Subjective wellbeing

33

What are the 5 most important priorities in your life?

access to land

health

Education for our children

Rice

Family

Source: Rasolofoson et al (submitted)

34

Participatory Impact valuation

Does CFM contribute to your performance in each domain?

Negative Impacts Positive Impacts


Just look at grey bars

35

CFM

‘Land’ seen as negatively influenced: “Population has grown rapidly and we are not allowed to enlarge our agricultural lands. Thus, available lands are not enough to provide for the people”


‘Agriculture’ seen as positively impacted (increased sense of security of tenure)

36

What is the impact of Community Forest Management on subjective well-being?

Subjective measure of well-being means we can’t evaluate if there is a net positive or negative impact BUT…..

Strength lies in wealth of information on what local people perceive as important and how they attribute cause.

Overall conclusions……Conservation does have local welfare impacts and as conservationists we need to understand these.Different evaluation approaches have pros and cons….Experiments are seldom possible. Quasi-experimental often seen as robust and more valid than participatory approaches BUT really depends on the situation.

References..▪ Pynegar, E., Aquith, N., Gibbons, J., Jones, J.P.G.

Evaluating the Impact of Payments for Environmental Services using a Randomised Control Trial. Submitted.▪ Rasolofoson, R.A., P.J. Ferraro, G. Ruta, M.S Rasamoelina,

P.L Randriankolona, H.O. Larsen and J.P.G Jones (in press). Impacts of Community Forest Management on human economic well-being across Madagascar. Conservation Letters.▪ Rasolofoson, R.A., M.R. Nielsen and J.P.G Jones. The

potential of the Global Person Generated Index (GPGI) for evaluating the perceived impact of conservation interventions on subjective well-being. Revision submitted.

38

Photos by Julia Jones, Lyn Jones, Neal Hockley, Mahesh Poudyal, Patrick Botazzii, Edwin Pynegar

39

Thank you for listening…….

For more information see www.p4ges.org or contact [email protected]

http://www.p4ges.org/

40

How about studying at Bangor University?

For more information see www.bangor.ac.uk

AcademicEXCELLEN

CEFOR 130 YEARS

THE BESTLOCATIO

N

BEST UKUNIVERSITYSETTING(The Independent)

Award WinningSUPPORT

#3 IN THE UKFORSTUDENT SUPPORT (WhatUni Student Awards 2016)

BESTACCOMODATI

ON

#1 IN UK FOR STUDENT ACCOMMODATION(WhatUni 2016)

INVESTING

£48 MILLION ARTS & INNOVATION CENTRE

£35 MILLION STUDENT VILLAGE

Investing

Developments at Treborth Botanic Gardens

ONE OF THE BEST VALUE PLACES TO STUDY IN THE UK(The Independent)

GENEROUSSCHOLARSHI

PSWORTH OVER £1MILLION

International Scholarships

Scholarships 2017/18•Undergraduate (per annum): £2,000 - £4,000•Postgraduate: £2,000•Postgraduate (FIRST CLASS): £4,000

Bangor-Chevening scholarship available for Postgraduate 8th November 2016 deadline www.chevening.org Commonwealth Scholarship November deadline http://cscuk.dfid.gov.uk/apply/ Commonwealth Shared Scholarship – East and Central Africa – deadline 28th March, 2017http://cscuk.dfid.gov.uk/apply/

http://www.chevening.org/

http://cscuk.dfid.gov.uk/apply/




Particular interest to you….Alumni discount (for you and your immediate family)Commonwealth Shared Scholarship Scheme6 scholarships for masters study in September 2017. Preference will be given to strong candidates resident in Uganda and Kenya who are refugees, internally displaced or have otherwise been affected by conflict. Deadline 28th March 2017•MSc Agroforestry •MSc Conservation and Land Management•MSc Environment and Business Management•MSc Environmental Forestry•MSc International Banking•LLM International Criminal Law and International Human Rights Law•MSc Public Health and Health Promotion•LLM Public Procurement Law and Strategy•MSc Wetland Science for Conservation

Come and join us!

53

CFM

“The forest management association built the school and we were responsible for paying the teacher’ salary. But we are so poor that we could not keep paying … and he left the village”
