Chris Sandbrook

Carbon, forests and the REDD paradox.

The institutional arrangements governing forests will be a critical factor in reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) as part of the global effort to mitigate climate change. A growing body of empirical research demonstrates how local forest governance can be as, if not more, effective than centralized state-based regimes. Local forest governance can secure improvements in multiple forest outcomes such as biomass and carbon storage and livelihoods contributions for the poor, and it can do so at lower cost than is possible through centralized governance. Many national governments have implicitly recognized these findings in their pursuit of decentralized forest governance and in strengthening local rights and capacities to use and manage forests. However, such reforms are often politically resisted, particularly where the value of forest resources is high and central government bodies are able to capture the majority of benefits. Ongoing negotiations related to the design and delivery of REDD policy and practice must take into account both the importance of local forest governance arrangements and the political–economic barriers to devolving secure rights over forests to local communities. These political dimensions of forest tenure and policy create a paradox for REDD: increasing the value of forest resources through global carbon markets without attending to local governance and rights will create political incentives towards centralized governance, which could lead to greater forest loss and lower forest-related benefits for the poor.

Value plurality among conservation professionals.

Debate on the values that underpin conservation science is rarely based on empirical analysis of the values conservation professionals actually hold. We used Q methodology to investigate the values held by international conservation professionals who attended the annual Student Conference in Conservation Science at the University of Cambridge (U.K.) in 2008 and 2009. The methodology offers a quantitative means of examining human subjectivity. It differs from standard opinion surveys in that individual respondents record the way they feel about statements relative to other statements, which forces them to focus their attention on the issues they believe are most important. The analysis extracts the diverse viewpoints of the respondents, and factor analysis is used to reduce the viewpoints to a smaller set of factors that reflect shared ways of thinking. The junior conservation professionals attending the conference did not share a unifying set of core values; rather, they held a complex series of ideas and a plurality of opinions about conservation and how it should be pursued. This diversity of values empirically challenges recent proposals for conservation professionals to unite behind a single philosophy. Attempts to forge an artificial consensus may be counterproductive to the overall goals conservation professionals are pursuing.

Conservation, evidence and policy

A growing literature argues for evidence-based conservation. This concept reflects a wider approach to policy-making and follows thinking in medicine, in which rigorous, objective analysis of evidence has contributed to widespread improvements in medical outcomes. Clearly, conservation decisions should be informed by the best information available. However, we identify issues relating to the type and sources of evidence commonly used and the way evidence-based conservation studies frame policy debate. In this paper we discuss two issues; firstly, we ask ‘what counts as evidence?’ (what is meant by evidence, and what kind of evidence is given credibility). We conclude that evidence-based conservation should adopt a broad definition of evidence to give meaningful space for qualitative data, and local and indigenous knowledge. Secondly, we ask ‘how does evidence count?’ (the relationship between evidence and the policy-making process). We conclude that there should be greater recognition that policy-making is a complex and messy process, and that the role of evidence in policy making can never be neutral. In the light of these issues we suggest some changes to build on developing practice under the title evidence-informed conservation. The change in terminology is subtle, yet it has profound implications in that it calls for a re-positioning and re-understanding of conservation science as one source of information among many for decision-makers.

Social research and biodiversity conservation.

There is now widespread agreement that social research is relevant to conservation (Mascia et al. 2003). Extensive efforts have been made to improve communication between natural and social scientists interested in conservation (e.g., Buscher & Wolmer 2007; Adams 2008). However, this communication has been described as a “dialog of the deaf” (Agrawal & Ostrom 2006) and is challenging personally and professionally (Campbell 2005; Brosius 2006; Fox et al. 2006). The search for more effective communication continues (Redford 2011) and is aided by—among other things—textbooks of social science methods for conservation (e.g., Newing 2011) and the Society for Conservation Biology’s Social Sciences Working Group, established in 2003. Despite these efforts, we believe that the role and place of social research in conservation remains a major source of misunderstanding, miscommunication, and contention among conservation researchers. There are problems of method (e.g., use of both qualitative and quantitative methods in social research), of epistemology (e.g., positivist versus postpositivist, and problem solving versus critical approaches), of understanding (it takes time to become expert in any discipline), and of language (terminology and writing styles can make publications effectively incomprehensible, or at least deeply unattractive and difficult, for people trained in a different discipline). None of these problems is unique to interdisciplinary engagement between conservation biology and social research (e.g., Lele & Norgaard 2005; Barry & Born 2013), but they are nonetheless important in this context. In this article, we seek to contribute to interdisciplinary communication and understanding by describing

Tourism revenue sharing policy at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda: a policy arrangements approach

Debates on how to deliver conservation benefits to communities living close to protected high-biodiversity areas have preoccupied conservationists for over 20 years. Tourism revenue sharing (TRS) has become a widespread policy intervention in Africa and elsewhere where charismatic populations of wildlife remain. This paper analyzes TRS policy at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP), Uganda, from a policy arrangements perspective. It is based on data collected at BINP and three surrounding parishes, using qualitative methods. It concludes that the governance capacity of the TRS policy arrangement at BINP is low due to the structural incongruence of the dimensions of the policy arrangement (analyzed in terms of actors, resources, rules of the game and discourses). Despite the participatory rhetoric of policy reforms, the Uganda Wildlife Authority remains the most powerful actor: it has control over resources and consequently determines the rules of the game. Local communities do not feel adequately compensated for conservation costs. This issue is exacerbated by weak communications with local people, problems of fair distribution locally and nationally, corruption claims and powerful local elites. To maximize TRS’ ability to contribute to conservation through development, inequities in the design of the TRS and dispersion of benefits need to be addressed.

The social implications of using drones for biodiversity conservation.

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or ‘drones’, appear to offer a flexible, accurate and affordable solution to some of the technical challenges of nature conservation monitoring and law enforcement. However, little attention has been given to their possible social impacts. In this paper, I review the possible social impacts of using drones for conservation, including on safety, privacy, psychological wellbeing, data security and the wider understanding of conservation problems. I argue that negative social impacts are probable under some circumstances and should be of concern for conservation for two reasons: (1) because conservation should follow good ethical practice; and (2) because negative social impacts could undermine conservation effectiveness in the long term. The paper concludes with a call for empirical research to establish whether the identified social risks of drones occur in reality and how they could be mitigated, and for self-regulation of drone use by the conservation sector to ensure good ethical practice and minimise the risk of unintended consequences.

The rules and the reality of mountain gorilla Gorilla beringei beringei tracking: how close do tourists get?

Mountain gorilla Gorilla beringei beringei tracking tourism generates important revenue for conservation efforts but brings with it the threat of disease transmission into the gorilla population. This study quantifies for the first time aspects of encounters between gorillas and tourists at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park that are likely to contribute to the risk of disease transmission. These include how close tourists get to gorillas, how close encounters are initiated, how long they last, and the age class of gorillas involved. Tourists got significantly closer to gorillas than the park rules allow (a mean of 2.76 m, compared to the rule of 7 m), and remained close for long periods. Contacts with the gorillas most vulnerable to disease, the juveniles, were closer but of shorter duration than those with adults. Contacts initiated by gorillas were closer but shorter than those initiated by tourists. Taken together these results demonstrate that the present rules are failing, and that the risk of disease transmission may be greater than previously believed.

Elasticity in ecosystem services : exploring the variable relationship between ecosystems and human well-being

Although ecosystem services are increasingly recognized as benefits people obtain from nature, we still have a poor understanding of how they actually enhance multidimensional human well-being, and how well-being is affected by ecosystem change. We develop a concept of “ecosystem service elasticity” (ES elasticity) that describes the sensitivity of human well-being to changes in ecosystems. ES Elasticity is a result of complex social and ecological dynamics and is context dependent, individually variable, and likely to demonstrate nonlinear dynamics such as thresholds and hysteresis. We present a conceptual framework that unpacks the chain of causality from ecosystem stocks through flows, goods, value, and shares to contribute to the well-being of different people. This framework builds on previous conceptualizations, but places multidimensional well-being of different people as the final element. This ultimately disaggregated approach emphasizes how different people access benefits and how benefits match their needs or aspirations. Applying this framework to case studies of individual coastal ecosystem services in East Africa illustrates a wide range of social and ecological factors that can affect ES elasticity. For example, food web and habitat dynamics affect the sensitivity of different fisheries ecosystem services to ecological change. Meanwhile high cultural significance, or lack of alternatives enhance ES elasticity, while social mechanisms that prevent access can reduce elasticity. Mapping out how chains are interlinked illustrates how different types of value and the well-being of different people are linked to each other and to common ecological stocks. We suggest that examining chains for individual ecosystem services can suggest potential interventions aimed at poverty alleviation and sustainable ecosystems while mapping out of interlinkages between chains can help to identify possible ecosystem service trade-offs and winners and losers. We discuss conceptual and practical challenges of applying such a framework and conclude on its utility as a heuristic for structuring interdisciplinary analysis of ecosystem services and human well-being.

Half-Earth or Whole Earth? Radical ideas for conservation, and their implications

We question whether the increasingly popular, radical idea of turning half the Earth into a network of protected areas is either feasible or just. We argue that this Half-Earth plan would have widespread negative consequences for human populations and would not meet its conservation objectives. It offers no agenda for managing biodiversity within a human half of Earth. We call instead for alternative radical action that is both more effective and more equitable, focused directly on the main drivers of biodiversity loss by shifting the global economy from its current foundation in growth while simultaneously redressing inequality.

Accessing the Impenetrable: The Nature and Distribution of Tourism Benefits at a Ugandan National Park

Nature-based tourism is widely considered a conservation strategy because it can provide benefits for local people and thereby increase support for conservation and contribute to development. However, concerns have been raised over the uneven distribution of benefits. Here we use access analysis to investigate the distribution of tourism benefits at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda, and the underlying factors constraining access to benefits. We introduce two new categories of engagement in tourism: active (for example through employment) and passive (for example through revenue sharing). Benefits from active engagement were often monetary, and access to them was often tightly constrained. In contrast, benefits from passive engagement were often nonmonetary and were more widely accessible. By analyzing together multiple active and passive pathways to tourism engagement, the study reveals that tourism benefits in some form can reach a wide range of local people, even where access to individual pathways is tightly constrained.