Jeffrey C. Milder

Trends and future potential of payment for ecosystem services to alleviate rural poverty in developing countries.

Payment for ecosystem services (PES) is a market-based approach to environmental management that compensates land stewards for ecosystem conservation and restoration. Because lowincome households and communities control much of the ecologically sensitive land in developing countries, they potentially stand to gain from PES, as environmentally responsible stewardship is assigned a value by various actors in society. To date, however, instances of PES benefiting the poor have been limited mainly to specific localities, small-scale projects, and a handful of broader government programs. We analyze the size, characteristics, and trends of PES to evaluate its future potential to benefit low-income land stewards in developing countries. We estimate that by the year 2030, markets for biodiversity conservation could benefit 10–15 million low-income households in developing countries, carbon markets could benefit 25–50 million, markets for watershed protection could benefit 80–100 million, and markets for landscape beauty and recreation could benefit 5–8 million. If payments and markets reach these potentials, they could provide a non-negligible contribution to poverty alleviation at the global level.

An agenda for assessing and improving conservation impacts of sustainability standards in tropical agriculture

Sustainability standards and certification serve to differentiate and provide market recognition to goods produced in accordance with social and environmental good practices, typically including practices to protect biodiversity. Such standards have seen rapid growth, including in tropical agricultural commodities such as cocoa, coffee, palm oil, soybeans, and tea. Given the role of sustainability standards in influencing land use in hotspots of biodiversity, deforestation, and agricultural intensification, much could be gained from efforts to evaluate and increase the conservation payoff of these schemes. To this end, we devised a systematic approach for monitoring and evaluating the conservation impacts of agricultural sustainability standards and for using the resulting evidence to improve the effectiveness of such standards over time. The approach is oriented around a set of hypotheses and corresponding research questions about how sustainability standards are predicted to deliver conservation benefits. These questions are addressed through data from multiple sources, including basic common information from certification audits; field monitoring of environmental outcomes at a sample of certified sites; and rigorous impact assessment research based on experimental or quasi-experimental methods. Integration of these sources can generate time-series data that are comparable across sites and regions and provide detailed portraits of the effects of sustainability standards. To implement this approach, we propose new collaborations between the conservation research community and the sustainability standards community to develop common indicators and monitoring protocols, foster data sharing and synthesis, and link research and practice more effectively. As the role of sustainability standards in tropical land-use governance continues to evolve, robust evidence on the factors contributing to effectiveness can help to ensure that such standards are designed and implemented to maximize benefits for biodiversity conservation.

Biofuels and ecoagriculture: can bioenergy production enhance landscape-scale ecosystem conservation and rural livelihoods?

Global development of the biofuel sector is proceeding rapidly, driven by national policy mandates, government subsidies, and profit opportunities for farmers, agribusiness and energy companies. To date, most investment in—and dialogue on—biofuels has focused on large-scale production of liquid transport fuels. A smaller set of efforts has explored the potential of biofuels to promote rural development by reducing energy poverty among the worlds two billion poorest people. Here, we consider the potential of these diverse approaches to promote the goals of ecoagriculture: namely, sustainable agricultural production (including biofuel feedstocks), conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services and viable rural livelihoods. Using a landscape planning framework, we review empirical evidence and identify criteria for designing biofuel production systems that promote this trio of goals. Biofuel development has the greatest potential when biomass production is an ‘interstitial’ activity and when processing and use occurs at the local level. Larger scale production for regional or global liquid fuel markets may be beneficial under some circumstances, but a stronger policy framework is needed to guide this approach. To advance biofuels for sustainable development, while avoiding serious risks, investment must shift to include a variety of ecoagriculture-compatible pathways. Supportive public policies and market incentives must be developed before the biofuel sector develops strong path-dependence toward unsustainable outcomes.

Conserving biodiversity and ecosystem function through limited development: an empirical evaluation.

Suburban, exurban, and rural development in the United States consumes nearly 1 million hectares of land per year and is a leading threat to biodiversity. In response to this threat, conservation development has been advanced as a way to combine land development and land conservation while providing functional protection for natural resources. Yet, although conservation development techniques have been in use for decades, there have been few critical evaluations of their conservation effectiveness. We addressed this deficiency by assessing the conservation outcomes of one type of conservation development project: conservation and limited development projects (CLDPs). Conducted by land trusts, landowners, and developers, CLDPs use revenue from limited development to finance the protection of land and natural resources. We compared a sample of 10 CLDPs from the eastern United States with their respective baseline scenarios (conventional development) and with a sample of conservation subdivisions--a different conservation development technique characterized by higher-density development. To measure conservation success, we created an evaluation method containing eight indicators that quantify project impacts to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems at the site and in the surrounding landscape. The CLDPs protected and managed threatened natural resources including rare species and ecological communities. In terms of conservation benefits, the CLDPs significantly outperformed their respective baseline scenarios and the conservation subdivisions. These results imply that CLDPs can offer a low-impact alternative to conventional development and a low-cost method for protecting land when conventional conservation techniques are too expensive. In addition, our evaluation method demonstrates how planners and developers can incorporate appropriate ecological considerations when designing, reviewing, and evaluating conservation development projects.

Conservation Development Practices, Extent, and Land‐Use Effects in the United States

Conservation development projects combine real-estate development with conservation of land and other natural resources. Thousands of such projects have been conducted in the United States and other countries through the involvement of private developers, landowners, land trusts, and government agencies. Previous research has demonstrated the potential value of conservation development for conserving species, ecological functions, and other resource values on private lands, especially when traditional sources of conservation funding are not available. Nevertheless, the aggregate extent and effects of conservation development were previously unknown. To address this gap, we estimated the extent and trends of conservation development in the United States and characterized its key attributes to understand its aggregate contribution to land-conservation and growth-management objectives. We interviewed representatives from land trusts, planning agencies, and development companies, searched the Internet for conservation development projects and programs, and compiled existing databases of conservation development projects. We collected data on 3884 projects encompassing 1.38 million ha. About 43% of the projects targeted the conservation of specific plant or animal species or ecological communities of conservation concern; 84% targeted the protection of native ecosystems representative of the project area; and 42% provided buffers to existing protected areas. The percentage of protected land in conservation development projects ranged from <40% to >99%, and the effects of these projects on natural resources differed widely. We estimate that conservation development projects have protected roughly 4 million ha of land in the United States and account for about 25% of private-land conservation activity nationwide.

Examining multi-functionality for crop yield and ecosystem services in five systems of agroecological intensification

ABSTRACT Agroecological intensification (AEI) integrates ecological principles and biodiversity management into farming systems with the aims of increasing farm productivity, reducing dependency on external inputs, and sustaining or enhancing ecosystem services. This review develops an analytic framework to characterize the fulfilment of these objectives by documenting the co-occurrence of positive, neutral, and negative outcomes for crop yield and nine regulating ecosystem services. We provide an illustrative examination of the framework, evaluating evidence for yield and ecosystem service outcomes across five AEI systems: conservation agriculture, holistic grazing management, organic agriculture, precision agriculture, and system of rice intensification (SRI). We reviewed 104 studies containing 245 individual comparisons between AEI and contrasting farming systems. In three of the five AEI systems, conservation agriculture, precision agriculture, and SRI, more than half of reviewed comparisons reported ‘win-win’ outcomes, enhancement of both yield and ecosystem services, or ‘win-neutral’ outcomes relative to contrasting farming systems. The review presents substantial evidence that the five AEI systems can contribute to multi-functional agriculture by increasing ecosystem service provision, or reducing negative externalities associated with agriculture, while maintaining or increasing yields. A framework such as the one presented here can help guide decision-makers considering how best to implement multi-functional agriculture so that both crop yield and ecosystem service delivery can be maintained or increased.

Landscape Approaches to Achieving Food Production, Natural Resource Conservation, and the Millennium Development Goals

The Rio Copan watershed in western Honduras is not unlike many agricultural landscapes throughout the developing world. A journey through this 800 km2 watershed reveals a mixture of small and mid-sized farms producing cattle, coffee, and subsistence crops. Residents here face many challenges: recent population growth has led to deforestation and water pollution, while agricultural productivity is generally low and poverty levels remain high, especially among the indigenous Mayan population.

Effects of farm and landscape management on bird and butterfly conservation in western Honduras

Previous research has indicated that a substantial portion of native flora and fauna may persist in agricultural mosaics in the Neotropics. However, understanding the relative importance of different habitat factors and management practices at different scales for sustaining this biodiversity has proven somewhat elusive. In addition, most such research has taken place in only a few fairly well-studied landscapes, thus limiting our ability to infer broader patterns that might be transferred to unstudied locales. This study expands the geographic breadth of prior research by evaluating bird and butterfly assemblages in an agricultural landscape in the Rio Copan watershed of western Honduras. The study also provides a systematic assessment of the relative influence of categorical and continuous habitat variables across a range of scales likely to be significant for birds and butterflies. Overall, we recorded 145 tree species, 139 bird species, and 119 butterfly species. Birds and butterflies displayed contrasting responses to land cover: birds were most strongly associated with dense vegetation in broadleaf forests, forest fallows, shade-grown coffee farms, and live fences, while butterflies were most abundant in live fences, pastures, and riparian forests. Bird assemblages were heavily skewed toward common and non-forest-dependent species, likely due to the young age and high disturbance level of forest plots. In contrast, butterfly assemblages contained a substantial proportion of forest-dependent species, which were observed in forests as well as pastures and live fences. Contrary to expectations, categorical land cover descriptors were more effective at explaining faunal assemblage patterns than continuous habitat descriptors related to vegetation and landscape context. In addition, plot scale (25–100 m) habitat features had a greater influence on faunal assemblages than did neighborhood scale (200–3000 m) landscape composition or structure, although differences in management intensity at the scale of the entire watershed (5–20 km) also exerted a strong influence on conservation outcomes.

Ecoagriculture : integrated landscape management for people, food, and nature

Ecoagriculture is an approach to managing landscapes for the simultaneous and synergistic achievement of three sets of outcomes: maintaining, increasing, or improving agricultural production; promoting biodiversity and ecosystem services; and enhancing human livelihoods and well-being. These elements are stitched together by institutions that support multistakeholder collaboration to achieve these outcomes. Key elements of the approach include: agreed landscape objectives; identification of synergies and trade-offs; land use practices that contribute to multiple objectives; markets, policies, and programs that encourage synergies and reduce trade-offs; and institutions that enable collaborative planning, implementation, and monitoring among stakeholders.

Reducing tourism's threats to biodiversity: effects of a voluntary sustainability standard and training program on 106 Latin American hotels, lodges and guesthouses

ABSTRACT The tourism industry can negatively affect wildlife, plants and natural ecosystems through habitat destruction, pollution, over-exploitation of natural resources and visitor impacts to sensitive ecosystems. One approach to mitigate such threats is the application of voluntary sustainability standards, supported by training of tourism enterprises and verified by external audits. The Rainforest Alliance standard defines 78 criteria (requirements) for sustainable environmental, social and business practices, and has been adopted by over 600 tourism enterprises – including hotels, lodges and tour boats – in 12 countries. We examined the performance of 106 hotels in six Latin American countries against 29 of the sustainable tourism criteria most directly related to biodiversity conservation. Independent audits were used to assess hotel performance at baseline followed by a repeat assessment after training, about two years later. Mean conformance with the 29 biodiversity criteria increased significantly during this interval, from 44% to 58%. Improvements were greatest for businesses in the lowest third of performance at baseline (laggards) and smallest for hotels in the highest third (leaders). The results indicate that a voluntary sustainability standard and training program can serve both to recognize existing good actors and to drive incremental improvement in enterprises that were previously less sustainable.