Keith Alger

Viable Reserve Networks Arise From Individual Landholder Responses To Conservation Incentives

Conservation in densely settled biodiversity hotspots often requires setting up reserve networks that maintain sufficient contiguous habitat to support viable species populations. Because it is difficult to secure landholder compliance with a tightly constrained reserve network design, attention has shifted to voluntary incentive mechanisms, such as purchase of conservation easements by reverse auction or through a fixed-price offer. These mechanisms carry potential advantages of transparency, simplicity, and low cost. However, uncoordinated individual response to these incentives has been assumed incompatible with the conservation goal of viability, which depends on contiguous habitat and biodiversity representation. We model such incentives for southern Bahia in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, one of the biologically richest and most threatened global biodiversity hotspots. Here, forest cover is spatially autocorrelated and associated with depressed land values, a situation that may be characteristic of long- settled areas with forests fragmented by agriculture. We find that in this situation, a voluntary incentive system can yield a reserve network characterized by large, viable patches of contiguous forest, and representation of subregions with distinct vegetation types and biotic assemblages, without explicit planning for those outcomes.

Opportunity costs of conservation in a biodiversity hotspot: the case of southern Bahia

Biodiversity ‘hotspot’ areas, which are characterized by concentrations of endemic species and severe anthropogenic loss of natural habitat, might be thought to present steep opportunity costs for maintaining forest cover against pressures of agricultural conversion. We examine this proposition for the southern part of the state of Bahia, a center of endemism within the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, which has less than 8 per cent of its original primary forest cover remaining. Using data from a survey of property values, we relate land price to land characteristics, including land cover, soil quality, slope, climate, and road proximity. We find median land values of R

Climate Change and Conservation in Brazil: CGE Evaluation of Health and Wealth Impacts

725/hectare, or about US

Approaches to Corridor Planning: Transitioning TAMARIN from Mata Atlantica to Madagascar

400/hectare at recently prevailing exchange rates. Remaining land under forest has a market value 70 per cent below comparable cleared land.

Examining Fragmentation and Loss of Primary Forest in the Southern Bahian Atlantic Forest of Brazil with Radar Imagery

Abstract Ecosystem services are public goods that frequently constitute the only source of capital for the poor, who lack political voice. As a result, provision of ecosystem services is sub-optimal and estimation of their values is complicated. We examine how econometric estimation can feed computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling to estimate health-related ecosystem values. Against a back drop of climate change, we analyze the Brazilian policy to expand National Forests (FLONAS) by 50 million hectares. Because these major environmental changes can generate spillovers in other sectors, we develop and use a CGE model that focuses on land and labor markets. Compared to climate change and deforestation in the baseline, the FLONAS scenario suggests relatively small declines in GDP, output (including agriculture) and other macro indicators. Urban households will experience declines in their welfare because they own most of the capital and land, which allows them to capture most of the deforestation benefits. In contrast, even though rural households have fewer opportunities for subsistence agriculture and face additional competition with other rural agricultural workers for more limited employment, their welfare improves due to health benefits from conservation of nearby forests. The efficiency vs. equity tradeoffs implied by the FLONAS scenario suggests that health-related ecosystem services will be underprovided if the rural poor are politically weaker than the urban rich. In conclusion, we briefly discuss the pros and cons of the CGE strategy for valuing ecosystem-mediated health benefits and evaluating contemporary policies on climate change mitigation.

Land Reform and Biodiversity Conservation in Brazil in the 1990s: Conflict and the Articulation of Mutual Interests

Effective long-term species conservation requires a conservation approach targeted at all scales at which biodiversity occurs, from the scale of species occurrences to the scale of populations and the ecological processes needed to sustain them (Noss, 2002). Protected areaand site-level initiatives have proven to be effective at protecting habitat, even when resources for effective management are lacking (Bruner et al., 2001), but protected areas alone are often of insufficient size to sustain viable populations of the species they are designed to protect (see, for example, Newmark, 1995). The total area accessible to conservation target species can be increased by connecting protected areas through biological corridors and stepping stones of habitat (Beier and Noss, 1998). But even with large protected areas and effective connectivity networks, human population pressures and incompatible land and resource use in surrounding areas can compromise biodiversity conservation goals (Wiens, 1996). In order to achieve the effective conservation of species, populations and ecological processes, a regional-scale biodiversity conservation corridor approach is necessary. Biodiversity conservation corridors have two objectives—the primary objective is the conservation or restoration of naturally functioning landscapes and the species diversity naturally present within the landscape; the secondary objective is the reconciliation of biodiversity conservation with the livelihood aspirations of human communities in the region and national development goals. Within biodiversity conservation corridors, irreplaceable biodiversity areas are put under strict protection, areas that can support both conservation and development goals through sustainable use and direct incentives for conservation are also identified, while economically important areas are targeted for more intensive development. A biodiversity conservation corridor is therefore a landscape in which land use, incentives, and policies are designed to achieve conservation objectives while contributing to economic development (Sanderson et al., 2003). Chapter 9 Approaches to Corridor Planning: Transitioning TAMARIN from Mata Atlantica to Madagascar