A proposal for improving the measurement of benefits from pollution abatement

Two basic and competing approaches for measuring the benefits of pollution abatement have found support in the recent literature-the property value approach and the health damage function approach. The purpose of this paper is to show that conditions will often exist when the property value approach will not accurately measure all benefits and conditions will always be present that cause the health damage function approach to underestimate benefits. In general, neither approach can stand alone. It is possible, however, that the two approaches can be combined in such a way as to improve the measurement of abatement benefits. We present an approach for combining these two methods and do so by introducing an “information coefficient” that measures the degree of knowledge about pollution effects held by the public. Approaches to estimating the information coefficient are suggested.     

An interdisciplinary review of current and future approaches to improving human–predator relations

In a world of shrinking habitats and increasing competition for natural resources, potentially dangerous predators bring the challenges of coexisting with wildlife sharply into focus. Through interdisciplinary collaboration among authors trained in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, we reviewed current approaches to mitigating adverse human–predator encounters and devised a vision for future approaches to understanding and mitigating such encounters. Limitations to current approaches to mitigation include too much focus on negative impacts; oversimplified equating of levels of damage with levels of conflict; and unsuccessful technical fixes resulting from failure to engage locals, address hidden costs, or understand cultural (nonscientific) explanations of the causality of attacks. An emerging interdisciplinary literature suggests that to better frame and successfully mitigate negative human–predator relations conservation professionals need to consider dispensing with conflict as the dominant framework for thinking about human–predator encounters; work out what conflicts are really about (they may be human–human conflicts); unravel the historical contexts of particular conflicts; and explore different cultural ways of thinking about animals. The idea of cosmopolitan natures may help conservation professionals think more clearly about human–predator relations in both local and global context. These new perspectives for future research practice include a recommendation for focused interdisciplinary research and the use of new approaches, including human‐animal geography, multispecies ethnography, and approaches from the environmental humanities notably environmental history. Managers should think carefully about how they engage with local cultural beliefs about wildlife, work with all parties to agree on what constitutes good evidence, develop processes and methods to mitigate conflicts, and decide how to monitor and evaluate these. Demand for immediate solutions that benefit both conservation and development favors dispute resolution and technical fixes, which obscures important underlying drivers of conflicts. If these drivers are not considered, well‐intentioned efforts focused on human–wildlife conflicts will fail.     

Considering the needs of indigenous and local populations in conservation programs

Local rural and indigenous communities have assumed increasing responsibility for conservation within and between areas buffering the impacts of agricultural or resource‐extraction zones and protected areas. Empowering local communities as central partners in conservation and climate‐change mitigation has allowed many people to gain access to land and citizenship rights but has provided limited improvements in access to social services and economic opportunities even as expectation about their role as environmental stewards grows. These expectations, however, are inconsistent with reality. We conducted multiple field studies in Brazil since the mid‐1980s to illustrate the discrepancies between conservation programs and local conditions and expectations. We suggest that public policies and conservation programs should not delegate responsibility for managing protected areas to local and indigenous communities without considering local needs and expectations and locals’ attitudes toward conservation. In other words, behavior that maintains or improves the environment should not be treated as traditional based on the expectations of outsiders. Framing local populations as traditional environmentalists creates contradictions and frustrations for local populations and for conservation professionals and policy makers.