How much deforestation do protected areas avoid in tropical Andean landscapes? |
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| Institution: | 1. Universidad de Concepción, Facultad de Ciencias Forestales, Laboratorio de Ecología de Paisaje, Concepción, Chile;2. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Department of Ecosystems and Environment, Santiago, Chile.;3. Millennium Nucleus Center for the Socioeconomic Impact of Environmental Policies (CESIEP), Santiago, Chile;1. Georges Lemaître Centre for Earth and Climate Research, Earth and Life Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Place Louis Pasteur 3, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium;2. F.R.S.-FNRS, Belgium;3. School of Earth Sciences and Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, 473 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305, United States;1. Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) e.V., Institute of Socio-Economics, Eberswalder Str. 84, 15374 Müncheberg, Germany;2. University of Hohenheim, Institute of Social Sciences in Agriculture, Subdivision Rural Sociology, Schloss, 70599 Stuttgart, Germany;1. University of Southern California, Davis School of Gerontology, McClintock Avenue 3715, Los Angeles, CA 90089, United States;2. University of California Los Angeles, Department of Human Genetics, 695 Charles E. Young Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States;3. University of California Los Angeles, Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics, 695 Charles E. Young Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States;1. Georges Lemaître Centre for Earth and Climate Research, Earth and Life Institute, University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium;2. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200E, B-3001 Heverlee, Belgium;3. Programa para el Manejo de Agua y Suelo, Universidad de Cuenca, Cuenca, Ecuador;4. School of Earth Sciences and Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States;1. Resources for the Future, 1616 P Street, Washington, DC 20036, United States;2. Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, United States;3. Environment for Development Center for Central America (EfD-CA), Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza, CATIE 7170, Cartago, Turrialba 30501, Costa Rica |
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| Abstract: | For many decades, protected areas (PAs) have been considered by decision makers and conservation practitioners as one of the most common policies to promote biodiversity conservation. Diverse studies have assessed the impact of conservation policies at global and regional levels by comparing deforestation rates between PAs and unprotected areas. Most of these studies are based on conventional methods and could overestimate the avoided deforestation of PAs by omitting from their analyses the lack of randomness in the allocation of forest protection.We demonstrate that estimates of effectiveness can be substantially improved by controlling for biases along dimensions that are observable and testing the sensitivity of estimates of potential hidden biases. We used matching methods to evaluate the impact on deforestation of Ecuador's tropical Andean forest protected-area system between 1990 and 2008. We found that protection reduced deforestation in approximately 6% of the protected forests. These would have been deforested had they not been protected. Conventional approaches to estimate conservation impact, which fail to control for observable covariates correlated with both protection and deforestation, substantially overestimate avoided deforestation. Our conclusions are robust to potential hidden bias, as well as to changes in modeling assumptions. In addition, it is assumed that this research will help decision-making in the framework of international climate change mitigation policies, such as REDD+. |
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| Keywords: | Protected areas Avoided deforestation Matching Conservation policy Tropical Andean forest REDD |
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