Who bears the cost of forest conservation?

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Biodiversity and Conservation

Main article text

 

Introduction

Materials and Methods

Study area

Sampling

Data collection

The choice experiment

Research ethics

Data analysis

Results

Livelihoods of people in the CAZ

The magnitude and distribution of local opportunity costs of preventing swidden agriculture

The magnitude and distribution of the compensation received

Discussion

Why do local costs of conservation matter?

What about the local benefits?

Is compensation reaching the right people?

Is compensation sufficient?

Can forest conservation in low-income countries be achieved without the poorest bearing the costs?

What are the implications of this work for the implementation of REDD+ social safeguards?

Conclusions

Supplemental Information

Fig. S1. How households gain access to land in the study sites.

Y-axis shows the overall percentage of plots in each site being accessed through one of the five ways listed–total adding up to 100% for each site. Error bars show 95% confidence intervals.

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Fig. S2. The value of the compensation projects as a percentage of household opportunity cost.

Data is for 62 recipients of compensation (all from site 1), 2 years after compensation was received. The value of compensation is estimated from our contingent valuation while the opportunity cost of conservation is estimated from the choice experiment.

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Fig. S3. Pictures showing the context of the field work presented in this paper.

a), b) The biodiversity of the CAZ is world-renowned. c), d) 10s of 1000s of people live around the CAZ new protected area, traditionally most people depend economically on clearing land for agriculture in a swidden system known locally as ‘tavy.’ e) The CAZ protected area will result in strict enforcement of conservation rules including not clearing new land. f) Selected residents have been identified as Project Affected Person and therefore have received micro-development projects such as improved bean cultivation under World Bank safeguards. g) To build a sampling frame we worked with local leader to update available maps and then visited each hamlet with a GPS. h) Our team stayed in the villages (with local families) where worked for extended periods which facilitated trust.

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Fig. S4. Population distribution within a 2 km buffer of CAZ.

Established protected areas managed by Madagascar National Parks (with 2 Km buffer around them) have been excluded as different compensation right exist there. The population model is based on Landscan 2007 data distributed with the EcoEngine algorithm in WaterWorld.

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Fig. S5. Examining goodness of fit of the modelled population from existing sources with our population data collected from the study areas.

Our field data shows the primary census data collected in each fokontany during 2014/2015 (population data from p4ges field sites) plotted against the population estimates for those sites from LandScan 2007 (LS07), and INSTAT (Madagascar’s National Institute of Statistics) 2010 data (fokontany 2010)- both distributed using EcoEngine algorithm in WaterWorld.

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Fig. S6. Example choice card of the Discrete Choice Experiment used to estimate opportunity costs.

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Table S1. Attributes and levels of the choice experiment (reference levels in bold).

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Table S2. The coefficients from the choice experiment. Lower and upper bounds are 95% confidence intervals.

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Table S3. The annualised opportunity costs of conservation per household (USD).

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Survey instruments for phase one of field work.

(household survey and choice experiment in English and Malagasy).

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Survey instruments for phase two of field work.

(Agricultural survey in English and Malagasy).

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Survey instruments for phase three of field work.

Contingent valuation of the compensation recieved by housholds (in English and Malagasy).

DOI: 10.7717/peerj.5106/supp-12

Additional Information and Declarations

Competing Interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Author Contributions

Mahesh Poudyal conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.

Julia P.G. Jones conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.

Sarobidy O. Rakotonarivo conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.

Neal Hockley conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.

James M. Gibbons conceived and designed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.

Rina Mandimbiniaina performed the experiments, approved the final draft.

Alexandra Rasoamanana performed the experiments, approved the final draft.

Nilsen S. Andrianantenaina performed the experiments, approved the final draft.

Bruno S. Ramamonjisoa authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.

Human Ethics

The following information was supplied relating to ethical approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):

Ethical approval was provided under Bangor University’s research ethics framework. Approval was granted on October 29, 2013.

Field Study Permissions

The following information was supplied relating to field study approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):

Research permission was granted by the Ministry of Environment, Ecology and Forests (45/14/MEF/SG/DGP/DCB.SAP/SCB).

Data Availability

The following information was supplied regarding data availability:

GitHub: https://github.com/mpoudyal/cepaper.

Funding

This work was part of the p4ges project (http://www.p4ges.org) funded by the ecosystem services for poverty alleviation programme (grant code (NE/K010220/1). O. Sarobidy Rakotonarivo received European Commission for support through the Forest and Nature for Society (FONASO) joint doctoral programme. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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