Ferraro, P.J. and Hanauer, M.M.
(2014)
Quantifying causal mechanisms to determine how protected areas affect poverty through changes in ecosystem services and infrastructure.
PNAS, 111 (11).
pp. 4332-4337.
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Abstract
To develop effective environmental policies, we must understand
the mechanisms through which the policies affect social and environmental
outcomes. Unfortunately, empirical evidence about these
mechanisms is limited, and little guidance for quantifying them
exists. We develop an approach to quantifying the mechanisms
through which protected areas affect poverty. We focus on three
mechanisms: changes in tourism and recreational services; changes
in infrastructure in the form of road networks, health clinics, and
schools; and changes in regulating and provisioning ecosystem
services and foregone production activities that arise from landuse
restrictions. The contributions of ecotourism and other ecosystem
services to poverty alleviation in the context of a real environmental
program have not yet been empirically estimated. Nearly
two-thirds of the poverty reduction associated with the establishment
of Costa Rican protected areas is causally attributable to
opportunities afforded by tourism. Although protected areas
reduced deforestation and increased regrowth, these land cover
changes neither reduced nor exacerbated poverty, on average.
Protected areas did not, on average, affect our measures of infrastructure
and thus did not contribute to poverty reduction through
this mechanism. We attribute the remaining poverty reduction to
unobserved dimensions of our mechanisms or to other mechanisms.
Our study empirically estimates previously unidentified
contributions of ecotourism and other ecosystem services to poverty
alleviation in the context of a real environmental program.
We demonstrate that, with existing data and appropriate empirical
methods, conservation scientists and policymakers can begin to
elucidate the mechanisms through which ecosystem conservation
programs affect human welfare.
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