As the terrible devastation of the Amazon rainforest has once again taken center stage, discussions have focused on how such important areas of biodiversity can be preserved, while at the same time local communities supported in their economic development.
Research from Lund University has explored the age old method of paying communities to preserve their local environment. The team developed three financial options to help support a intergovernmental biodiversity financing mechanism.
The project comes at a time when the international community have agreed on the Aichi targets to conserve various parts of the global environment. While the targets are ambitious, there remain concerns about the implementation of them, with biodiversity continuing to dwindle at alarming rates.
“Human well-being depends on ecological life support. Yet, we are constantly losing biodiversity and therefore the resilience of ecosystems. At the international level, there are political goals, but the implementation of conservation policies is a national task. There is no global financial mechanism that can help nations to reach their biodiversity targets,” the researchers explain.
Incentivizing conservation
Brazil have previously had joy with Ecological Fiscal Transfer mechanisms to compensate communities for protecting areas rather than commercially exploiting them. The challenge has been in scaling these initiatives up to make a meaningful difference.
The researchers propose doing so on a national rather than local level so that countries are in charge of designating areas to be protected. They suggest three different options they could pursue.
- An ecocentric model whereby only the total protected areas in each country count, and the bigger the better.
- A socio-ecological model whereby protected areas are combined with the Human Development Index to take account of development justice.
- An anthropocentric model whereby population density is also added to the mix.
When the three models were simulated, it transpired that the socio-ecological design was the most efficient. This provided the highest marginal incentives to countries and communities to protect their natural environment.
“While we developed the socio-ecological design with a fairness element in mind, believing that developing countries might be more easily convinced by a design that benefits them, we were surprised how well this particular design aligns with the global policy goals,” the researchers explain. “It would most strongly incentivize additional conservation action where the global community is lacking it the most.”
The researchers were conscious not to be prescriptive with their work, so they don’t go into huge detail about how the approaches would work, who would pay for it and indeed how large the fund should be. Instead, they hope it provides options for the international community to consider to ensure that conservation happens and the global goals are met.
“We know that we need to change land use in order to preserve biodiversity. Protecting land from degradation and providing healthy ecosystems, clean air or clean rivers is a function of the state. Giving a financial reward to governments for such public ecosystem services will ease the provision of corresponding conservation efforts and will help to put this on the agenda,” they conclude.
