Making a difference takes time: comparing the impacts of two direct conservation interventions on forest cover in a biodiversity hotspot

Ana L. Reboredo Segovia, Leidy López Toro, Eric L. Bullock, Paulo Arévalo, Clara Matallana, Christoph Nolte

Forest impacts of two direct-incentive conservation interventions

Direct conservation incentive programs have attracted interest due to their potential to increase tropical forest benefits while avoiding harms associated with protected areas (PAs). Here we compare the cost-effectiveness of two direct incentive conservation programs—public land acquisitions (PLA) and payments for environmental services (PES)—on forest cover in a biodiversity hotspot. While PLA and PES both compensate landowners for their loss of land-use rights, their relative cost-effectiveness is uncertain because of differences in enforcement capacity, implementation capacity and permanence. Our study region, eastern Antioquia in the Colombian Andes, has dedicated public funding to both incentives for 10–30 years, enabling outcome and impact comparison. We find that PES were implemented over a larger area than PLA (67,000 vs. 9000 hectares) due to lower up-front costs, acceptance of less formal tenure, and broader political support. However, using causal impact estimation methods and novel forest cover change data, we estimate that PES had smaller percentage effects on net forest cover than PLA (+0.33% vs. +10.05%), and that PLA had larger overall impacts on forest area (+306.25 ha vs. +125.95 ha) when including forest gain. There were no detectable differences in cost-effectiveness. As the two interventions can achieve different outcomes, choices between the two interventions depend on the ecological aims, institutional constraints, and the land users’ contexts, which require equity considerations. Our results highlight that impacts are dependent on implementation opportunities and capacity, can vary based on outcome measurement, and are affected by the study’s time frame.

Event: World Bank Land Conference 2024 - Washington

Document type:Making a difference takes time: comparing the impacts of two direct conservation interventions on forest cover in a biodiversity hotspot (1020 kB - pdf)