̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC)

Cambridge conservation and sustainable business leaders prepare for COP16

plc32 — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 14:50:40 +0000

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Conservation Initiative and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) co-hosted a panel discussion featuring key industry leaders in the run-up to the 16th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP16). Please read more about the panel here

CISL

Panel members from CCI and CISL discuss the upcoming COP16

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Sir David Attenborough's 'joy' on visit to Cambridge Conservation Initiative

plc32 — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 16:01:44 +0000

Sir David said of visiting CCI that he felt “an undercurrent of joy” whenever he came to the conservation campus, which is housed in the building bearing his own name.

̽��ֱ��campus was opened in 2016 and is the first of its kind, with over 500 conservation professionals and researchers, from 10 different organisations and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, all collaborating to stop the biodiversity crisis and build more hopeful futures for people and nature.

Read the full story: 'An Undercurrent of Joy'

Sir David Attenborough spoke of how he feels during visits to the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) when he stopped by the CCI conservation campus at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge this week.

Cambridge Conservation Initiative

Photo of Sir David Attenborough on a visit to Cambridge Conservation Research Initiative

Yes

What can Pokémon Go teach the world of conservation?

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 15:37:01 +0000

A new paper by a group of researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, and ̽��ֱ�� College London (UCL) explores whether Pokémon Go's success in getting people out of their homes and interacting with virtual 'animals' could be replicated to redress what is often perceived as a decline in interest in the natural world among the general public.

Or, could the game's popularity pose more problems than opportunities for conservation?

Study author Leejiah Dorward, a doctoral candidate in Oxford ̽��ֱ��'s Department of Zoology, said: "When Pokémon Go first came out, one of the most striking things was its similarity with many of the concepts seen in natural history and conservation. ̽��ֱ��basic facts and information about Pokémon Go make it sound like an incredibly successful citizen science project, rather than a smartphone game.

"We wanted to explore how the success of Pokémon Go might create opportunities or challenges for the conservation movement."

Co-author John C Mittermeier, a doctoral candidate in Oxford's School of Geography and the Environment, said: "There is a widespread belief that interest in natural history is waning and that people are less interested in spending time outside and exploring the natural world.

"Pokémon Go is only one step removed from natural history activities like bird watching or insect collecting: Pokémon exist as 'real' creatures that can be spotted and collected, and the game itself has been getting people outdoors. What’s going on here, and can we as conservationists take advantage of it?"

In the paper, the researchers explain that Pokémon Go has been shown to inspire high levels of behavioural change among its users, with people making significant adjustments to their daily routines and to the amount of time spent outside in order to increase their chances of encountering target 'species'. There is also evidence that users are discovering non-virtual wildlife while playing Pokémon Go, leading to the Twitter hashtag #Pokeblitz that helps people identify 'real' species found and photographed during play.

Pokémon Go, the researchers write, exposes users first hand to basic natural history concepts such as species' habitat preferences and variations in abundance. 'Grass Pokémon', for example, tend to appear in parks, while water-related types are more likely to be found close to bodies of water. There are also four regional species that are continent restricted: Tauros to the Americas, Mr Mime to Western Europe, Farfetch’d to Asia, and the marsupial-like Kangaskhan to Australasia. This differentiation captures a fundamental aspect of natural history observation – that exploring new habitats and continents will lead to encounters with different species.

And hundreds of people congregated near New York’s Central Park one night over the summer to try to find a rare Vaporeon – something that will sound familiar to birdwatchers used to similar gatherings to see a rare species.

However, the researchers caution that the success of Pokémon Go could also bring challenges: for example, it may be that this type of augmented reality – featuring engaging, brightly coloured fictional creatures – could replace people's desire to interact with real-world nature, or the focus on catching and battling Pokémon may encourage exploitation of wildlife. There has also been controversy in the Netherlands, where Pokémon Go players have been blamed for damage caused to a protected dune system south of ̽��ֱ��Hague.

Co-author Dr Chris Sandbrook, a senior lecturer at UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre and affiliated lecturer at the Department of Geography, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: "Just getting people outside does not guarantee a conservation success from Pokémon Go. It might actually make things worse – for example, if interest in finding a rare Vaporeon replaces concern for real species threatened with extinction. Real nature could be seen as just a mundane backdrop for more exciting virtual wildlife."

Dorward added: "One of the positive things about Pokémon Go is that there's a very low barrier for entry. As long as you have a smartphone, you can play – and the game itself does a lot of things for you. Finding ways to break down barriers to engagement with real-life nature is a priority for conservation. Pokémon are also relatable 'characters', whereas modern conservation tends to frame itself purely in scientific terms, which may be off-putting to many.

"There is something called the biophilia hypothesis, which suggests that people have an in-built affinity with nature and a desire to explore the natural world. If that’s one of the reasons Pokémon Go has proved to be so popular – because it’s a natural history proxy – then that could be a huge boost to conservation. It's possible that the desire to connect with nature is there and to get people to engage with conservation we just need to 'sell' it correctly."

̽��ֱ��paper 'Pokémon Go: benefits, costs, and lessons for the conservation movement' is published in the journal Conservation Letters.

̽��ֱ��augmented reality game, designed for mobile devices, allows users to capture, battle and train virtual creatures called Pokémon that appear on screen as if part of the real-world environment. But can the game's enormous success deliver any lessons to the fields of natural history and conservation?

̽��ֱ��basic facts and information about Pokémon Go make it sound like an incredibly successful citizen science project, rather than a smartphone game

Leejiah Dorward

Mister_Toodles

Pokemon outside King's College Cambridge

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Climate change: can nature help us?

Anonymous — Wed, 08 May 2013 11:05:19 +0000

Flooding, landslides, crop failure, water shortages. Across the globe, the frequency with which humans are suffering the ill effects of climatic variability and extreme weather events is on the increase. Can natural environments be used effectively to help people adapt to the effects of climate change? ̽��ֱ��first systematic review of this question – facilitated by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) Collaborative Fund for Conservation – finds much evidence of their effectiveness.

" ̽��ֱ��delays in international agreements on ways to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions mean that planning to counter the impacts of climate change is a necessity,” said Robert Munroe, Climate Change Officer at BirdLife International. “Governments of all countries should be making plans to protect us against these impacts.”

One adaptation option is to invest in costly, large-scale structures such as sea walls, irrigation systems and dams. But while their short-term impact is clear, these solutions lead to ever-increasing maintenance costs and often have negative impacts on local ecosystems and biodiversity.

“International policy makers are having to think about the different approaches they could take, but the problem is that they don’t have enough information to make informed decisions,” said Munroe.

“Hard-engineered sea walls have a limited life span, and we know that they change wave and tidal currents, often to the detriment of saltmarshes or mangroves that act as a natural buffer to storm surges and coastal erosion. Do we really want to lose these buffers and face increasing costs of sea wall maintenance?” asked Dr Iris Möller, Deputy Director of the Cambridge Coastal Research Unit in the Department of Geography.

“There’s anecdotal evidence from events like the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that villages surrounded by mangroves were significantly less affected by the tsunami than more exposed areas,” she added. ̽��ֱ��mangroves may have saved thousands of lives and properties by absorbing a large proportion of the energy in the waves.

But local anecdotal evidence is not enough to provide a reliable measurement of the effectiveness of an approach. Now a review has been completed of the effectiveness of natural approaches to buffering the effects of climate change. Termed Ecosystem-based approaches for Adaptation (EbA), this relatively new concept incorporates approaches that have been used for a long time to address climatic variability, but not necessarily in the context of adaptation to climate change.

“We wanted to understand what the research evidence tells us, in terms of the relative importance of ecosystems as opposed to hard-engineering solutions to the same problem,” said Dr Bhaskar Vira in the Department of Geography. Vira, Möller, Dr Tom Spencer (Director of the Cambridge Coastal Research Unit) and Dr Andreas Kontoleon (Department of Land Economy) worked with climate change policy expert Munroe at BirdLife and climate change expert Dr Nathalie Doswald at the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, as well as with the International Institute for Environment and Development in London. They looked at published studies from around the world in which a wide range of EbA had been assessed. ̽��ֱ��step-by-step detail of their systematic review method was published in Experimental Evidence in 2012, which will enable it to be replicated for consistency in future studies.

“ ̽��ֱ��systematic review is very specific: we sifted out the most relevant published studies and compiled evidence from them on the different interventions being used and how effective they have been,” said Vira. ̽��ֱ��team found that activities related to EbA have been used across the globe to address a broad range of climatic hazards and impacts.

Interventions include the sustainable management of wetlands and floodplains to act as floodwater reservoirs and provide important water stores for times of drought, and the conservation and restoration of forests and natural vegetation to stabilise slopes and regulate water flows, preventing flash floods and landslides due to increased rainfall. Most of the approaches were reported by the studies to be effective in reducing human vulnerability to the effects of climate change, climatic variability or natural hazards.

“ ̽��ֱ��results are providing general guidance on the circumstances in which an EbA may be useful,” said Vira. “There are cases where it isn’t necessarily going to be helpful – if you live in Gloucestershire and you’re about to get flooded, you can’t start planting trees, you have to use sandbags. These interventions take time, and there are limitations to their effectiveness.”

“It’s important to work towards fully informed decision-making between alternative adaptation approaches,” said Munroe. “Large-scale infrastructural solutions may tend to be pursued because the financial costs are clear and their short-term effectiveness at buffering hazards has been tested by engineers. But by constraining natural ecological cycles, they may increase social vulnerability in the medium to long term. We found some discussions on the comparison between ecosystem-based and other kinds of approaches to adaptation, which are valuable for policy makers.”

“We also realised there are some real knowledge gaps,” added Möller. “We need information on the costs as well as the benefits, and on whether monitoring systems have been put in place to assess the long-term effectiveness of these approaches. With respect to ecosystems as coastal protection, for example, we need to know exactly how much energy mangroves and marshes absorb and what we can do to maximise and maintain the effect.”

̽��ֱ��project collaborators recognise that the divide between scientific research and policy making must be bridged if governments are to make the best decisions for long-term adaptation to climate change. “Our partnership with NGO colleagues meant the project has both academic rigour and a built-in pathway to impact,” said Vira. ̽��ֱ��Collaborative Fund for Conservation, which was established with the generous support of the Arcadia Fund, was set up explicitly to foster these innovative partnerships.

̽��ֱ��team’s collective range of contacts has enabled them to disseminate their results and recommendations. Their presentations at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban in December 2012, and the distribution of briefing papers and guidance documents, have drawn the attention of decision-makers at the highest levels to the possibilities of ecosystem-based approaches.

“A technical workshop on EbA, likely to involve 70 countries, was recently convened by the Climate Change Convention,” said Munroe. “Our work contributed to the momentum that resulted in this decision. It’s really exciting as it’s the first time the Convention has met to discuss this approach.”

“EbA is an important tool in the adaptation toolkit, which has often been ignored because the evidence base had not been made clear,” said Munroe. “Employing it alongside other adaptation options will result in much more sustainable responses to the effects of climate change in both developed and developing countries.”

Hard-engineered sea walls have a limited life span. Could saltmarshes and mangroves offer a different approach to buffering against storm surges and coastal erosion?

Do we really want to lose these buffers and face increasing costs of sea wall maintenance?

Iris Moller

Saltmarshes starting to be inundated by the tide at Abbots Hall, Cumbria, UK

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Attribution

Research, policy, practice: conservation in the round

lw355 — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:00:39 +0000

Just under a decade ago, a target was set by the world’s governments: to slow the decline in biodiversity within 10 years. But by 2010 it was clear that global efforts had largely failed. ̽��ֱ��state of biodiversity had worsened and the ecosystem services that we rely on for food and water, a stable climate, and protection from natural disasters continue to be in jeopardy.

As plans were drawn up for a new strategic plan for the next decade, the Secretary-General of the United Nations stated that conservation efforts are all too often undermined by conflicting policies; yet, “conserving biodiversity,” he said, “cannot be an afterthought once other objectives are addressed.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Professor Andrew Balmford, who helps lead the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Conservation Science Group in the Department of Zoology: “Conservation has to be mainstreamed. It can’t be on the margins. It has to be part of policy and practice across a whole range of sectors if we are to have a chance of counteracting the rapid declines in the extent and condition of natural ecosystems.”

With this in mind, he and Professor Rhys Green, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)’s Principal Research Biologist and also based in the Department of Zoology, have created a series of highly effective partnerships with conservation practitioners and policy makers. These in turn have developed a suite of tools aimed at helping decision makers make informed judgments.

“Conservation has for too long suffered from key disconnects,” explained Balmford. “One of the main problems is conservation research is often about biology, but the global loss of nature is really about people and what they do. To tackle fundamental questions about this relationship, quantitative research studies need to be linked to policies and practice that are capable of effecting behaviour change.”

“It’s an iterative process,” added Green. “Smart collaborations involve policy makers or conservation practitioners identifying the questions that need tackling and, through a dialogue with scientists, turning these into tractable research questions that researchers can answer in ways that are fit for purpose. It’s conservation in the round.”

Smart collaborations are a key part of the vision of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI), a pioneering collaboration between the ̽��ֱ�� and eight leading conservation organisations and a conservation network based in the Cambridge area that integrates research, policy, practice and learning. Collaboration and funding through CCI have enabled Balmford and Green to address a series of questions that have important implications for global conservation and environmental management.

How, for instance, can the world respond to the growing demands for increased food production and yet conserve the raw material that biodiversity represents? A project led by Dr Ben Phalan from the Department of Zoology, and funded by the Newton Trust and CCI partners BirdLife International, RSPB and the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), is using recently developed global datasets to understand better how conflicts between conservation and farming in the tropics might be resolved.

“ ̽��ֱ��expansion and intensification of agriculture are the greatest source of threat to biological diversity,” explained Phalan, “and yet there is little information about how far priority areas for conservation and food production overlap. To what extent will the expansion of a particular crop threaten wild species? Are there areas where expansion of food production would be less of a problem for biodiversity?”

Following input from policy experts at a workshop held in the project’s early stages to identify focal crops, Phalan has been intersecting detailed maps of bird and crop distributions in the tropics, where agricultural expansion is most likely to affect biodiversity. Once completed later in 2012, the study will help decision makers identify the most damaging crops and the most vulnerable areas, both now and under future scenarios of agricultural change.

Another collaboration deals with the problem of how to assess the full benefits that an area’s biodiversity brings to society – its ‘ecosystem services’. These can include the formation of soils, provision of clean water, production of crops, regulation of climate and opportunities for recreation. Most are hard to measure without expert support. So when faced, for instance, with pressures to cut down a natural forest to increase food production, how can local decision makers accurately value the ecosystem services and weigh up the implications of the proposed change in land use?

An ambitious Ecosystem Services Toolkit to do just this is currently in its testing phase, led by Dr Kelvin Peh from the Department of Zoology with a team from Anglia Ruskin ̽��ֱ��, BirdLife International, RSPB and UNEP-WCMC. ̽��ֱ��result is a manual (and eventually an online program) that enables non-experts to make state-of-the-art assessments of ecosystem services in their region, so that they can gauge for themselves how changes in local biodiversity will affect them.

“Linking declining levels of biodiversity with the benefits biodiversity delivers, and the pressures and responses affecting it, is crucial to taking us forward in the ‘post-2010’ global strategic plan for biodiversity,” explained Green. A new approach to understanding this relationship has been the driving force behind yet another project – ‘Linked Indicators’, which, like the Ecosystem Services Toolkit project, was supported by the CCI Collaborative Fund.

̽��ֱ��idea behind the project is that indicators of biodiversity levels are easier to understand, communicate and act upon if they are linked together in a set that connects policies to outcomes. Green, one of the leaders of the study, explained: “It’s not enough to be aware of changes to biodiversity levels. It’s a bit like having a depth gauge on the Titanic – why would we want to know how fast things are getting worse unless we have an idea of why, and whether our attempts to do something about it are doing any good?”

̽��ֱ��Linked Indicators concept is based on a response–pressure–state– benefit model. It proposes a set of linked indicators for each system of interest. For fisheries, for example, the pressure on marine animals from fishing and ocean temperature is related to the resulting state of marine life, as well as the benefit fishing brings in terms of employment and food, and also the policy response to reduce losses to biodiversity by creating marine protected areas. ̽��ֱ��links between such indicators represent the best available knowledge of how the ecosystem involved works and the causal relationships between its components.

Where Linked Indicators can help decision makers is to provide them with better tools to assess whether the amount and type of response to biodiversity loss have been implemented on a sufficient scale to arrest or reverse it. ̽��ֱ��study, which was developed by a team from the Department of Zoology working with BirdLife International, RSPB and UNEP-WCMC, was presented at meetings of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) last year. ̽��ֱ��ideas it suggests are helping the CBD to improve its ability to track progress towards biodiversity targets post-2010.

“Even in the first few years, all of these projects have demonstrated the value for money that smart collaborations can generate,” added Balmford. “By building accessible tools and strengthening the evidence base for decision makers, we can help them make wise and informed decisions for the future of people and the rest of the planet.”

Conservation scientists working in partnership with practitioners and policy makers are building practical tools for real-world conservation.

Conservation has to be mainstreamed. It can’t be on the margins.

Professor Andrew Balmford

Sassan Saatchi/JPL CALTECH

Trees

CCI: collaboration and funding

CCI is a collaboration between the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and nine internationally renowned conservation organisations in the Cambridge area committed to the study and protection of global biodiversity. ̽��ֱ��founder members of CCI are:

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge: six Departments – Zoology, Geography, Plant Sciences, Land Economy, Judge Business School and the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership – founded the Cambridge Conservation Initiative along with the partner organisations listed below. Each of these departments has a growing programme of research and teaching in conservation, and work closely together on interdisciplinary programmes as part of CCI.

United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre: a branch of the United Nations that undertakes synthesis, analysis and dissemination of global biodiversity knowledge for conventions, countries, organisations and companies.

Fauna and Flora International: acts to conserve threatened species and ecosystems worldwide, delivering global and regional programmes of conservation and community projects.

BirdLife International: is a strategic global partnership of conservation organisations in over 100 countries, working to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity, and to promote sustainability in the use of natural resources.

Traffic International: is a global wildlife trade monitoring network that works to ensure that trade in wild plants and animals is not a threat to the conservation of nature.

International Union for Conservation of Nature: is the world’s largest professional global conservation network, and supports scientific research, manages field projects and unites conservationists to develop and implement policy, laws and best practice.

Tropical Biology Association: is dedicated to building the capacity and expertise of people and institutions to conserve and manage biodiversity in tropical regions.

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB): is the largest wildlife conservation organisation in Europe, and works to secure the conservation of biodiversity – especially wild birds and their habitats – through research, education, habitat management and advocacy.

British Trust for Ornithology: is an independent scientific research trust specialising in impartial evidence-based knowledge and advice about populations, movements and ecology of birds and other wildlife.

Cambridge Conservation Forum: is a network that links the diverse Cambridge-based community of conservation practitioners and researchers working at local, national and international levels.

To deliver its ambitious programme CCI works closely with like-minded funding partners. CCI is particularly grateful to Arcadia, who has provided core support for the leadership of CCI and grants for the CCI Collaborative Fund, the Miriam Rothschild Programme for Conservation Leadership, the Miriam Rothschild Travel Bursaries for the Student Conference in Conservation Science and the Miriam Rothschild PhD Studentships. CCI is also deeply grateful to the MAVA Fondation pour la Nature for their support to establishment a unique MPhil in Conservation Leadership.

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Canopy commerce: forest conservation and poverty alleviation

lw355 — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:00:37 +0000

Gola Forest, situated at the westernmost tip of a once extensive swathe of forest that stretched a thousand kilometres from Sierra Leone to Togo, is classified as a biodiversity hotspot of global significance. Its 71,000 hectares are home to over 330 species of bird, including the rare White-necked Picathartes and Rufous Fishing Owl, more than 500 species of butterfly, and a long list of threatened and endangered plants and animals.

̽��ֱ��forest, which was recently designated a National Park, is recovering from a history of commercial logging and mining, and areas have also been cleared by local communities for agriculture. Without protection, logging and mining activities would undoubtedly be resumed and destroy what remains.

But the forest is not only important for its biodiversity. Like other forests, Gola is a vast carbon store, both in the biomass of the trees themselves and in its storage of carbon as dead organic matter beneath the forest floor. For the past 20 years, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has been working with the Conservation Society of Sierra Leone and the Sierra Leone Government to protect the Gola Forest. Safeguarding its future in perpetuity is a priority, as Dr Jeremy Lindsell, Senior Conservation Scientist at RSPB explained: “Without the Gola Forest Programme, it’s likely the forest would eventually be lost. Our goal is to find a mechanism by which richer countries can help one of the poorest countries in the world protect its nature at the same time as improving the livelihoods of the local communities.”

Now, innovative approaches to forest conservation and poverty alleviation are being pioneered by two projects made possible by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI; see panel below). Each project is a unique collaboration between researchers, practitioners and policy makers.

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge plant scientists Beccy Wilebore and Dr David Coomes, with CCI partner organisations RSPB and the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), are conducting research for a scheme to fund forest conservation through carbon credits. And Dr Andreas Kontoleon and Dr Maarten Voors from Cambridge’s Department of Land Economy, together with RSPB, BirdLife International and the Universities of Wageningen and Chicago, are working with local villagers to establish how best to reward them for forest conservation.

Carbon credits for conservation

Current estimates suggest that around 12%–17% of global greenhouse gas emissions result from deforestation and forest degradation. A drive to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) by incentivising countries to keep forests rather than clear them is currently being developed internationally by governments, conservation agencies, scientists and the private sector.

“Long-term funding for conservation of forests like Gola is difficult to secure, so carbon markets offer one possible solution,” explained Lindsell. “To do this, we must be able to demonstrate that the Gola Forest Programme is not only benefiting biodiversity, but that it is also reducing deforestation and securing the carbon stocks – essentially that our intervention makes a positive difference.”

This is where the expertise of the plant scientists comes in. Wilebore, whose research is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, is working with RSPB to determine how much carbon is in the forest and in the surrounding mosaic of land, which has been ‘slashed and burned’ for agriculture and is now regrowing as secondary forest.

“Once we know the baseline – the level of emissions we would expect from deforestation and forest degradation in the absence of the Gola Forest Programme – the impacts of the conservation programme on future carbon stores can be gauged,” she explained. To calculate the baseline, she is gathering information from ground-based inventory plots, satellite imagery of land cover types and, soon, three-dimensional images of forest structure obtained by airborne remote-sensing devices. A rigorous system will be developed by the research partners to measure current forest carbon stocks and predict changes in forest carbon stocks in the future.

“An important aspect of the new methodologies will be to advise policy makers on the relative merits of different approaches for estimating how much carbon would have been lost if the forests had been left unprotected,” added Coomes. “UNEP-WCMC will contribute greatly towards ensuring that lessons from the development of methods for Gola will influence the development of REDD+ policy at a critical point in time.” Over the next year, the data will help the Gola Forest Programme assess how carbon trading can be used to protect the forest and at the same time cut global carbon emissions.

Assessing livelihood impacts

Agreements have been struck with forest-edge communities to limit activities such as farming and hunting in the new National Park. In return, substantial funds have been set aside by the Gola Forest Programme for livelihood improvement for these communities. ̽��ֱ��funds support such projects as the building of schools and latrines, as compensation for benefits that have been foregone.

Although it’s widely acknowledged that, to be successful, conservation programmes must be coupled with poverty alleviation schemes, “there is scant hard scientific evidence on the impact of conservation policies on livelihoods, or on specific aspects of human behaviour that are related to conservation,” explained Kontoleon. ̽��ֱ��project he leads aims to address this gap.

Pooling expertise from economics, anthropology and conservation science, the team has carried out extremely detailed surveys of more than 2,800 households across 180 villages during the past two years. This has provided a ‘pre-treatment’ baseline recording all aspects of the villagers’ economic and social lives.

With the support of the Gola Forest Programme, the team then tested the impacts of a series of different conservation–livelihood interventions using randomised field experiments with ‘treated’ and ‘control’ groups (within ethical experimental norms).

For example, in one study, they experimentally assessed ways to improve co-operative behaviour within communities, given that pro-social behaviour is known to be essential for the effectiveness of conservation programmes. In another study, they evaluated how effectively conservation funds intended for community projects were actually spent under different managed regimes. And they explored how social cohesion and support for conservation can be best advanced by comparing aid payments allocated to village chiefs versus funds allocated directly to individuals, or through a voucher-for-work scheme.

After a return visit for a follow-up survey, the researchers are now analysing the data, with results expected early in 2012. “All in all, the project will provide the first detailed formal policy evaluation of a major conservation programme,” said Kontoleon. “ ̽��ֱ��results should allow us to derive reliable inferences on the livelihood and behavioural impacts of conservation policies.”

Predicting change

Over the next year, the two project teams will begin working more closely. Their combined data will help the researchers understand what drives changes in land use, and what effect this has on the environment and the impact of support programmes. Against a background of a rising world population and an increasing demand for food, studies such as these will prove vital for balancing global pressures at the least cost to biodiversity.

̽��ֱ��Gola Forest Programme might be regarded as something of a test case for how a large and dynamic biodiversity conservation project can be implemented sustainably in a developing country. “ ̽��ֱ��stakes are high in terms of the biodiversity and carbon that is at jeopardy, the impacts on human welfare, and the conservation funds spent,” said Kontoleon. “A vital ingredient for the success of the research projects in providing reliable assessments is the degree of collaboration, nurtured by CCI, between academia and conservation organisations, which cannot be taken lightly.”

Innovative approaches for protecting the future of Sierra Leone’s Gola Forest – globally important for its biodiversity and its carbon reserves – are being developed by a collaboration of conservation agencies and ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge researchers.

Our goal is to find a mechanism by which richer countries can help one of the poorest countries in the world protect its nature at the same time as improving the livelihoods of the local communities.

Dr Jeremy Lindsell (RSPB)

Jeremy Lindsell

Gola Forest

CCI: collaboration and funding

Fauna and Flora International: acts to conserve threatened species and ecosystems worldwide, delivering global and regional programmes of conservation and community projects.

Traffic International: is a global wildlife trade monitoring network that works to ensure that trade in wild plants and animals is not a threat to the conservation of nature.

Tropical Biology Association: is dedicated to building the capacity and expertise of people and institutions to conserve and manage biodiversity in tropical regions.

Cambridge Conservation Forum: is a network that links the diverse Cambridge-based community of conservation practitioners and researchers working at local, national and international levels.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes