Human behavior and biodiversity conservation in tropical systems: mobility, livelihoods, and wildlife conflict at multiple scales
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University of California, Davis
Abstract
Supporting human wellbeing and household livelihoods while conserving biodiversity and
managing natural resources are challenges of global scale and importance. Across tropical
regions, trade-offs between people and nature are most acute near the borders of strictly
protected biodiversity areas. This dissertation consists of three studies that investigate the
behavior or rural people, paying particular attention to mobility, how conservation strategies
affect communities, and how people’s livelihood decisions influence social and natural
environments.
Chapter one examines a recent discussion debating the extent of human in-migration around
protected areas in the tropics. One proposed argument is that rural migrants move to bordering
areas to access conservation outreach benefits. A counter-proposal maintains that protected areas
have largely negative effects on local populations and that outreach initiatives even if successful
present insufficient benefits to drive in-migration. Using data from Tanzania, we examined
merits of statistical tests and spatial methods used previously to evaluate migration near
protected areas and applied hierarchical modeling with appropriate controls for demographic and
geographic factors to advance the debate. Areas bordering national parks in Tanzania did not
have elevated rates of in-migration. Low baseline population density and high vegetation
productivity with low interannual variation rather than conservation outreach explained observed
migration patterns. More generally we argue that to produce results of conservation policy
significance, analyses must be conducted at appropriate scales, and we caution against use of
demographic data without appropriate controls when drawing conclusions about migration
dynamics.
Chapter two examines conservation strategies and the challenges of protecting biodiversity while
also supporting household livelihoods. Across the tropics, efforts focus on balancing trade-offs in
local communities near the borders of protected areas. Devolving rights and control over certain
resources to communities is increasingly considered necessary, but decades of attempts have
yielded limited success and few lessons on how such interventions could be successful in
improving livelihoods. We investigated a key feature of household well-being, the experience of
food insecurity, in villages across Tanzania’s northern wildlife tourist circuit. Using a sample of
2,499 primarily livestock-keeping households we compared food insecurity in villages
participating in the country’s principal community-based conservation strategy with nearby
control areas. We tested whether community-based projects could offset the central costs
experienced by households near strictly protected areas (i.e. frequent human–wildlife conflict
and restricted access to resources). We found substantial heterogeneity in outcomes associated
with the presence of community-based conservation projects across multiple project sites.
Although households in project villages experienced more frequent wildlife conflict and received
few provisioned benefits, there is evidence that these households may have been buffered to
some degree against negative effects of wildlife conflict. We interpret our results in light of
qualitative institutional factors that may explain various project outcomes. Tanzania, like many
areas of conservation importance, contains threatened biodiversity alongside areas of extreme
poverty. Our analyses highlight the need to examine more precisely the complex and locally
specific mechanisms by which interventions do or do not benefit wildlife and local communities.
Finally, chapter three examines how rural farmers and livestock keepers use mobility as an
adaptive livelihood strategy. Continued migration to and within frontier areas is largely viewed as a driver of environmental decline and biodiversity loss. Recent scholarship advances our
understanding of migration decision-making in the context of changing climate and
environments, and in doing so it highlights the variation in migration responses to largely
economic and environmental factors. Building on these insights, this letter investigates past and
future migration decisions in a frontier landscape of Tanzania, East Africa. Combining field
observations and household data within a multilevel modelling framework, this letter analyses
the explicit importance of social factors relative to economic and environmental factors in
driving migration decisions. Results indeed suggest that local community ties and non-local
social networks drive both immobility and anticipated migration, respectively, for different
households. In addition, positive interactions with local protected natural resource areas promote
longer-term residence. Findings are interpreted in light of how the migration literature
understands changing frontier areas as they transition to human dominated landscapes. Doing so
highlights critical links between migration behaviour and the conservation of biodiversity and
management of natural resources, as well as how migrants evolve to become integrated into
communities.
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Salerno, J. (2015). Human beavior and biodiversity conservation in tropical systems: Mobility, livelihoods, and wildlife conflict at multiple scales. Retrieved from ProQuest Digital Dissertations. (AAT 10036206)