Environmental goods and services are increasingly valued for their contributions of food, resources and incomes to rural livelihoods of the poor in the developing world. Resources from tropical forests not only support current consumption but also provide valuable safety nets where limited
alternatives exist. Evidence has also been provided on their ability to pull people out of poverty. However an array of conservation interventions have in the past attempted to bridge the gap in achieving poverty alleviation and conservation – two of the millenium’s top priorities. Conservation and development approaches have shifted from command-and-control interventions, to integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs), and are now increasingly focusing on more direct conservation approaches
such as Payments for Environmental Services (PES) and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD), relying on contractual and market-based incentives to achieve conservation. However,
incorporating pro-poor benefits and the trade-off between equity and efficiency is a topic of large debate. Through case studies from two of the most important tropical forest regions of the world with high rates of poverty – the Congo basin and the Brazilian Amazon – this dissertation presents empirical evidence on the importance of environmental goods and services to livelihoods of the rural poor. The objective of the dissertation is to examine various conservation intervention effects on livelihoods, poverty alleviation as well as in achieving conservation goals. In a collection of five papers spanning five years of research, the dissertation presents evidence on the livelihood effects of conservation and provides insights on various points of onsideration in the equitable and efficient design of future conservation
interventions. The first three papers deal with the livelihood aspects of conservation interventions. Paper 1 presents a new method of characterising poverty groups in the Congo, using combined measures of assets and income, and importantly how they rely on the environmental goods provided by a Biosphere Reserve. Paper 2 examines the exploitation of two high value non-timber forest products (NTFPs), bushmeat and eru (Gnetum africanum), in the same Biosphere Reserve and their determinants of collection as well as
contribution to asset accumulation and thereby poverty alleviation. Paper 3 analyses the income and incentive effects of conservation transfers and other transfers under various land use regulated settings in the Brazilian Amazon. It looks at the welfare implications of payments and potential spillover effects on land use above land use conditionalities attached to some of the transfers. The last two papers deal with the efficiency aspects of implementing effective conservation interventions, namely REDD. Paper 4 presents a simple nnovation of stated preference methods to uncover the willingness-to-accept (WTA) compensation for foregone land use amongst households in the Brazilian Amazon, and compares this to actual current measures of agricultural income. It uncovers some basic household characteristics that can predictably determine levels of compensation required. Paper 5 is a theoretical piece using a case study from the Brazilian Amazon, on how full and asymmetric information affects capture of rents (efficiency), welfare of recipients (equity) and forest conservation (effectiveness). All papers have contributed to the discussion on equity, efficiency and effectiveness mplications of conservation interventions. Major learning points have outlined that applicability of certain interventions from one context to another may not be appropriate – for example from a well-governed and land use regulated Brazilian Amazon to the politically unstable and resource lacking Congo. But, through new perspectives such as policy makers or poverty classifications, we can evaluate trade-offs in a new light. Finally, innovating new methods in estimating opportunity costs can contribute to the realisation of emissions reductions through REDD interventions.