Elsevier

Biological Conservation

Volume 171, March 2014, Pages 247-258
Biological Conservation

Assessing the influence of land-cover change and conflicting land-use authorizations on ecosystem conversion on the forest frontier of Madre de Dios, Peru

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2014.01.036Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The main factor driving ecosystem conversion was a 239% increase in gold mining.

  • Designated conservation areas were most effective in ecosystem protection.

  • Conflicting land-use authorizations negated additionality of conservation areas.

  • Impact and mitigation of conflicting land designations requires further research.

  • Frequent and detailed monitoring can improve frontier conservation activities.

Abstract

Despite the many benefits natural forests provide, they are being lost worldwide at unsustainable rates as development frontiers expand. One approach to improving the efficacy of natural forest conservation efforts is to refine local forest conservation policies based on insights from the place-based study of conservation policies and land-use and land-cover change (LULC) dynamics. To demonstrate the strength of this approach, this research explores the dynamics of LULC and conservation policies on the forest frontier of Madre de Dios, Peru. The main objectives of this research are to evaluate the efficacy of designated conservation lands in a rapidly expanding frontier landscape and to assess the effect on ecosystem conversion of granting conflicting land-use designations, such as mining concessions, inside conservation areas. Using statistical matching and a GIS-based analysis of LULC, this research shows that for the period 2006–2011, designated conservation lands on the forest frontier of Madre de Dios significantly reduced ecosystem losses compared to non-conservation lands, but the effect was highly variable across conservation designations. Also, when present, conflicting land-use authorizations inside conservation areas, specifically overlapping mining and agricultural titles, eliminated the policy additionality of designating lands for conservation. This finding demonstrates that authorizing conflicting land-use rights inside conservation areas should be avoided to ensure intended land conservation outcomes. This case study also provides examples of how local forest conservation policies can be improved through detailed and frequent analyses of LULC and conservation policies, particularly in dynamic frontier landscapes where LULC and socio-economic conditions are rapidly changing.

Introduction

Globally, forest ecosystems provide a myriad of human benefits at multiple spatial scales, including the provision of ecosystem goods, such as timber and clean water, and the delivery of ecosystem services, such as carbon cycling (MEA, 2005). However, the widespread continued loss and degradation of forests around the world, particularly tropical rain forests, has led to calls for the adoption of additional forest conservation measures (e.g., Shearman et al., 2012, Laurance et al., 2012). Frequently, actions taken to advance forest conservation include implementing new conservation policies, including: new protected areas, international treaties, and payment for ecosystem service programs. Unfortunately, for most conservation policies, scientists and policy-makers still do not have a full understanding of their likely socio-environmental impacts and the optimum conditions for their application (Pullin and Knight, 2001, Parrish et al., 2003, Pattanayak et al., 2010, Miteva et al., 2012).

Over the last decade, in response to increasing awareness that conservation efforts could be improved with more empirical evaluation, a variety of studies evaluating the efficacy of conservation policies have been undertaken (e.g., Pattanayak et al., 2010, Miteva et al., 2012, Blackman, 2013). Frequently these studies have focused on assessing the effect of designating lands for conservation, including the global protected areas network (e.g., Joppa and Pfaff, 2010) and regional protected areas networks (e.g., Vuohelainen et al., 2012). Studies designed to assess the impact of designating lands for conservation suggest designated protected areas often have lower levels of land conversion than unprotected areas. Collectively, this body of research suggests that land designation can be an important factor influencing land conservation outcomes, but also that designation is only one factor among many that determine the efficacy of conservation policies (e.g., Scullion et al., 2011, Vuohelainen et al., 2012).

Since land designation is simply a title conferring a “bundle of rights” that legally determine who benefits from the land and how that land can be used (Robinson et al., 2011), targeted analyses of the systemic factors that determine the environmental outcomes of land designations are likely to yield insights that can inform comparable conservation activities. An important factor likely to influence the efficacy of designated conservation lands occurs when government agencies grant land-use rights to different parties that conflict, such as granting mining concessions inside authorized ecotourism concessions. Given that conflicting land-use authorizations are common in many parts of the world (e.g., Finer et al., 2008), it is surprising that the role of overlapping land designations on the efficacy of conservation outcomes has been poorly researched (but see Holland et al., 2013).

The great potential for unintended environmental outcomes resulting from authorizing overlapping and conflicting land-use rights within conservation areas suggests that conservation outcomes should be sensitive to the influence of conflicting land-use authorizations. In the Amazon region alone, many large-scale and conflicting land-use authorizations have already been implemented on designated conservation lands. Examples in Amazonia include: the Ecuadorian government’s recent zoning of 65% of its Amazon territory, e.g., Ecuador’s famous Yasuni National Park (Bass et al., 2010), for oil extraction; and the government of Peru granting oil leases on 72% of its Amazonian territory that includes designated conservation areas (Finer et al., 2008).

Because of the high potential for negative impacts from overlapping and conflicting land-use designations on the conservation and management of forests globally, this research examines this issue locally in Madre de Dios, Peru. In Madre de Dios, various affected land users have already identified overlapping land designations as problematic. For example, local Brazil nut gathers are facing logging threats from authorized forest concessionaires who have rights to harvest timber on approximately 1.3 million hectares of Brazil nut concessions, as well as from gold miners because mining concessions have been granted on top of 47,000 ha of Brazil nut concessions (Fraser, 2013).

To better understand how conservation designations and overlapping land conflicts influence conservation policies in Madre de Dios, this study used a mixed-methods approach to answer the following questions: (1) What is the efficacy, or policy additionality, of designated conservation lands on the rapidly expanding frontier of Madre de Dios for the period 2006–2011?, (2) What are the main factors influencing the efficacy of designated conservation areas?, and (3) How does granting conflicting land-use rights inside conservation areas, particularly mining concessions and agricultural titles, affect ecosystem conservation outcomes in areas designated for conservation?

Section snippets

Study area

Located in Peru’s southeast Amazonian province of Madre de Dios, the 2,060,000 ha study area includes the majority of the province’s contemporary LULC dynamics (Fig. 1). Madre de Dios is Peru’s designated “Capital of Biodiversity” and part of the Tropical Andes Biodiversity Hotspot (Myers, 2001) (Federal Law 26311). Madre de Dios is also recognized worldwide as a conservation priority due to its relatively intact forests, exceptionally high levels of biodiversity, strategic location in

Land-use and land-cover change 2001–2011

Landscape dynamics for the period 2001–2011 were complex and changed rapidly. Mining was the dominant driver of anthropogenic land-cover change, increasing during the period by 239% (9642 to 32,642 ha), while infrastructure, e.g., roads, buildings, and industrial areas, expanded by 44%, (1569–2264 ha). In contrast, agricultural lands declined by 10.8% (24,115–21,504 ha). The rate of ecosystem conversion, defined as the replacement of native vegetation by anthropogenic land-cover, was comparable

Discussion

A major goal of this research is to identify policy recommendations, or “best practices,” to improve forest conservation policies in frontier environments. Likewise, an important goal is to demonstrate the value of combining analyses of policy efficacy with studies of LULC to improve the design of forest conservation policies. To this end, the explicit objectives of this research are to evaluate the influence of conflicting land-use authorizations on ecosystem conversion and extend the work of

Conclusions

LULC dynamics and conservation additionality in the study area are the direct result of a complex interaction of local, regional, and international factors. This case study shows that like many active forest frontiers around the world, the efficacy of the conservation area system in Madre de Dios would benefit from rigorous and frequent analyses to monitor LULC and conservation policy outcomes. This case study also shows that conservation areas in the study area faced intense land-conversion

Acknowledgements

Juan Obesso, Chris Kirkby, Bethzabe Guevara, Yadira Cipriani, Antonio Velazco, Samantha Zwicker, Miles Logsdon, Daniel Vogt, Amanda Rasmussen, Bethany Drahota, Morgan Hoenig, Sam Scullion, and the nonprofit organizations the Amazon Conservation Association (ACA), the Association for the Conservation of the Amazon River (ACCA), and Fauna Forever. Also we are grateful for the helpful comments provided by two anonymous reviewers that greatly improved this manuscript.

This research was supported by

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