Protected areas (PAs) are cornerstones of GEF's investments in biodiversity. But from time to time, PAs come under criticism for presumably imposing costs to marginalized rural communities. A paper published on July in Science  looked at a sample of protected areas for their possible effect on human populations (Accelerated Human Population Growth at Protected Area Edges, Wittemyer, G. et al., Science 321:123-126, 4 July 2008). Contrary to conventional wisdom, Wittemyer and colleagues found that average human population growth rates on the borders of 306 PAs in 45 countries in Africa and Latin America were nearly double average rural growth, suggesting that PAs attract, rather than repel, human settlement.

GEF’s Evaluation Office (GEF EO) has since completed two very good studies on the impact of PAs, but now sharpening the focus on two countries: Costa Rica and Thailand (Measuring the social impact of protected areas, Andam, K.S. et al., GEFEO report September 2008, 40 pp.; Evaluating the local socio-economic impacts of protected areas: Sims, K. R. E., GEFEO report, 10 September 2008, 36 pp.). To a large extent, these quasi-experimental approaches reaffirm the notion that PAs do not impoverish local people, and may indeed have positive net benefits to their livelihoods, as was the case with the Costa Rica study. For Thailand, the reported gains in consumption levels and decreased poverty rates outweighed the costs imposed by the protected areas.

GEF should be looking at publicizing this general finding with key constituencies - Parks are indeed good for people. Bear in mind that GEF has been the largest funder of protected areas (1,600 PAs, covering more than 360 million hectares - the size of Mongolia and Greenland put together). This is a huge asset for both the global environment and for the local communities that directly benefit from their existence.

The GEF EO should be applauded for conceiving and implementing these studies. One suggestion, though: the GEF EO should perhaps be looking at placing their high quality reports more regularly to the scrutiny of peer reviewed journals, including those of higher impact. The significant investments made in these focused analyses merit much wider dissemination because they have direct policy-making implications.


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# re: Protected areas are good for people – Part II

The relationship between biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation is clearly an important and timely subject: Matiku, P. (2008) Oryx 42: 1 summarizes the key issues neatly. Wittemyer et al. are certainly asking relevant questions. However, I have to admit to a sense of unease about their results. For one thing, disproportionate human population growth around PAs simply does not match experience. Even if it did, I’m not convinced that rapid population growth is necessarily an indicator of human well-being benefits. Definitely an avenue for further research. 11/22/2008 10:08 PM | Thomas Brooks

# re: Protected areas are good for people – Part II

The point about population growth [more like population movement, in the case of Wittemyer et al.] being a doubtful indicator of human well-being benefits is a good one. But net positive economic activity does induce migration poles to emerge. And what if the trend they report is real? What is the implication for the long-term sustainabiltiy of PAs? And what capacity do PAs have to _sustain_ human populations following economically-driven inflows? Yes, there are very wide avenues for further research. 11/24/2008 2:34 PM | Gustavo Fonseca

# re: Protected areas are good for people – Part II

The recent results of Wittemyer et al. in Science have raised a significant amount of discussion regarding the impact of protected areas on human populations. This discussion is needed, but unfortunately the results which spurred them are flawed. I, along with several others, re-analyzed Wittemyer et al.'s results, and found that they were simply the consequence of comparing incompatible datasets. We further applied a more spatially explicit analysis, and found no evidence for human population growth to be higher or lower around protected areas. As for migration, we show that most population growth around protected areas is simply the result of multi-directional growth from pre-existing population centers. Our results just came out in PLoS ONE, which we chose for their ability to handle dialogue about published manuscripts (Joppa, Loarie, Pimm. 2009. On population growth near protected areas. PLoS ONE). The impact of protected areas on human well-being is a hugely important topic and deserves in-depth attention. That said, there is still much to be learned. 1/26/2009 9:42 AM | Lucas Joppa

# re: Protected areas are good for people – Part II

We were denied a venue for a formal response to this article by PLoS One, therefore we have left a comment detailing our problems with the analysis on the PLoS One website. 2/3/2009 8:25 PM | George Wittemyer
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