Protected areas can reduce poverty of local communities

A groundbreaking study from researchers in Georgia unexpectedly finds that protected areas in two developing countries - Thailand and Costa Rica - have actually reduced poverty in local communities over time.

The common assumption is that protected areas exacerbate poverty in local communities by restricting access to important economic activities like agriculture and logging.

The study differs from past research in that the investigators controlled for a number of confounding variables. Since parks are often located in remote areas with poor infrastructure, local communities may already be predisposed to poverty with or without the parks.

To control for this issue, Kwaw Andam and fellow researchers compared villages adjacent to protected areas with communities that matched up for potentially confounding characteristics such as pre-protection poverty, forest cover, land productivity, and access to transportation and market infrastructure.

They found that compared to the control communities, villages adjacent to protected areas had less poverty relative to baseline levels. Based on this, they were able to conclude that protected areas in Costa Rica and Thailand were responsible for reducing the poverty level approximately 10% and 30% respectively.

"The results are surprising," co-author Paul Ferraro said in a press release. "Most people might expect that if you restrict resources, people on average will be worse off."

While it is unclear why protected areas had this impact, "the authors speculate that the conservation of biodiverse areas may have helped the poor because of tourism and infrastructure, such as new roadways, which may have provided new economic opportunities."

Despite the very promising results the study leaves a number of questions to be addressed. For example, it is still uncertain whether poor people from when the protected areas were designated have actually benefited over time.

It could be that in certain cases wealthier people migrating in to take advantage of new economic opportunities from tourism have displaced poor people in local communities.  More research is needed to shed light on these finer scale but critically important details.

--by Rob Goldstein

Andam, K., Ferraro, P., Sims, K., Healy, A., & Holland, M. (2010). Protected areas reduced poverty in Costa Rica and Thailand Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0914177107