A recent study in Vietnam’s central Annamite mountains found biodiversity corridors linking protected areas can significantly boost the income of households living inside them.
A group of conservationists listening for gibbon calls in Hue Saola Nature Reserve in Vietnam’s Annamite mountains. Image courtesy of Cody Aylward / WWF.
Conservationists say connecting existing protected areas through biodiversity corridors is vital in many landscapes to prevent further loss of species and habitats. Yet the households living inside conservation areas often face stark financial tradeoffs associated with lost access to resources, sometimes making new designations controversial.
A recent study from the rugged mountains of central Vietnam, however, suggests that biodiversity corridors can bring significant economic benefits to the households who live inside them.
The study, published in Conservation Science and Practice, analyzed interviews with 120 families living in four villages in Quang Nam and Thua Thien provinces within the Annamite mountain range to find out how financial incentives tied to two biodiversity corridors connecting isolated protected areas affected people’s lives and livelihoods.
Households inside biodiversity corridors earned substantially more, mainly from conservation-linked payments, than those outside them. However, they also made less money from forest resources due to greater restrictions on how they could use their land.
The researchers say their findings underscore how conservation-linked payments and other longer-term benefits from living near flourishing forests, such as water purification, healthy pollinator populations and conservation-based jobs, can help communities recoup income they once derived from forest exploitation.
“By providing regular financial benefits from forest protection, programs like PFES [Payment for Forest Ecosystem Services] create incentives for communities to maintain forest cover and reduce pressures on critical habitats,” study lead author Nguyen Van Tri Tin, a conservation scientist at Southern Cross University in Australia at the time of the study, told Mongabay in an email.
For conservation programs to be successful in the long-term, initiatives have to provide alternative sources of income that help communities adapt to and benefit from protections, Nguyen said. “In biodiversity corridors, where maintaining habitat connectivity requires cooperation from communities outside protected areas, these incentive mechanisms are particularly valuable.”
Critically endangered red-shanked douc langurs are found in the central Annamites landscape. Image by Long Vu via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
A hotspot of endemic and newly described species
The study focuses on two biodiversity corridors that were set up by provincial authorities in 2018 to maintain connectivity between several of Vietnam’s flagship protected areas. The two corridors cover nearly 2,000 square kilometers (772 square miles) of otherwise unprotected watershed forests, steep forested valleys and cultivated land, linking up Quang Nam Saola Nature Reserve, Song Thanh National Park and the Elephant Habitat and Species Conservation Area; and Hue Saola Nature Reserve with Phong Dien Nature Reserve.
The corridors’ location close to the Laos border makes them pivotal in international goals to achieve effective transboundary conservation of some of the Annamite’s most enigmatic and endemic megafauna. Species like the large-antlered muntjac (Muntiacus vuquangensis) and the rarely observed saola ox (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) are notoriously difficult to study, but conservationists say protection of large continuous tracts of habitat will give them the best chances of survival.
“If we’re to think long-term about how to recover this landscape back to its original state of biodiversity, there needs to be a system in place that will allow these wide-ranging species to survive,” study co-author Cody Aylward, a senior connectivity specialist at WWF, told Mongabay in an interview.
The central Annamite mountains are also home to several globally threatened primates, including the red-shanked douc langur (Pygathrix nemaeus) and northern yellow-cheeked gibbon (Nomascus annamensis), and researchers frequently describe new species of reptiles, amphibians and insects found in the area.
However, the area faces significant pressures from illegal logging, forest encroachment and incursions by professional wildlife hunters from the lowlands.
In recognition of the need to link protected areas in the region while maintaining access to viable livelihoods for the 11 distinct Indigenous groups and Kinh landowners who live in the landscape, provincial authorities set up the two biodiversity corridors in 2018, supported by Vietnam’s PFES program.
Under the PFES program, households receive modest payments in return for complying with forest protection contracts that restrict land clearing for plantations, mandate the preservation of natural forest cover, and limit the harvesting of non-timber forest products like honey and medicinal plants. Payments are made by the provincial authority, funded by contributions from private companies that benefit from healthy ecosystems, such as hydropower and water supply firms.
Payments and protection contracts provide primary income
To find out how the presence of the biodiversity corridors financially impacts local communities, the researchers interviewed households both inside and outside of the corridor boundaries.
Relative household income was 25% higher in households living inside a biodiversity corridor, compared to households outside of them. This equated to land worth roughly $412 per hectare per year inside biodiversity corridors, and $330 per hectare per year outside of them.
Conservation-linked payments were the primary driver of the additional earnings inside the corridors. “PFES accounted for about half of the income for households in the corridors,” Aylward said. “It’s a big chunk of their income, underscoring why the governance framework around PFES needs to be strong, sustainable and reliable.” Ultimately, local people’s support for conservation depends on these payments, he added.
Other sources of conservation-linked revenue inside corridors include ecotourism and forest restoration and patrolling contracts to deter illegal logging and remove snares that represent the primary threat to wildlife in the area.
By contrast, residents outside of the biodiversity corridors earned most of their income from growing Acacia trees in pulp and paper plantations and selling non-timber forest products, such as bamboo shoots, leaves and rattan poles.
Residents living inside the biodiversity corridor also reported greater access to livelihood support initiatives, more participation in community-based forest management and higher overall satisfaction with forest governance.
However, some of these households also acknowledged a decline in their access to resources like non-timber forest products they once used for food and medicine.
“Households outside the corridors had greater access to non-timber forest products, fuelwood, and other non-monetary benefits that contribute to food security and daily livelihoods,” Nguyen said.
Nguyen explained the clear trade-off for those living inside the conservation areas underscores why local authorities and conservation groups should work closely with affected communities, especially with vulnerable groups who depend heavily on forest resources, to ensure people have the appropriate level of support.
Measures should also be taken to ensure conservation payments don’t unintentionally reinforce existing inequalities, Nguyen said.
The study found large landholders typically made higher earnings from PFES payments, indicating the program could end up benefiting wealthier landowning households, while leaving out smaller households, who are typically more dependent on ecosystems and have weaker land tenure, but make significant contributions to conservation through forest monitoring and reducing natural resource use.
To avoid inequalities and support vulnerable communities, the authors recommend a suite of conservation approaches, including devolving forest management rights to local communities, expanding conservation payment programs, supporting ecosystem restoration and monitoring jobs, strengthening value chains for products such as honey, rattan and medicinal plants.
Deeper understanding and long-term investment
Grace Wong, a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, who wasn’t involved in the Vietnam study, said the findings provide concrete evidence of how well-managed conservation-linked payments can help both nature and people.
However, she said that as with all social studies, the findings represent a snapshot in time. As commodity trends and market prices fluctuate, the situation in highly dynamic frontier regions like the Annamite mountains could rapidly change, she said. This is why it’s vital for conservation initiatives to seek a deep understanding of local realities and cultural nuances, she said.
“If conservation is to be truly sustainable over the longer term, engaging communities economically through incentives will not be sufficient without also recognizing and learning from their knowledge and relational values, [encompassing] the diverse emotions, preferences and place attachments of human-nature relationships,” Wong said.
The study’s focus on socioeconomic impacts left some questions about these relational values unanswered, Wong said. Exploring the ways different communities living in the landscape relate to their lands and natural resources, beyond their use of food and medicinal plants, would provide valuable context for designing inclusive and effective conservation plans, she said.
The team in Vietnam are now exploring ways to bring funding into landscapes outside protected areas through nature-based solutions, including forest restoration and sustainable forestry practices. “This effort overlaps biodiversity corridors in the Annamite mountains and will certainly benefit them,” Aylward said.
WWF-Vietnam is also helping policymakers improve the design of the biodiversity corridors to define core protection areas based on camera trap data. However, Aylward said the key will be ensuring conservation-linked payments like PFES continue to be sufficient, fairly distributed and sustained over the long-term to make conservation worthwhile for the families living within them.
“We have to make sure whatever policies are in place to support nature are also benefiting people,” he said. “We’ll continue being adaptive and trying new approaches to see what gets the most community support and results in the healthiest forests and best biodiversity outcomes.”
Author: Carolyn Cowan
This article was originally published on Mongabay under the Creative Commons BY NC ND licence. Read the original article.
