Community Based Conservancies: Investigating the Prospects for Cooperation and Conflict

该奖项支持的研究将调查以社区为基础的方法保护自然资源的有效性。自然资源提供清洁水和空气、遗传多样性和就业机会等环境服务。如何最好地管理这些资源仍然是一个挑战，因为不同群体对这些资源提出了许多要求，而且往往是相互竞争的要求。在过去的几十年里，保护方法发生了重大变化，从禁止人类对关键区域的任何使用，到承认使用者社区必须发挥的重要作用。了解以社区为基础的保护方法是否以及如何工作，对于确保未来设计自然资源保护和利用政策和方案的努力是有效和有效的非常重要。研究人员选择在东非进行研究，因为她发现了一个网站，一些以社区为基础的方法，这被称为社区保护或CBCs，已经运作了一段时间，而其他的则刚刚推出。这使她能够开展一个科学严谨的比较项目，以评估这种自然资源管理方法的优点和缺点。 该地区是重要野生动物物种的家园，如狮子，大象，犀牛，猎豹和长颈鹿。这些动物生活在与牲畜牧民社区相邻的景观中，这些牧民的生计依赖于与野生动物相同的资源。因此，这是一个理想的环境，了解如何以社区为基础的方法来保护工作，其成本和利益的社区，以及他们是否是一个有效和高效的资源管理手段。资料的收集将采用访谈、观察、调查、实验经济学和文献分析等方法。这些数据将使该小组能够研究CBC形成的过程、社区参与以及土地使用规则的设计和实施。他们将评估CBCs如何影响CBCs成员之间的合作和冲突，以及与CBCs相邻但在CBCs之外的社区。研究人员还将构建计算机模拟（基于代理人的）模型，以了解CBCs带来的变化如何影响环境和家庭福祉。这项研究将为美国两所大学的本科生和研究生提供教育和培训机会。研究结果和所产生的模拟模型将以电子方式提供，并将适用于其他环境，如美国的国家公园和其他关键地点。

The research supported by this award will investigate the efficacy of community-based approaches to protecting natural resources. Natural resources provide environmental services such as clean water and air, genetic diversity, and employment opportunities. How to best manage these resources remains a challenge because of the many, often competing, demands made on them by different groups. Over the last few decades, methods of conservation have undergone significant change from approaches that prohibited any human use of key areas to those that recognize the important role that user communities have to play. Understanding if and how community-based approaches to conservation work is important for assuring that future efforts at designing policies and programs for natural resource protection and utilization are efficient and effective.The researcher has chosen to conduct the research in East Africa because she has found a site where some community-based approaches, which are known as Community Based Conservancies or CBCs, have been operating for some time while others are just being introduced. This allows her to carry out a scientifically rigorous comparative project to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of this approach to natural resource management. The region is home to important wildlife species such as lion, elephant, rhino, cheetah and giraffe. These animals live in landscapes alongside communities of livestock herders who depend for their livelihoods on the same resources as the wildlife. Thus, this is an ideal setting in which to understand how community-based approaches to conservation work, their costs and benefits to communities, and whether they are an effective and efficient means of resource management. Data will be collected interviews, observations, surveys, experimental economics, and document analysis. These data will allow the team to study the process of CBC formation, community participation, and how land use rules are designed and implemented. They will assess how CBCs affect cooperation and conflict among CBC members as well as communities that are adjacent to but outside of CBCs. The investigators also will construct computer simulation (agent-based) models to understand how changes brought about by CBCs affect the environment and household well-being. The study will provide education and training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students at two American universities. Study results and the simulation models produced, which will be made publically available, will be applicable to other settings, such as national parks and other key sites in the United States.