Trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and economic development in tropical forests

生物多样性保护和减贫是人类面临的两个最重大的挑战。从历史上看，这些问题都是孤立地解决的，但越来越明显的是，它们是密不可分的，需要一起处理。人类的福祉不仅取决于食物和水的供应，还取决于其他生态系统服务的保护，包括物种和生态系统的保护以及我们从中获得的许多好处。然而，平衡环境和经济目标是困难的，双赢的解决方案(经济发展和生物多样性保护可以同时进行)非常罕见。迈向可持续经济需要应对两个挑战；第一，我们要勇敢地面对发展和保护目标相结合的问题；第二，我们要最大限度地提高效率，制定出满足这两个目标的战略。在土地竞争激烈的地区，我们必须了解采取保护行动的社会和经济代价。通过拥抱土地利用规划的人文维度，该项目将有助于提供必要的拼图，将保护从解决现实世界问题的学术练习中解脱出来。可以说，保护野生动物行动的最大成本是社会成本，因为保护野生动物意味着失去经济机会，也就是经济学家所说的“机会成本”。然而，不同的经济用地与本土物种的保护有多不相容？在任何给定的景观中，潜在地可以多赚多少钱？为这些问题提供答案是巴西亚马逊地区的一项紧迫任务，那里激进的经济增长和高砍伐率威胁着剩余森林的可持续发展机会。因此，了解生物多样性和经济土地价值之间的重叠是发展更可持续的森林管理的关键，也是本研究的主要目的。在我早先在巴西亚马逊所做的工作中，我表明，屎甲虫和鸟类都是人类干扰森林生态系统的极好指标。我将把关于这些物种的现有数据与新的实地研究结合起来，以了解不同农业(例如大豆、牧场、多年生作物)和林业(例如选择性采伐和种植园林业)土地用途的保护价值。这项工作将在亚马逊的五个地区进行，并将有助于确定可能影响经济土地使用选择的不同生态和社会因素的重要性。我还会收集有关每一块土地如果用于更有成效的用途可能增加的利润的信息。这些潜在的收入增加是保护野生动物(如保护区和公园)的干预措施给社会带来的机会成本和/或低效的土地利用。将保护价值与前述经济机会的成本(例如，从阴凉的咖啡种植园转移到阳光咖啡种植园)进行比较，将使我能够量化人类当前需求和自然保护之间的权衡。有一系列结果是可能的：某些形式的土地利用可能会造成有限的生态损失，但可以带来显著的经济收益，而其他形式的集约化可能不太符合保护目标。该项目的成果将为响应《里约生物多样性公约》所阐明的国际社会关于统一管理整个生态系统的方法的呼吁，迈出非常实际的一步。具体地说，我将开发一种指导战略性土地利用规划的工具，能够识别当前和计划中土地利用的低效，以及需要最少额外砍伐森林或栖息地退化的创收方法。

Biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation are two of humanity's most significant challenges. Historically these problems have been tackled in isolation, yet it is becoming increasingly clear that they are inextricably linked and need to be dealt with together. Human well-being depends not only on the provision of food and water, but also on the preservation of other ecosystem services, including the conservation of species and ecosystems and the many benefits we derive from them. Nevertheless, balancing environmental and economic goals is difficult, and win-win solutions (where economic development and biodiversity conservation can occur in the same place) are very rare. Progress towards a sustainable economy requires meeting two challenges; first that we stand up to the problem of combining development and conservation goals, and second that we maximise our efficiency in devising strategies that satisfy both goals. In areas where there is strong competition for land it is vital that we understand the social and economic cost of taking conservation action. By embracing the human dimension of land-use planning this project will help provide the piece of the jigsaw necessary to lift conservation away from being an academic exercise to address real-world issues. Arguably the greatest cost of conservation action is the cost to society when protecting wildlife means lost economic opportunities / what economists call 'opportunity costs'. Yet how incompatible are different economic land-uses with the protection of native species? How much more money could potentially be made in any given landscape? Providing answers to these questions is an urgent task in the Brazilian Amazon, where aggressive economic growth and high rates of deforestation threaten the chance of sustainable development in the remaining forest. Understanding the overlap between biodiversity and economic land value is therefore key to developing more sustainable forest management, and is the primary aim of this research. During my earlier work in the Brazilian Amazon I showed that dung beetles and birds were both excellent indicators of human disturbance in forest ecosystems. I shall combine existing data on these species with new field studies, to understand the conservation value of different agricultural (e.g. soybean, cattle pastures, perennial crops) and forestry (e.g. selective logging and plantation forestry) land-uses. Work will be conducted in five areas of the Amazon, and will help determine the importance of different ecological and social factors that may influence economic land-use choices. I will also collect information on the potential increase in profits that could be gained from each area of land if it was put to a more productive use. These potential improvements in income are the opportunity costs to society by interventions to conserve wildlife (e.g. reserves and parks) and/or inefficient land-uses. Comparing conservation value with the cost of foregoing economic opportunities (e.g. moving from shade to sun coffee plantations) will allow me to quantify the trade-offs between immediate human needs and nature conservation. A range of outcomes are possible: some forms of land-use may incur limited ecological losses but allow significant economic gains, while other forms of intensification may be less compatible with conservation goals. The results of this project will provide a very practical step in addressing the call by the international community, articulated in the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity, for a unified approach to managing entire ecosystems. Specifically I will develop a tool for guiding strategic land-use planning that is able to identify both inefficiencies in current and planned land-uses, as well as methods of income generation that require minimal additional deforestation or habitat degradation.