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保护自然资源的方法的效力。自然资源提供清洁的水和空气、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项挑战，因为不同群体对这些资源提出了许多常常是相互竞争的要求。在过去的几十年里，保护方法经历了重大的变化，从禁止人类使用关键区域的方法到承认用户社区必须发挥重要作用的方法。了解以社区为基础的方法是否以及如何进行保护工作，对于确保未来为自然资源保护和利用设计政策和方案的努力是高效和有效的，是很重要的。这位研究人员选择在东非进行这项研究，因为她发现了一个地点，在那里，一些以社区为基础的方法，即以社区为基础的保护或CBCs，已经运作了一段时间，而其他方法刚刚被引入。这使她能够开展一个科学严谨的比较项目来评估这种自然资源管理方法的优缺点。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。这些动物与牧民社区一起生活在景观中，这些牧民与野生动物一样依靠同样的资源为生。因此，这是一个理想的环境，可以了解以社区为基础的方法如何进行保护工作，它们对社区的成本和利益，以及它们是否是一种有效和高效的资源管理手段。数据将收集访谈，观察，调查，实验经济学和文件分析。这些数据将使团队能够研究CBC形成的过程、社区参与以及如何设计和实施土地使用规则。他们将评估CBCs如何影响CBCs成员之间以及邻近但不在CBCs范围内的社区之间的合作和冲突。研究人员还将构建计算机模拟（基于主体）模型，以了解CBCs带来的变化如何影响环境和家庭福祉。该研究将为两所美国大学的本科生和研究生提供教育和培训机会。将向公众提供的研究结果和模拟模型将适用于其他环境，例如美国的国家公园和其他重要地点。

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.