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

保护生物多样性和减缓贫穷是人类面临的两项最重大挑战。从历史上看，这些问题都是孤立地处理的，但越来越清楚的是，它们是不可分割地联系在一起的，需要一起处理。人类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诸多惠益。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在同一个地方发生）非常罕见。迈向可持续经济的进展需要应对两个挑战;首先，我们要勇敢地面对将发展和保护目标结合起来的问题，其次，我们要最大限度地提高效率，制定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成本。通过拥抱土地使用规划的人的方面，这个项目将有助于提供必要的拼图，以解除保护远离作为一个学术活动，以解决现实世界的问题。可以说，保护行动的最大成本是社会的成本，因为保护野生动物意味着失去经济机会，经济学家称之为“机会成本”。然而，不同的经济用地与保护本地物种有多不相容？在任何特定的环境中，还能赚多少钱？回答这些问题是巴西亚马逊地区的一项紧迫任务，在那里，迅猛的经济增长和高毁林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。在我早期在巴西亚马逊地区的工作中，我证明了金龟子和鸟类都是森林生态系统中人类干扰的极好指标。我将联合收割机结合这些物种的现有数据与新的实地研究，以了解不同的农业（如大豆，牛牧场，多年生作物）和林业（如选择性伐木和种植园林）土地使用的保护价值。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。我亦会搜集资料，了解每幅土地如作更有效益的用途，可能增加的利润。这些潜在的收入改善是社会为保护野生动物（如保护区和公园）和/或低效土地使用而采取的干预措施的机会成本。将保护价值与先前经济机会的成本（例如从阴凉处转移到阳光下的咖啡种植园）进行比较，将使我能够量化人类直接需求与自然保护之间的权衡。可能产生一系列结果：某些形式的土地利用可能造成有限的生态损失，但可以带来重大的经济收益，而其他形式的集约化可能不太符合保护目标。这一项目的成果将提供一个非常实际的步骤，以响应国际社会在《里约生物多样性公约》中提出的关于采取统一办法管理整个生态系统的呼吁。具体而言，我将开发一种工具，用于指导土地利用战略规划，该工具能够确定当前和计划中的土地利用效率低下的情况，以及需要最小限度地增加森林砍伐或生境退化的创收方法。

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.