The effectiveness and social implications of economic incentives for conservation: a case study in Ruaha, Tanzania

许多富有魅力的大型食肉动物在活动范围和数量上都经历了严重的下降。虽然这些物种--如非洲狮(Panthera Leo)--经常在全球范围内受到高度重视，但它们经常给社区带来巨大的当地成本。这些费用通常由贫困农村地区的牧民承担，他们是最不能承受这些费用的人之一。虽然人与食肉动物的关系是一个复杂的问题，涉及多种社会、经济和文化因素--包括人与人之间的冲突--但牲畜捕食造成的经济损失往往是一个关键决定因素。由于非洲剩余的狮子种群主要生活在人类主导的母狮群中，报复性和非报复性杀戮在整个狮子范围内无处不在，被认为是东非的主要威胁。一些保护方法试图通过提供“鼓励共存的费用”(PEC)来缓解这种情况。这些措施旨在抵消大型食肉动物造成的各种成本，并大致分为两类，一类是为因捕食而损失的牲畜提供补偿，另一类是通过将大型食肉动物的存在与政府补贴的兽药和医疗保健等经济激励措施联系起来，促进共存。在东非，与大型食肉动物共存的社区往往是传统的牧民，在物质和社会上依赖他们的牲畜，特别容易受到“文化贫困陷阱”的伤害。由于有义务减轻这种贫困，一些自然资源保护者将其描述为“道德上的当务之急”，PEC方法造福贫困农村社区和受到威胁的食肉动物的潜力已经得到承认。这项研究的目标是检验多激励PEC计划在改变人们对大型食肉动物的看法和行为以及提供社会福利方面的作用和有效性。该项目跨越多个学科，借鉴多个理论框架；以生态经济学为基础，与相关的“生态系统服务付费”文献在主题和语义上有显著的相似之处。此外，该项目在很大程度上借鉴了人类与食肉动物共存的更广泛的社会心理理论，包括接受危险和野生动物容忍的模型。这些文献确定了与该项目目标有关的几个主题。第一个问题涉及在社区内采取不同行动的经济诱因的潜力，例如导致妇女特别呼吁更好的保护做法。从这些框架中得出的第二个关键主题涉及保护的经济激励的社会正义影响，特别是关于社区内利益和成本的平衡。

Many charismatic large carnivores have undergone severe declines in range and population. Whilst these species - such as the African lion (Panthera leo) - are regularly valued highly at a global level, they frequently impose significant local costs to communities. These are often borne by pastoralists in poor rural areas, who are among those least able to tolerate such costs. Whilst human-carnivore relations represent a complex issue with multiple social, economic and cultural factors - including human-human conflict - economic losses through livestock predation are often a key determinant. With the remaining lion populations in Africa predominantly inhabiting human-dominated matrices, retaliatory and non-retaliatory killings are pervasive throughout the lion range and are considered their primary threat in East Africa. Some conservation approaches have attempted mitigate this by providing 'payments to encourage co-existence' (PEC). These aim to offset the diverse costs imposed by large carnivores and divide broadly between those that provide compensation for livestock lost to predation, and those that aim to foster coexistence by linking the presence of large carnivores to economic incentives such as subsidised veterinary medicines and healthcare. In East Africa, communities coexisting with large carnivores are often traditional pastoralists, materially and socially dependent upon their livestock and particularly vulnerable to 'cultural poverty-traps'. With the obligation to alleviate such poverty described by some conservationists as a 'moral imperative', the potential of PEC approaches to benefit both poor rural communities and threatened carnivores has been acknowledged. The objectives of this research are to examine the role and efficacy of a multi-incentive PEC scheme in changing perceptions of - and behaviour towards - large carnivores in addition to delivering social good.This project spans disciplines and draws from multiple theoretical frameworks; grounded in ecological economics, it shares significant thematic and semantic similarities with the related 'payments for ecosystem services' literature. Furthermore, this project draws heavily from wider socio-psychological theories of human-carnivore coexistence, including models for hazard acceptance and wildlife tolerance. These bodies of literature have identified several themes relevant to the objectives of this project. The first concerns the potential of economic incentives to act differentially within communities, such as resulting in women in particular to call for better conservation practices. The second key theme drawn from these frameworks concerns the social justice implications of economic incentives for conservation, particularly regarding the balance of benefits and costs within communities.