The political economy of protected area performance: a framework
for evaluation

Dr. Robert T. Deacon, Professor, Dept. of Economics, University of California

April 13, 2006

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The area of land set aside for conservation of biodiversity and other natural resources has grown rapidly over the last 40 years. At present, however, there is little hard evidence on how well these ‘protected areas’ (PAs) are achieving the goals for which they were established. Assessing the effectiveness of PAs is critically important if the conservation NGOs and government agencies that work to establish these sites are to achieve the maximum impact from the resources they have to spend. Traditionally, decisions on which areas to set aside have been made on the basis of species richness and, possibly, measures of threat. An optimal decision framework, one that maximizes the conservation return from the available budget, must extend the analysis to take into account costs and, critically, to consider the role of host country political conditions.

The presentation will report on a current research project that aims to provide this information. A key aspect is the emphasis placed on developing a predictive model of how host country governance institutions are related to the level of protection achieved in PAs. Two approaches are taken to assessing conservation success. The first uses changes in forest cover in protected areas, as measured by satellite images, to indicate the success of protection in forested areas. The second approach, and our main emphasis, relies on a survey of NGO personnel who have expertise in individual PAs around the world on habitat loss, changes in species abundance and other indicators of conservation success. This survey will cover PAs in a broad set of countries with varied governance institutions and will solicit relatively detailed information on local political and economic conditions. The intended result is a predictive model identifies the host country institutional factors that are related to PA success. Results from this model will then be combined with information on species richness and threat—the factors presently receiving paramount attention—to develop a ranking system for potential protected area sites. The desired end product is a prioritization scheme that allows conservation NGOs and government bureaus to allocate conservation funds more cost effectively. A lively discussion will follow.

Robert Deacon is Professor of Economics and Professor of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research specialization is natural resource economics, with emphasis on political influences on natural resource markets and on resource use in developing countries. His past research has examined the economics of oil and gas production and taxation, the analysis of nonprice rationing under price controls and the economic analysis of government behavior. Since 1992 Professor Deacon has been University Fellow at Resources for the Future, a non-profit research organization specializing in resource and environmental economics. He served as Managing Editor of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management between 1997 and 2001. He has held visiting faculty or fellow positions at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, the University of Washington, Resources for the Future, Tilburg University (The Netherlands), and the University of Witten-Herdecke (Germany).