Impact of Tanzania's Wildlife Management Areas on household wealth

Large-scale area-based conservation measures affect millions of people globally. Understanding their social impacts is necessary to improve effectiveness and minimize negative consequences. However, quantifying the impacts of conservation measures that affect large geographic areas and diverse peoples is expensive and methodologically challenging, particularly because such evaluations should capture locally defined conceptions of well-being while permitting policy-relevant comparisons. Here, we measure the impact of Tanzania’s Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs), a national community-based conservation and poverty reduction initiative. We use a novel, cost-effective impact evaluation method based on participatory wealth ranking and Bayesian multilevel modelling. We find that from 2007 to 2015 the impacts of WMAs on wealth were small and variable, with no clear evidence of widespread poverty reduction. Accompanying qualitative data suggest that apparently positive effects in one WMA cannot be directly attributed to WMA activities. Our results suggest that current WMA policy needs to be revisited if it is to promote positive local development

Navigating power in conservation

Conservation research and practice are increasingly engaging with people and drawing on social sciences to improve environmental governance. In doing so, conservation engages with power in many ways, often implicitly. Conservation scientists and practitioners exercise power when dealing with species, people and the environment, and increasingly they are trying to address power relations to ensure effective conservation outcomes (guiding decision-making, understanding conflict, ensuring just policy and management outcomes). However, engagement with power in conservation is often limited or misguided. To address challenges associated with power in conservation, we introduce the four dominant approaches to analyzing power to conservation scientists and practitioners who are less familiar with social theories of power. These include actor-centered, institutional, structural, and, discursive/governmental power. To complement these more common framings of power, we also discuss further approaches, notably non-human and Indigenous perspectives. We illustrate how power operates at different scales and in different contexts, and provide six guiding principles for better consideration of power in conservation research and practice. These include: (1) considering scales and spaces in decision-making, (2) clarifying underlying values and assumptions of actions, (3) recognizing conflicts as manifestations of power dynamics, (4) analyzing who wins and loses in conservation, (5) accounting for power relations in participatory schemes, and, (6) assessing the right to intervene and the consequences of interventions. We hope that a deeper engagement with social theories of power can make conservation and environmental management more effective and just while also improving transdisciplinary research and practice

Nature’s contribution to poverty alleviation, human wellbeing and the SDGs

Millions of households globally rely on uncultivated ecosystems for their livelihoods. However, much of the understanding about the broader contribution of uncultivated ecosystems to human wellbeing is still based on a series of small-scale studies due to limited availability of large-scale datasets. We pooled together 11 comparable datasets comprising 232 settlements and 10,971 households in ten low-and middle-income countries, representing forest, savanna and coastal ecosystems to analyse how uncultivated nature contributes to multi-dimensional wellbeing and how benefits from nature are distributed between households. The resulting dataset integrates secondary data on rural livelihoods, multidimensional human wellbeing, household demographics, resource tenure and social-ecological context, primarily drawing on nine existing household survey datasets and their associated contextual information together with selected variables, such as travel time to cities, population density, local area GDP and land use and land cover from existing global datasets. This integrated dataset has been archived with ReShare (UK Data Service) and will be useful for further analyses on nature-wellbeing relationships on its own or in combination with similar datasets

Senescent cells evade immune clearance via HLA-E-mediated NK and CD8(+) T cell inhibition

Senescent cells accumulate in human tissues during ageing and contribute to age-related pathologies. The mechanisms responsible for their accumulation are unclear. Here we show that senescent dermal fibroblasts express the non-classical MHC molecule HLA-E, which interacts with the inhibitory receptor NKG2A expressed by NK and highly differentiated CD8 + T cells to inhibit immune responses against senescent cells. HLA-E expression is induced by senescence-associated secretary phenotype-related pro-inflammatory cytokines, and is regulated by p38 MAP kinase signalling in vitro. Consistently, HLA-E expression is increased on senescent cells in human skin sections from old individuals, when compared with those from young, and in human melanocytic nevi relative to normal skin. Lastly, blocking the interaction between HLA-E and NKG2A boosts immune responses against senescent cells in vitro. We thus propose that increased HLA-E expression contributes to persistence of senescent cells in tissues, thereby suggesting a new strategy for eliminating senescent cells during ageing

Thiazolides promote apoptosis in colorectal tumor cells via MAP kinase-induced Bim and Puma activation

While many anticancer therapies aim to target the death of tumor cells, sophisticated resistance mechanisms in the tumor cells prevent cell death induction. In particular enzymes of the glutathion-S-transferase (GST) family represent a well-known detoxification mechanism, which limit the effect of chemotherapeutic drugs in tumor cells. Specifically, GST of the class P1 (GSTP1-1) is overexpressed in colorectal tumor cells and renders them resistant to various drugs. Thus, GSTP1-1 has become an important therapeutic target. We have recently shown that thiazolides, a novel class of anti-infectious drugs, induce apoptosis in colorectal tumor cells in a GSTP1-1-dependent manner, thereby bypassing this GSTP1-1-mediated drug resistance. In this study we investigated in detail the underlying mechanism of thiazolide-induced apoptosis induction in colorectal tumor cells. Thiazolides induce the activation of p38 and Jun kinase, which is required for thiazolide-induced cell death. Activation of these MAP kinases results in increased expression of the pro-apoptotic Bcl-2 homologs Bim and Puma, which inducibly bind and sequester Mcl-1 and Bcl-xL leading to the induction of the mitochondrial apoptosis pathway. Of interest, while an increase in intracellular glutathione levels resulted in increased resistance to cisplatin, it sensitized colorectal tumor cells to thiazolide-induced apoptosis by promoting increased Jun kinase activation and Bim induction. Thus, thiazolides may represent an interesting novel class of anti-tumor agents by specifically targeting tumor resistance mechanisms, such as GSTP1-1

Survey of the impacts of an environmental intervention on household wealth, livelihoods and wellbeing in Tanzania 2007-2015

This dataset is part of the Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) programme. These data represent the central quantitative datasets from a mixed method, quasi-experimental study of the effects of an environmental intervention (national implementation of Wildlife Management Areas - WMAs) on Tanzania's rural population. The study focused on changes in wealth, livelihoods and wellbeing 2007-2014 for households in villages that are members of a WMA, compared to households in matched control villages that are not in WMAs, and causal attribution of those changes. The study covered 6 of the then 18 WMAs, (3 in northern rangelands and 3 in southern Miombo woodlands), and surveyed a total of 47 villages (both 'inside' WMAs and matched 'outside' non-WMA villages). In all, 13,578 households in these villages were wealth ranked on locally derived, village-specific criteria for both 2014/5 and (by recall) for 2007. From this sample frame we surveyed a stratified random sample of 1924 household heads (including 187 female heads of household) and 945 wives of household heads. Questions to household heads addressed household composition, land and livestock assets, resource use, income generating activities and income portfolios, participation in decision-making in natural resources management, and perceived benefits and costs of conservation, at the time of the 2014/5 survey and also by recall for 2007. Related questions addressed women’s perceptions of changes since 2007 in access to land and natural resources, production, income-generating activities, human-wildlife conflict, participation in WMA management; and overall costs and benefits of WMAs. Though there is also considerable qualitative data, much of this is politically sensitive and therefore not deposited here: interested researchers may contact the PI for partial access. Environmental data not already in the public domain are being deposited in the NERC Environment Information Data Service.Rural people across the global south are caught between competing land demands for large-scale cultivation, global conservation, and local needs. These can in theory be integrated locally through community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) and payments for ecosystem services (PES): where communities can decide on and benefit directly from natural resources, they may invest in and manage those resources in ways that are more socially and environmentally sustainable. CBNRM/PES initiatives are being rolled out across the global south, but there are conflicting views as to how well they work, for whom and under what circumstances. This is partly due to the complexity and multidimensionality of the ecosystem services (ES) and poverty alleviation (PA) outcomes involved, and the inevitable tradeoffs, but also to the hitherto limited use of either qualitatively or quantitatively rigorous impact evaluation approaches that are independent, control for confounding factors and ensure the voices of the most marginalized are heard. As well as being limited by generally weak research design, studies to date have often failed to account for the ways political sensitivities around changing access to and use of ecosystem services may compromise data quality and mask differentiated impacts. PIMA seizes a unique policy moment, with Tanzania's poverty reduction strategy Mkukuta driving nationwide implementation of CBNRM/PES-based Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs), and other countries in the region considering comparable initiatives. The WMAs comprise different ecosystems (rangeland, miombo), socio-political structures (long-established/ethnically uniform vs recent, heterogeneous constituent villages), and a broad range of ecosystem services (water-regulating and -supplying, provision of forest products, grazing, livestock, crop and wildlife production, cultural services both local and global (from locally significant social and ritual spaces, to heritage and tourism). Quasi-experimental comparison of social and ecological outcomes for established WMAs with statistically matched non-WMA areas (within the same ecosystems) offers an ideal opportunity for rigorous impact evaluation. PIMA combines analysis of remotely-sensed, public-domain MODIS and NDVI data, with cutting edge study of governance, and new data from qualitatively and quantitatively rigorous, differentiated survey of livelihoods and resource use histories, structured within a quasi-experimental research design. PIMA brings together a powerful international research team to work with strongly-rooted civil society organizations to ensure research excellence and development impact. Building on ongoing stakeholder engagement, with input sought from users, practitioners and policymakers at all stages pre- to post-project, PIMA ensures findings will be of direct use locally, nationally and internationally. PIMA 's framework and approach create channels for grassroots users to make experienced change in ecosystem services quality and quantity, and in poverty and wellbeing, more clearly heard by policymakers and practitioners, as well as highlighting tradeoffs and best practice lessons. Establishing what works, why and for whom will be of use not only to the one million rural people directly affected by WMAs, but will deliver insights and best practice lessons generalizable to the many millions more whose livelihoods and wellbeing are to be shaped by comparable CBNRM/PES initiatives. The findings delivered, and the mechanisms piloted, will give local users and national and international policymakers and practitioners the insights and tools to improve interventions through creating better upward and downward accountability. PIMA findings will be of use locally to rural people making collective and individual resource use decisions, through national levels, to international donors deciding how to invest scarce resources for ecosystem services and poverty alleviation.</p