Can existing assessment tools be used to track equity in protected area management under Aichi Target 11?

Aichi Target 11 (AT11) includes the commitment of 194 governments to equitably manage protected areas (PAs) by 2020. Here we evaluate whether existing PA Management Effectiveness (PAME) and social and governance assessment tools can be used to determine if AT11 meets equity goals. We find that PAME assessment conditions are insufficiently inclusive of relevant actors and do not satisfactorily allow for a diversity of perspectives to be expressed and accounted for, both of which are essential for equitable PA management. Furthermore, none of the analysed PAME tools fully cover multidimensional equity and thus they are inadequate for assessing progress towards equitable management in PAs. The available social and governance PA assessment tools stipulate more inclusive and participatory conditions within their guidelines, and the IUCN Governance Guidelines comprehensively capture equity dimensions in PA management, but results are not comparable across sites. We conclude that available assessment tools do not provide a reliable way to track equity in PAs at global scale. The IUCN Governance Guidelines could be adjusted to achieve this goal, providing that the information collected is made globally comparable, while ensuring transparency, accountability and room for contestation, including by communities whose livelihoods are directly implicated. Ultimately, developing and deploying globally comparable measures to evaluate equity is problematic, as the process of gathering comparable data inevitably obscures information that is highly relevant to resolving equity issues at local scales. This challenge must be met, however, if nations are to achieve and report on their success at meeting AT11 by 2020. © 2018 Elsevier LtdWe thank Jens Friis Lund from the University of Copenhagen for his great support in the writing of this publication. We also thank the following for their assistance in the data collection and analysis: April Eassom, Lauren Coad, Kathryn Knights, Jonas Geldmann, Murielle Misrachi and Naomi Kingston from UNEP-WCMC, PA Solutions, University of Oxford and University of Copenhagen, Phil Franks, Kate Schreckenberg and Dilys Roe from IIED, Marc Hockings, Fiona Leverington from IUCN WCPA/University of Queensland. N.Z-C. and N.B. acknowledge the funding provided by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 659881 to N.Z-C. and the Danish National Research Foundation for funding for the Centre for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate; grant number DNRF96 . We thank Jens Friis Lund from the University of Copenhagen for his great support in the writing of this publication. We also thank the following for their assistance in the data collection and analysis: April Eassom, Lauren Coad, Kathryn Knights, Jonas Geldmann, Murielle Misrachi and Naomi Kingston from UNEP-WCMC, PA Solutions, University of Oxford and University of Copenhagen, Phil Franks, Kate Schreckenberg and Dilys Roe from IIED, Marc Hockings, Fiona Leverington from IUCN WCPA/University of Queensland. N.Z-C. and N.B. acknowledge the funding provided by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 659881 to N.Z-C. and the Danish National Research Foundation for funding for the Centre for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate; grant number DNRF96

Anticipated impacts of achieving SDG targets on forests - a review

Sustainable development requires knowledge of trade-offs and synergies between environmental and non-environmental goals and targets. Understanding the ways in which positive progress in matters of development not directly concerned with the environment can affect the natural environment, whether for better or for worse, can allow policymakers and development agencies to avoid the negative impacts of their actions, while capitalising on mutually beneficial opportunities. Through a systematic review of the literature, we consider the impacts of UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets on forest ecosystems, and identify 63 targets associated with potentially beneficial, damaging or mixed (i.e. damaging and/or beneficial depending on context or location) impacts. Types of impact are not uniform within SDGs, nor necessarily within individual targets. Targets relating to energy and infrastructure are among the most damaging and best studied, while targets expected to potentially result in beneficial outcomes, typically associated with social progress and well-being, have been investigated to a much lesser degree, especially in the context of external interventions. Thirty-eight targets have some variation in the direction of their impacts (i.e. at least one record with mixed impacts, or two or more records with different directions), suggesting the potential to achieve beneficial over damaging impacts in many cases. We provide illustrative examples of a range of impacts and use our findings to provide recommendations for researchers, development agencies and policymakers

From Poachers to Protectors: Engaging Local Communities in Solutions to Illegal Wildlife Trade

Combating the surge of illegal wildlife trade (IWT) devastating wildlife populations is an urgent global priority for conservation. There are increasing policy commitments to take action at the local community level as part of effective responses. However, there is scarce evidence that in practice such interventions are being pursued and there is scant understanding regarding how they can help. Here we set out a conceptual framework to guide efforts to effectively combat IWT through actions at community level. This framework is based on articulating the net costs and benefits involved in supporting conservation versus supporting IWT, and how these incentives are shaped by anti-IWT interventions. Using this framework highlights the limitations of an exclusive focus on "top-down," enforcement-led responses to IWT. These responses can distract from a range of other approaches that shift incentives for local people toward supporting conservation rather than IWT, as well as in some cases actually decrease the net incentives in favor of wildlife conservation

COVID-19, systemic crisis, and possible implications for the wild meat trade in sub-Saharan Africa

Wild animals play an integral and complex role in the economies and ecologies of many countries across the globe, including those of West and Central Africa, the focus of this policy perspective. The trade in wild meat, and its role in diets, have been brought into focus as a consequence of discussions over the origins of COVID-19. As a result, there have been calls for the closure of China’s “wet markets”; greater scrutiny of the wildlife trade in general; and a spotlight has been placed on the potential risks posed by growing human populations and shrinking natural habitats for animal to human transmission of zoonotic diseases. However, to date there has been little attention given to what the consequences of the COVID-19 economic shock may be for the wildlife trade; the people who rely on it for their livelihoods; and the wildlife that is exploited. In this policy perspective, we argue that the links between the COVID-19 pandemic, rural livelihoods and wildlife are likely to be more complex, more nuanced, and more far-reaching, than is represented in the literature to date. We develop a causal model that tracks the likely implications for the wild meat trade of the systemic crisis triggered by COVID-19. We focus on the resulting economic shockwave, as manifested in the collapse in global demand for commodities such as oil, and international tourism services, and what this may mean for local African economies and livelihoods. We trace the shockwave through to the consequences for the use of, and demand for, wild meats as households respond to these changes. We suggest that understanding and predicting the complex dynamics of wild meat use requires increased collaboration between environmental and resource economics and the ecological and conservation sciences