Designing conservation-incentives for Tanzania’s ecological corridors

Abstract

The global forest resources assessments show that the world lost about 420 million hectares of forest between 1990 and 2020, mainly due to deforestation. Between 2010 and 2020, Africa experienced the highest annual net forest loss, averaging 3.9 million hectares per year. Deforestation contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, and threats to livelihoods. In Tanzania, deforestation is attributed to agricultural expansion and is particularly pronounced in ecologically sensitive areas such as ecological corridors. <br/> Conservation policies to mitigate degradation have shown mixed results worldwide, but some instruments (e.g., payment for ecosystem services) are yet to be tested in the Tanzanian context. The success of instruments, however, depends not only on its design, but also the context to which they are applied. This dissertation evaluates the effectiveness of Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) in conserving ecological corridors in Tanzania. It further investigates the role of landownership heterogeneity and intrinsic motivation factors (here: personal values) in shaping PES performance. Tanzania’s ecological corridors, which are ecologically valuable yet heavily threatened by agricultural expansion, provide an ideal case study. <br/> The first empirical chapter provides site-specific evidence and establishes a foundation to support the relevance of PES for conservation. This chapter employs a holistic approach, using decision analysis to estimate the costs and benefits of conserving ecological corridors for biodiversity and for households and the government. The findings indicate that biodiversity improves with increased conservation (through landscape connectivity). However, there is no evidence to suggest that the conservation-based benefits for households outweigh their costs. On a landscape level, the government, representing society, appears to gain greater conservation-based benefits than costs, highlighting the importance of government adopting PES schemes to compensating compensate farmers for their financial losses. <br/> The second chapter tests two PES designs—fixed payment and fixed payment with an agglomeration bonus—using lab-in-the-field experiments that incorporate asymmetric landownership. Both designs demonstrated potential for conservation, and landownership asymmetry does not necessarily hinder collective action, a critical factor for conservation success. This resilience may be attributed to the strength of pre-existing social norms. <br/> The third chapter examines how personal values (biospheric and egoistic) influence conservation behavior and PES performance. Biospheric values were found to promote conservation behavior, while egoistic values hindered it. PES designs had minimal impact on altering conservation behavior among participants with strong biospheric values compared to the average treatment effect. This suggests that PES may be cost-inefficient in communities with predominantly biospheric values. <br/> The results of this dissertation generally suggest promising potential for PES in conserving ecological corridors in Tanzania. Nevertheless, it is important for policymakers to validate these findings in real-world contexts to ensure robust evidence. <br/>