Suchergebnisse

International audience ; Meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals requires reconciling development with biodiversity conservation. Governments and lenders increasingly call for major industrial developments to offset unavoidable biodiversity loss but there are few robust evaluations of whether offset interventions ensure no net loss of biodiversity. We focus on the biodiversity offsets associated with the high-profile Ambatovy mine in Madagascar and evaluate their effectiveness at delivering no net loss of forest. As part of their efforts to mitigate biodiversity loss, Ambatovy compensate for forest clearance at the mine site by slowing deforestation driven by small-scale agriculture elsewhere. Using a range of methods, including extensive robustness checks exploring 116 alternative model specifications, we show that the offsets are on track to avert as much deforestation as was caused by the mine. This encouraging result shows that biodiversity offsetting can contribute towards mitigating environmental damage from a major industrial development, even within a weak state, but there remain important caveats with broad application. Our approach could serve as a template to facilitate other evaluations and so build a stronger evidence-base of the effectiveness of no net loss interventions.

International audience ; Meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals requires reconciling development with biodiversity conservation. Governments and lenders increasingly call for major industrial developments to offset unavoidable biodiversity loss but there are few robust evaluations of whether offset interventions ensure no net loss of biodiversity. We focus on the biodiversity offsets associated with the high-profile Ambatovy mine in Madagascar and evaluate their effectiveness at delivering no net loss of forest. As part of their efforts to mitigate biodiversity loss, Ambatovy compensate for forest clearance at the mine site by slowing deforestation driven by small-scale agriculture elsewhere. Using a range of methods, including extensive robustness checks exploring 116 alternative model specifications, we show that the offsets are on track to avert as much deforestation as was caused by the mine. This encouraging result shows that biodiversity offsetting can contribute towards mitigating environmental damage from a major industrial development, even within a weak state, but there remain important caveats with broad application. Our approach could serve as a template to facilitate other evaluations and so build a stronger evidence-base of the effectiveness of no net loss interventions.

International audience ; Meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals requires reconciling development with biodiversity conservation. Governments and lenders increasingly call for major industrial developments to offset unavoidable biodiversity loss but there are few robust evaluations of whether offset interventions ensure no net loss of biodiversity. We focus on the biodiversity offsets associated with the high-profile Ambatovy mine in Madagascar and evaluate their effectiveness at delivering no net loss of forest. As part of their efforts to mitigate biodiversity loss, Ambatovy compensate for forest clearance at the mine site by slowing deforestation driven by small-scale agriculture elsewhere. Using a range of methods, including extensive robustness checks exploring 116 alternative model specifications, we show that the offsets are on track to avert as much deforestation as was caused by the mine. This encouraging result shows that biodiversity offsetting can contribute towards mitigating environmental damage from a major industrial development, even within a weak state, but there remain important caveats with broad application. Our approach could serve as a template to facilitate other evaluations and so build a stronger evidence-base of the effectiveness of no net loss interventions.

International audience ; The English language version of this book chapter "Forest conservation in Madagascar: past, present, and future" is available on the EcoEvoRxiv preprint server https://ecoevorxiv.org/7p6rx/) .At this critical time for the future of Madagascar's biodiversity, we first review the past: touching upon conservation from pre- to post-colonial periods before focusing on the period which most dramatically shaped the country's current conservation-related institutions and policies (1984-2009). Next the present: we examine evidence for the effectiveness (or otherwise) of the main approaches to forest conservation on the island. We look in detail at how conservation has conceptualized the link between environment and development in Madagascar, the impact of measures by conservationists to transform rural livelihoods, and the effectiveness of protected areas, community-based natural resources management, and the environmental impact assessment legislation. Finally, we look to the future and consider how pressures on Madagascar's biodiversity, and the conservation community's responses, are evolving and need to evolve. ; A paraître dans le prochain livre The New Natural History of Madagascar, édité par S. M. Goodman, à publier par Princeton University PressA ce moment critique pour l'avenir de la biodiversité de Madagascar, nous révisons le passé en premier : abordant la conservation de la période précoloniale à la période postcoloniale avant de se concentrer sur la période ayant le plus dramatiquement formé les institutions de conservation actuelles et les politiques (1984-2009). Ensuite, le présent : nous examinons une preuve pour l'efficacité (ou sinon) des approches principales sur la conservation de la forêt sur une île. Nous voyons en détail comment la conservation a-t-elle conceptualisé le lien entre l'environnement et le développement à Madagascar, l'impact des mesures prises par les conservationnistes (écologistes) pour transformer les moyens d'existence ruraux, et l'efficacité des aires ...

Despite increased effort from non-governmental organisations, academics and governments over recent decades, several threats continue to cause species declines and even extinctions. Resource use by a growing human population is a significant driver of biodiversity loss, so conservation scientists need to be interested in the factors that motivate human behaviour. Economic models have been applied to human decision making for many years; however, humans are not financially rational beings and other characteristics of the decision maker (including attitude) and the pressure that people perceive to behave in a certain way (subjective norms) may influence decision making; these are characteristics considered by social psychologists interested in human decision making. We review social-psychology theories of behaviour and how they have been used in the context of conservation and natural-resource management. Many studies focus on general attitudes towards conservation rather than attitudes towards specific behaviours of relevance to conservation and thus have limited value in designing interventions to change specific behaviours (e.g. reduce hunting of a threatened species). By more specifically defining the behaviour of interest, and investigating attitude in the context of other social-psychological predictors of behaviour (e.g. subjective norms, the presence of facilitating factors and moral obligation), behaviours that have an impact on conservation goals will be better understood, allowing for the improved design of interventions to influence them.

Background: Psychiatric Intensive Care Units (PICU) have been part of most inpatient psychiatric services for some time, although information about their functioning and outcome has not previously been collated. Aim: To conduct a systematic literature review to assess the current state of knowledge about such services. Method: A search of electronic databases was undertaken, followed by obtaining additional references from items obtained. Results: Over 50 papers in English containing some empirical data were identified. Most studies were retrospective. Typical PICU patients are male, younger, single, unemployed, suffering from schizophrenia or mania, from a Black Caribbean or African background, legally detained, with a forensic history. The most common reason for admission is for aggression management, and most patients stay a week or less. Evidence of the efficacy of PICU care is very poor. Conclusions: Most research so far has been small scale, and more substantial work using better methodologies is clearly required.

The Government of Madagascar is trying to reduce deforestation and conserve biodiversity through creating new protected areas in the eastern rainforests. While this has many benefits, forest use restriction may bring costs to farmers at the forest frontier. We explored this through a series of surveys in five sites around the Corridor Ankeniheny Zahamena new protected area and adjacent national parks. In phase one a stratified random sample of 603 households completed a household survey covering demographic and socio-economic characteristics, and a choice experiment to estimate the opportunity costs of conservation. A stratified sub-sample (n = 171) then completed a detailed agricultural survey (including recording inputs and outputs from 721 plots) and wild-harvested product survey. The data have been archived with ReShare (UK Data Service). Together these allow a deeper understanding of the household economy on the forest frontier in eastern Madagascar and their swidden agricultural system, the benefits households derive from the forests through wild-harvested products, and the costs of conservation restrictions to forest edge communities.

The Government of Madagascar is trying to reduce deforestation and conserve biodiversity through creating new protected areas in the eastern rainforests. While this has many benefits, forest use restriction may bring costs to farmers at the forest frontier. We explored this through a series of surveys in five sites around the Corridor Ankeniheny Zahamena new protected area and adjacent national parks. In phase one a stratified random sample of 603 households completed a household survey covering demographic and socio-economic characteristics, and a choice experiment to estimate the opportunity costs of conservation. A stratified sub-sample (n = 171) then completed a detailed agricultural survey (including recording inputs and outputs from 721 plots) and wild-harvested product survey. The data have been archived with ReShare (UK Data Service). Together these allow a deeper understanding of the household economy on the forest frontier in eastern Madagascar and their swidden agricultural system, the benefits households derive from the forests through wild-harvested products, and the costs of conservation restrictions to forest edge communities.

Major developments, such as mines, will often have unavoidable environmental impacts. In such cases investors, governments, or even a company's own standards increasingly require implementation of biodiversity offsets (investment in conservation with a measurable outcome) with the aim of achieving 'no net loss' or even a 'net gain' of biodiversity. Where conservation is achieved by changing the behaviour of people directly using natural resources, the offset might be expected to have social impacts but such impacts have received very little attention. Using the case study of Ambatovy, a major nickel mine in the eastern rainforests of Madagascar and Ambatovy, a company at the vanguard of developing biodiversity offsets, we explore local perceptions of the magnitude and distribution of impacts of the biodiversity offset project on local wellbeing. We used both qualitative (key informant interviews and focus group discussions) and quantitative (household survey) methods. We found that the biodiversity offsets, which comprise both conservation restrictions and development activities, influenced wellbeing in a mixture of positive and negative ways. However, overall, respondents felt that they had suffered a net cost from the biodiversity offset. It is concerning that benefits from the development activities do not compensate for the costs of the conservation restrictions, that those who bear the costs are not the same people as those who benefit, and that there is a mismatch in timing between the immediate restrictions and the associated development activities which take some time to deliver benefits. These issues matter both from the perspective of environmental justice, and for the long term sustainability of the biodiversity benefits the offset is supposed to deliver.

Forests and trees are key to solving water availability problems in the face of climate change and to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. A recent global assessment of forest and water science posed the question: How do forests matter for water? Here we synthesize science from that assessment, which shows that forests and water are an integrated system. We assert that forests, from the tops of their canopies to the base of the soils in which trees are rooted, must be considered a key component in the complex temporal and spatial dimensions of the hydrologic cycle. While it is clear that forests influence both downstream and downwind water availability, their actual impact depends on where they are located and their processes affected by natural and anthropogenic conditions. A holistic approach is needed to manage the connections between forests, water and people in the face of current governance systems that often ignore these connections. We need policy interventions that will lead to forestation strategies that decrease the dangerous rate of loss in forest cover and that-where appropriate-increase the gain in forest cover. We need collective interventions that will integrate transboundary forest and water management to ensure sustainability of water supplies at local, national and continental scales. The United Nations should continue to show leadership by providing forums in which interventions can be discussed, negotiated and monitored, and national governments must collaborate to sustainably manage forests to ensure secure water supplies and equitable and sustainable outcomes. ; Funding for this work was provided by the Australian Research Council Linkage Grant (LP130100498).