E-Letter responses to:

review: William. M. Adams, Ros Aveling, Dan Brockington, Barney Dickson, Jo Elliott, Jon Hutton, Dilys Roe, Bhaskar Vira, and William Wolmer Biodiversity Conservation and the Eradication of Poverty Science 2004; 306: 1146-1149 [Abstract] [Full text] [PDF]

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Conservation does not compromise social development in Brazilian Cerrado

Luis M Bini, José A. F. Diniz-Filho   (24 May 2005)

Conservation does not compromise social development in Brazilian Cerrado 24 May 2005
Luis M Bini, Professor Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brasil, José A. F. Diniz-Filho Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Conservation does not compromise social development in Brazilian Cerrado	Adams et al. (12 Nov. 2004, p. 1146-1149) recently summarized the hot debate about the impact of protected areas on poverty. They provided fresh insights by offering four scenarios disentangling poverty reduction and conservation. Here, we evaluated which scenario better fit data for Brazilian Cerrado. Specifically, we tested if the presence of protected areas affected variation in per capita (delta I, in R$) incomes between 1991 and 2000 (1,2) for 1199 municipalities in Brazilian Cerrado. There was no significant difference in average delta I between municipalities harboring large (< 5000 ha) and old (established before 1991) protected areas and municipalities not harboring any protected area (t = 0.35; P = 0.731). This result supports the first scenario proposed by Adams et al. in which poverty and conservation are separate policy realms. However, even newer and smaller areas could be included in this analysis because one could argue that they generate local impacts on poverty. Besides, newer protected areas, at least in Brazil, have been selected mainly in nearly pristine areas, which are used for economic activities even before the official reservation. When including all data, we detected a significant difference in delta I between municipalities that harbor or not protected areas (t = 4.04; P < 0.001), with the presence of protected areas increasing DI in ca. R$ 35.2 (about US$ 11.7). This difference suggests that protected areas improved economic activities (e.g., wildlife tourism and fisheries), in part supporting Adams’ et al. fourth scenario (reservation can be an important component for poverty reduction). Alternatively, new and small areas could have simply being created in richer municipalities. Our data do not allow distinguishing between these two explanations for this increase in delta I. Anyway, our results offer an optimistic view for the relationship between poverty reduction (at least measured by delta I) and effective conservation of biodiversity in Brazilian Cerrado. References and Notes 1. http://www.ibge.gov.br/ 2. The data used in this letter is available upon request.