Environmental Conservation and Social Equality: Distributional Impacts of Marine Protected Areas in Eastern Indonesia

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Abstract
The growing prevalence of marine protected areas (MPAs) to conserve marine biodiversity has been shown to have a considerable impact on resource-dependent coastal communities. Despite the existence of the burgeoning literature studying MPA aggregate effects on human well-being, there is limited evidence related to the equality of marine conservation impacts across societal groups. In this paper, we study the distributional socioeconomic impacts of MPAs through the lens of poverty exposure—a crucial aspect of inequality relevant to coastal communities in developing countries. We implement a quasi-experimental design using a multi-round household survey in eastern Indonesia, that covers over 10,000 households located in 180 treated and control coastal settlements across 10 MPAs between 2010 and 2017. To capture some of the multiple dimensions of human well-being, we used both objective (asset-based poverty index) and subjective (household’s perceived economic trends) measures of poverty. Our analysis documents a positive poverty-alleviation trend in the studied seascapes, as well as the existence of pre-existing economic inequality across major subgroups defined by gender, age cohort, fishing occupation, and tenure-rights ownership. We also find that the implementation of MPAs did not incur a significant short-term loss in objective economic well-being as documented elsewhere or materially increase inequality between social groups. Nonetheless, MPAs appeared to be constraining perceived economic improvement, particularly in female-headed households. Importantly, we find that community engagement is an influential factor moderating this impact heterogeneity; MPAs exacerbated the gender-based inequality in perceived economic improvement in settlements where female household heads participated less in community groups at baseline but not in more active participation settlements. Our results suggest that active community participation by marginalized groups could foster more objective economic well-being as documented elsewhere or materially increase inequality between social groups. Nonetheless, MPAs appeared to be constraining perceived economic improvement, particularly of female-headed households. Importantly, we find that community engagement is an influential factor moderating this impact heterogeneity; MPAs exacerbated the gender-based inequality in perceived economic improvement in settlements where female household heads participated less in community groups at baseline but not in more active participation settlements. Our results suggest that active community participation by marginalized groups could foster more equitable distribution of conservation impacts and, therefore, should be promoted by MPA implementing and management agencies. e equitable distribution of conservation impacts and, therefore, should be promoted by MPA implementing and management agencies. JEL Classifications: Q25, Q57, O13, O15

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