Sophie Jago

Crop genetic diversity underpins the adaptive capacity of food systems but is declining. Maintaining diversity is challenging because most crop varieties underperform the best-suited ones under current conditions, therefore the private value of currently low-yielding varieties to farmers is limited. However they may carry traits that become critical as conditions change, so their public value as a genetic resource is large and long-term. Payments for Agrobiodiversity Conservation Services (PACS) – adapted from Payments for Ecosystem Services – aims to address this disparity by compensating farmers’ opportunity cost of conserving declining landraces. Here we provide the first counterfactual evaluation of a PACS scheme, using competitive bidding to allocate community conservation contracts among 461 farmers. We focus on enset (Ensete ventricosum), a staple food for over 20 million Ethiopians, which is almost entirely absent from ex situ collections. Of 141 enset landraces, 70% were threatened and 26% locally extinct. Using two complementary difference-in-differences designs we show that, relative to controls, PACS increased richness by 4.9 landraces per household, doubling typical farm diversity, and increased the number of households cultivating contracted landraces tenfold. Rather than crowding out non-contracted landraces, PACS improved their conservation status, with larger gains in communities with a greater share of contracted landraces. This indicates motivational crowding in, with PACS delivering conservation gains beyond those paid for. Scaling average compensation (US$8.46 per household) suggests that securing threatened enset diversity nationally would require US$141,000-640,000, <0.1% of Ethiopia’s agriculture and food security budget. PACS offers a cost-effective, scalable strategy for in situ agrobiodiversity conservation.

Achieving global biodiversity targets, such as the commitment to conserve 30% of the planet by 2030, depends on the ability of individual countries to translate targets into reality. While there has long been recognition that protected areas can bring costs as well as benefits, the implications of this for delivery of global targets have not been fully explored. We focus on Ethiopia, a country supporting globally important biodiversity but facing substantial poverty challenges. We characterize the extent and representativeness of Ethiopia’s protected area network, demonstrating that a threefold expansion—particularly into ecoregions with higher opportunity cost—would be required to meet the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework Target 3. Using a quasi-experimental approach (accounting for known confounders and exploring sensitivity to potential unobserved confounders), we show that the existing protected area network has reduced forest loss and agricultural expansion, and helped to maintain grasslands. Yet, this has brought social wellbeing costs equivalent to 3.9 million fewer household-months of adequate food. Surveys show that national conservation stakeholders recognize these challenges and prioritize improving effectiveness of the existing network over expansion. Our findings highlight that trade-offs between environmental and social outcomes are not simply challenges to be managed, but are central to whether global biodiversity commitments can be delivered.

Achieving global biodiversity targets depends on the ability of individual countries to translate targets into reality on the ground. In 2022, 196 parties committed to conserving 30% of the planet by 2030, yet questions remain over whether existing protected areas are effective at conserving biodiversity, and furthermore whether conservation successes impact the wellbeing of local communities. We focus on Ethiopia, a country supporting globally important and endemic biodiversity but facing substantial poverty and food insecurity challenges. We characterise the extent and representativeness of Ethiopia’s existing protected area network, illustrating a three-fold expansion would be required to meet the global target, potentially impacting millions of people. Using a quasi-experimental approach (accounting for known confounders and exploring sensitivity of results to potential unobserved confounders), we demonstrate that the existing protected area network has delivered environmental benefits, with strict protected areas associated with 25% less forest loss and 44% less agricultural expansion compared to statistically matched controls. This is likely to provide national-scale benefits through ecosystem service provision, however, local communities neighbouring protected areas were exposed to significantly worse food security outcomes, equivalent to 3.9 million fewer household-months of adequate food. Surveys with conservation stakeholders show national recognition of these challenges: they prioritise improving effectiveness and governance of the existing network rather than expansion. Our findings highlight the importance of national context, and the risk of prioritising global area-based targets without addressing local social impacts.

Protected areas (PAs) are central to sustainability targets, yet few evaluations explore outcomes for both conservation and development, or the trade‐offs involved. We applied counterfactual analyses to assess the extent to which PAs maintained forest cover and influenced well‐being across >31,000 villages in Sumatra and Kalimantan, Indonesia. We examined multidimensional aspects of well‐being, tracking education, health, living standards, infrastructure, environment, and social cohesion in treatment and control villages between 2005 and 2018. Overall, PAs were effective at maintaining forest cover compared to matched controls and were not detrimental to well‐being. However, impacts were highly heterogeneous, varying by island and strictness of protection. While health, living standards, and infrastructure aspects of well‐being improved, education access, environmental conditions, and social cohesion declined. Our analysis reveals the contexts through which individual PAs succeed or fail in delivering multiple benefits and provides insights into where further on‐ground support is needed to achieve conservation and development objectives.