Believing that others are damaging the environment can cause a ‘race to the bottom’ | Imperial news

A study shows that when communities believe outsiders are stealing their forest resources, they are more likely to want to increase their own harvests.

The research, led by researchers from Imperial College London and the Max Plank Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, shows why effective boundaries around a community’s shared resources are key to sustainable management of those resources.

Awareness of the damage to critical natural resources is not enough to inspire action, especially if we believe that ‘others’ are causing the damage. Dr. Matt Clark

Common resources, such as forests, fisheries and groundwater, must be managed effectively to reduce overfishing and environmental damage. Researchers knew that strong boundaries around a community’s shared resources could promote effective management, but they didn’t know exactly why.

The new research – in collaboration with mangrove-dependent communities in Tanzania – shows that borders not only exclude others, but also promote good conservation practices by community members.

Without effective boundaries, communities can become victims of theft by neighbors. The research shows that if they then believe that this theft causes deforestation, they are more likely to want to increase their own harvest – potentially setting off a ‘race to the bottom’.

However, secure borders lead to collective decisions within the community that keep harvests sustainable.

Lead researcher Dr Matt Clark, from the Center for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, explained: “For many natural resources, we want to exclude people because of the direct damage they can do to the ecosystem. But what we show is that secure borders can actually have much bigger effects than just stopping the direct harvest of outsiders: they can actually shape the culture of sustainable resource management.”

Tragedy of the commons?

These conclusions are based on the results of two research papers by the international team that looked at the mangrove forests of Pemba Island in Tanzania in collaboration with local communities. Between 90-95% of the population in Pemba rely on direct timber harvest to meet their daily cooking needs, much of which comes from mangroves.

The first article, published in Nature Sustainabilitypresents a general computer simulation that examines how resource scarcity and competition between groups can drive conservation actions in some places but not others.

Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom found that secure boundaries (social and physical) were almost always linked to successful management of common resources. However, How These successful management principles originated and persist in communities and are not yet well understood.

The results of the simulations suggest that where communities have little control over the security of their resources, this can erode rules and norms around sustainable harvesting.

The second study put this model to the test and the results were published in Conservation biology. Dr. Clark and second author Haji Hamad, from the local Zanzibar Department of Forests, spent nine months traveling around Pemba, conducting a ‘participatory mapping activity’ with community members.

The team surveyed 423 people in 43 mangrove communities, asking questions about their perceptions and behavior, and mapping changes in local mangrove forests.

They found that, contrary to the ‘tragedy of the commons’ idea that people will act selfishly until a resource is depleted, communities will impose their own restrictions on harvesting to reduce depletion, through community conservation committees. However, this only applied if they took action to ensure that the boundaries of their forest land were secure – that they perceived a low risk of theft by neighboring communities.

If the opposite were true and the perceived risk of theft was high, then community members would tend to favor looser harvest limits for themselves, which would result in a more degraded mangrove ecosystem.

Successful conservation design

The results revealed several other important factors for forest protection. For example, following the establishment of government-sanctioned protected areas in 2015, some neighboring communities have entered into agreements of their own to prevent the movement of harvested timber from the protected areas into their nearby forests.

Dr. Clark said: “This kind of research is only possible somewhere like Pemba – a small island where we can do extensive research and where the complex dynamics can be unraveled – but what it reveals could be broadly applicable to conservation plans for common resources around the world.

“It is only through our close collaboration with the Zanzibar Department of Forests that we can carry out this research and that is what makes this research so exciting: we produce it directly with the people who can best use it.

“Ultimately, our study shows that awareness of the damage to critical natural resources is not enough to take action, especially if we believe ‘others’ are causing the damage.

“This insight helps us understand the drivers of ecological and cultural change – and how we can design successful conservation actions based on them.”

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“Effects of Perceptions of Forest Change and Intergroup Competition on Community-Oriented Conservation Behavior” by Matt Clark, Haji Masoud Hamad, Jeffrey Andrews, Vicken Hillis, and Monique Borgerhoff Mulder is published in Conservation Biology.

‘The cultural evolution of collective property rights for sustainable resource management’ by Jeffrey Andrews, Matthew Clark, Vicken Hillis and Monique Borgerhoff Mulder is published in Nature Sustainability.