IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/31873.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Environmental Impacts of Protected Area Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Mathias Reynaert
  • Eduardo A. Souza-Rodrigues
  • Arthur A. van Benthem

Abstract

The world has pledged to protect 30 percent of its land and waters by 2030 to halt the rapid deterioration of critical ecosystems. We summarize the state of knowledge about the impacts of protected area policies, with a focus on deforestation and vegetation cover. We discuss critical issues around data and measurement, identify the most commonly-used empirical methods, and summarize empirical evidence across multiple regions of the world. In most cases, protection has had at most a modest impact on forest cover, with stronger effects in areas that face pressure of economic development. We then identify several open areas for research to advance our understanding of the effectiveness of protected area policies: the use of promising recent econometric advancements, shifting focus to direct measures of biodiversity, filling the knowledge gap on the effect of protected area policy in advanced economies, investigating the long-run impacts of protection, and understanding its equilibrium effects.

Suggested Citation

  • Mathias Reynaert & Eduardo A. Souza-Rodrigues & Arthur A. van Benthem, 2023. "The Environmental Impacts of Protected Area Policy," NBER Working Papers 31873, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31873
    Note: EEE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w31873.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cheng, Audrey T. & Sims, Katharine R.E. & Yi, Yuanyuan, 2023. "Economic development and conservation impacts of China's nature reserves," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    2. Jeffrey R. Vincent, 2016. "Impact Evaluation of Forest Conservation Programs: Benefit-Cost Analysis, Without the Economics," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 63(2), pages 395-408, February.
    3. Kere, Eric Nazindigouba & Choumert, Johanna & Combes Motel, Pascale & Combes, Jean Louis & Santoni, Olivier & Schwartz, Sonia, 2017. "Addressing Contextual and Location Biases in the Assessment of Protected Areas Effectiveness on Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazônia," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 148-158.
    4. Eduardo Souza-Rodrigues, 2019. "Deforestation in the Amazon: A Unified Framework for Estimation and Policy Analysis," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(6), pages 2713-2744.
    5. Juliano Assunção & Robert McMillan & Joshua Murphy & Eduardo Souza-Rodrigues, 2023. "Optimal Environmental Targeting in the Amazon Rainforest," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 90(4), pages 1608-1641.
    6. Abman, Ryan, 2018. "Rule of Law and Avoided Deforestation from Protected Areas," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 282-289.
    7. Matthew A. Turner & Andrew Haughwout & Wilbert van der Klaauw, 2014. "Land Use Regulation and Welfare," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(4), pages 1341-1403, July.
    8. Andrew Metrick & Martin L. Weitzman, 1998. "Conflicts and Choices in Biodiversity Preservation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 21-34, Summer.
    9. Tristan Grupp & Prakash Mishra & Mathias Reynaert & Arthur A. van Benthem, 2023. "An Evaluation of Protected Area Policies in the European Union," NBER Working Papers 31934, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. BenYishay, Ariel & Heuser, Silke & Runfola, Daniel & Trichler, Rachel, 2017. "Indigenous land rights and deforestation: Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 29-47.
    11. Lina O Anderson & Samantha De Martino & Torfinn Harding & Karlygash Kuralbayeva & Andre Lima, 2016. "The Effects of Land Use Regulation on Deforestation:," OxCarre Working Papers 172, Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies, University of Oxford.
    12. Heidi J. Albers & Madison F. Ashworth, 2022. "Economics of Marine Protected Areas: Assessing the Literature for Marine Protected Area Network Expansions," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 14(1), pages 533-554, October.
    13. Victor Cazalis & Karine Princé & Jean-Baptiste Mihoub & Joseph Kelly & Stuart H. M. Butchart & Ana S. L. Rodrigues, 2020. "Effectiveness of protected areas in conserving tropical forest birds," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 11(1), pages 1-8, December.
    14. Jeffrey R. Vincent, 2016. "Erratum to: Impact Evaluation of Forest Conservation Programs: Benefit-Cost Analysis, Without the Economics," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 63(2), pages 409-409, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Keles, Derya & Delacote, Philippe & Pfaff, Alexander & Qin, Siyu & Mascia, Michael B., 2020. "What Drives the Erasure of Protected Areas? Evidence from across the Brazilian Amazon," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    2. Palmer, Charles & Taschini, Luca & Laing, Timothy, 2017. "Getting more ‘carbon bang’ for your ‘buck’ in Acre State, Brazil," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 214-227.
    3. Li, Yi & Song, Zhenjiang, 2022. "Have protected areas in China achieved the ecological and economic “win-win” goals? Evidence from the Giant Panda Reserves of the Min Mont Range," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    4. Giudice, Renzo & Börner, Jan, 2021. "Benefits and costs of incentive-based forest conservation in the Peruvian Amazon," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    5. Burgess, Robin & Costa, Francisco J M & Olken, Ben, 2019. "The Brazilian Amazon’s Double Reversal of Fortune," SocArXiv 67xg5, Center for Open Science.
    6. Bonilla-Mejía, Leonardo & Higuera-Mendieta, Iván, 2019. "Protected Areas under Weak Institutions: Evidence from Colombia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 585-596.
    7. Francisco Fontes & Charles Palmer, 2017. "Was von Thünen right? Cattle intensification and deforestation in Brazil," GRI Working Papers 261, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    8. Derya Keles & Philippe Delacote & Alexander Pfaff & Siyu Qin & Michael B. Mascia, 2019. "What Drives Size Reductions for Protected Areas? Evidence about PADDD from across the Brazilian Amazon," Working Papers of BETA 2019-12, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    9. Nordén, Anna & Coria, Jessica & Villalobos, Laura, 2016. "Evaluation of the Impact of Forest Certification on Environmental Outcomes in Sweden," Working Papers in Economics 657, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    10. Jones, Kelly W. & Mayer, Alex & Von Thaden, Juan & Berry, Z. Carter & López-Ramírez, Sergio & Salcone, Jacob & Manson, Robert H. & Asbjornsen, Heidi, 2020. "Measuring the net benefits of payments for hydrological services programs in Mexico," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    11. Mohebalian, Phillip M. & Aguilar, Francisco X., 2018. "Beneath the Canopy: Tropical Forests Enrolled in Conservation Payments Reveal Evidence of Less Degradation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 64-73.
    12. Wumeng He & Orapan Nabangchang & Krista Erdman & Alex C. A. Vanko & Prapti Poudel & Chandra Giri & Jeffrey R. Vincent, 2023. "Inferring Economic Impacts from a Program’s Physical Outcomes: An Application to Forest Protection in Thailand," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 84(3), pages 845-876, March.
    13. Thiemo Fetzer & Samuel Marden, 2017. "Take What You Can: Property Rights, Contestability and Conflict," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0(601), pages 757-783, May.
    14. Gyourko, Joseph & Hartley, Jonathan S. & Krimmel, Jacob, 2021. "The local residential land use regulatory environment across U.S. housing markets: Evidence from a new Wharton index," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    15. Oliver Fromm, 2000. "Ecological Structure and Functions of Biodiversity as Elements of Its Total Economic Value," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 16(3), pages 303-328, July.
    16. Gyourko, Joe & Krimmel, Jacob, 2021. "The impact of local residential land use restrictions on land values across and within single family housing markets," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    17. H. Spencer Banzhaf & Kyle Mangum, 2019. "Capitalization as a Two-Part Tariff: The Role of Zoning," NBER Working Papers 25699, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Ariane Amin & Johanna Choumert, 2015. "Development and biodiversity conservation in Sub-Saharan Africa: A spatial analysis," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(1), pages 729-744.
    19. Langenmayr Dominika & Mittermaier Ferdinand, 2021. "Nachhaltiges Wirtschaften, nachhaltig finanziert: Herausforderungen für die Politik in den 2020er Jahren," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 22(3), pages 176-190, September.
    20. Rauscher, Michael & Barbier, Edward B., 2010. "Biodiversity and geography," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 241-260, April.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • Q23 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Forestry
    • Q24 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Land
    • Q57 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Ecological Economics
    • R14 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31873. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.