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Bangor University DOCTOR of PHILOSOPHY Impacts of Community Forest Management and Strictly Protected Areas on Deforestation

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Bangor University DOCTOR of PHILOSOPHY Impacts of Community Forest Management and Strictly Protected Areas on Deforestation Bangor University DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Impacts of Community Forest Management and strictly protected areas on deforestation and human well-being in Madagascar Rasolofoson, Ranaivo Award date: 2016 Awarding institution: Bangor University Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 08. Oct. 2021 University of Copenhagen Bangor University PhD Thesis Ranaivo Andriarilala Rasolofoson Title: Impacts of Community Forest Management and strictly protected areas on deforestation and human well-being in Madagascar Research progamme: The human dimension of forest conservation: consequences of forest dependence for conservation management Submitted on July 11th, 2016 Author : Ranaivo Andriarilala Rasolofoson Title : Impacts of Community Forest Management and strictly protected areas on deforestation and human well-being in Madagascar Supervisors : · Helle Overgaard Larsen, Associate professor Department of Food and Resource Economics Faculty of Science University of Copenhagen, Denmark · Carsten Smith-Hall, Professor Department of Food and Resource Economics Faculty of Science University of Copenhagen, Denmark · Julia Patricia Gordon Jones, Professor School of Environment, Natural Resources and Geography Bangor University, United Kingdom Financed by: The European Commission through the Forest and Nature for Society (FONASO), Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate Program, and the University of Copenhagen Assessment Committee: · Committee Chair: Jette Bredahl Jacobsen, Professor Department of Food and Resource Economics Faculty of Science University of Copenhagen, Denmark · Eleanor Jane Milner-Gulland, Professor Department of Zoology University of Oxford, United Kingdom · Jennifer Alix-Gracia, Associate Professor Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA Date of submission : March 8th , 2016 Preface This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the double Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree at the Section for Global Development, Department of Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen and the School of Environment, Natural Resources and Geography, Bangor University The research was carried out from November 1 st , 2012 to March 4th , 2016. I undertook fieldwork in Madagascar. The research focuses on the impacts of forest conservation interventions on forests and local human well-being. The thesis comprises an introductory chapter and the following three manuscripts: Manuscript 1: Rasolofoson, R.A , P. Ferraro, C. Jenkins and J.P.G Jones 2015. Effectiveness of Community Forest Management at reducing deforestation in Madagascar. Biological Conservation 184: 271 – 277. Manuscript 2: Rasolofoson, R.A ., P.J. Ferraro, G. Ruta, M.S Rasamoelina, P.L Randriankolona, H.O. Larsen and J.P.G Jones. Impacts of Community Forest Management on human economic well-being across Madagascar. Revision submitted to Conservation Letters. Manuscript 3: Rasolofoson, R.A., M.R. Nielsen and J.P.G Jones. The potential of the Global Person Generated Index (GPGI) for evaluating the perceived impact of conservation interventions on subjective well-being. Submitted to Ecology and Society. An additional output is: Rasamoelina, M.S., G. Ruta, R.A. Rasolofoson , P.L. Randriankolona, S. Aubert, B.S. Ramamonjisoa, Z. Rabemananjara, A.S. Raharijaona, G. Buttoud, J. Plananska 2015. Analysis of community forest management (CFM) in Madagascar . World Bank Group, Washington, D.C. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2015/11/25485929/analysis-community-forest- management-cfm-madagascar. We mainly used quantitative methods, although manuscript 3 includes some small qualitative analysis. Particularly, we used rigorous program evaluation design in our attempt to generate rigorous evidence about impacts of nature conservation, which still lags behind many other disciplines in terms of high quality and scientifically rigorous impact evaluation. i Acknowledgments First and foremost, I thank my wife Tendry and daughter Abigail for their invaluable support and prayers during this PhD. The three of us are always the core team in everything we do, including this PhD work. I thank Tendry for the great counsels she has provided regarding practical, logistic, and even academic matters. I also thank her for withstanding the loneliness when I had to travel to different places around the world, and this even during the time we expected our daughter Abigail. I thank Abigail for the joy, happiness and laughter she has brought into our home. These are effective relieves, particularly in the tough times of this PhD. I thank my supervisors Helle Larsen, Julia Jones, and Carsten Smith-Hall for their academic, administrative and even personal support. There were really engaged in my work and helped shaping the direction of my research. I also thank my co-authors Paul Ferraro, Clinton Jenkins, Gianni Ruta, Mami Rasamoelina, Patrick Randriankolona, and my supervisors for giving invaluable technical guidance on how to improve the manuscripts. I thank my internal PhD committee at Bangor University, Mark Rayment and James Gibbons, for their constructive and helpful comments concerning the academic content as well as other matters related to this PhD. I thank my research assistants Angelo Rabearisoa and Toky Rakotonavalona for carrying out the surveys with me in unknown territories in the middle of the forests. I also thank all the people who took part in interviews and the local administrative and traditional leaders for welcoming us in their villages. I also thank my fellow PhD students and staff at the section for Global Development, Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen for advice and support in academic and practical matters, such as providing feedback for my draft manuscripts and how to arrange my paternity leave. I give special thanks to Rebecca Rutt and Jens Lund for welcoming me to stay in their home in times of needs. I thank the European Commission, which funded my PhD education, through the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate Program, Forest and Nature for Society (FONASO) and the University of Copenhagen for providing additional funding. I also thank every person behind the FONASO program. I thank my fellow FONASO scholars, particularly those based in Copenhagen and Bangor, for helping me settling down in these cities. I thank the following organizations in Madagascar for discussions and providing data: Direction Générale des Forêts, Madagascar National Parks, Office National pour l’Environnement, Asity, Fanamby, Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, Conservation International, Wildlife Conservation Society, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF MWIOPO), and the World Bank Group. I also thank Tendro Tondrasoa Ramaharitra and Alexio Lohanivo for providing data and spatial analysis tips. I thank Bruno Ramamonjisoa and his team at the Département des Eaux et Forêts, Ecole Supérieure des Sciences Agronomiques, University of Antananarivo for taking care of my research permit application ii to the Direction Générale des Forêts. I thank the ESPA-funded P4GES project ( NE /K010220-1) for collaboration. Finally, I thank my family in Madagascar for their daily prayer asking for God to help me and my family to succeed at this PhD. iii Summary Protected areas and Community Forest Management (CFM) are among the most widespread interventions to conserve forests in tropical countries. In addition to their impacts on forests and the biodiversity they contain, these interventions also affect human well-being, particularly that of the local communities who are often poor and politically marginalized and whose livelihoods depend directly on the forest resources being conserved. To develop effective interventions, practitioners need to have credible, strong and scientifically rigorous evidence on their impacts on forests (or the biodiversity they contain) and human well-being. However, while scientifically rigorous impact evaluation of programs is well advanced in fields such as development, health and education, it is rare in nature conservation. The rare existing studies focus mostly on protected areas and other interventions, such as CFM, are relatively untouched by scientifically rigorous impact evaluation. Different challenges account for the limited adoption of rigorous impact evaluation in nature conservation. Among these are the identification and elimination of rival explanations: factors other than the intervention that can explain the observed relationship between the intervention and the outcome. Potential rival explanations are factors that can confound impact estimates by affecting both assignment of units to intervention and the outcome. Another potential rival explanation is baseline outcome data that should
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