A Crystal Ball for Forests?: Analyzing the Social-Ecological Impacts of Forest Conservation and Management over the Long Term

Abstract

Citizens, governments, and donors are increasingly demanding better evidence on the eff ectiveness of development policies and programs. Eff orts to ensure such accountability in the forest sector confront the challenge that the results may take years, even decades, to materialize, while forest-related interventions usually last only a short period. Th is article reviews the broad interdisciplinary literature assessing forest conservation and management impacts on biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation, and poverty alleviation in developing countries. It emphasizes the importance of indicators and identifi es disconnects between a rapidly growing body of research based on quasi-experimental designs and studies taking a more critical, ethnographic approach. Th e article also highlights a relative lack of attention on longer-term impacts in both of these areas of scholarship. We conclude by exploring research frontiers in the assessment of the impacts of forest-related interventions with long incubation periods, notably the development of predictive proxy indicators (PPIs).Ⅲ

Machine learning to analyze the social-ecological impacts of natural resource policy: insights from community forest management in the Indian Himalaya

“…Evidence of the success of such community-based interventions is mixed and highly heterogeneous [2,3,[5][6][7]. Understanding how forest management policies perform, and which social and ecological contexts are more conducive for success over the long term is critical to enhancing their effectiveness [8]. Recent machine learning (ML) approaches hold particular promise for building knowledge in this domain and on natural resource policy more generally.…”

A systematic map of evidence on the contribution of forests to poverty alleviation

“…This is particularly the case where the causal chains linking activity and outcome may be complex and/ or long. While the value of this kind of impact evaluation is widely recognized for understanding the impact of conservation and development projects [40,41,48], applications of impact evaluation methods in peer-reviewed literature in conservation, natural resource management, and development fields remains limited [49][50][51], particularly in relation to long-term impacts [52].…”

“…Furthermore, these gaps may represent outcomes that may be more likely to take significant time to manifest, often beyond the life cycle of a program or project. Thus, future evaluation of efforts falling in these linkages may be able to use "predictive proxy indicators" [52] or other techniques to shed light on longer-term outcomes.…”

Explaining long-term outcome trajectories in social–ecological systems

“…This approach yields only a partial understanding of the causal efficacy of key variables and factors predictive of long-term social and ecological outcome trajectories, and it struggles to address issues of multiple and contingent correlation, noncomparability of results from different studies, and spurious correlation [17,18]. Common property research has made scant use of experimental and quasi-experimental impact evaluation techniques that are increasingly employed to assess environmental programs and policies [19,20]. However, impact evaluation studies in environmental policy have mostly focused on near-term impacts rather than longer-term outcomes [19,21].…”

“…Common property research has made scant use of experimental and quasi-experimental impact evaluation techniques that are increasingly employed to assess environmental programs and policies [19,20]. However, impact evaluation studies in environmental policy have mostly focused on near-term impacts rather than longer-term outcomes [19,21].…”