Monitoring local well-being in environmental interventions: a consideration of practical trade-offs

Abstract

Within the field of environmental management and conservation, the concept of well-being is starting to gain traction in monitoring the socio-economic and cultural impact of interventions on local people. Here we consider the practical trade-offs policy makers and practitioners must navigate when utilizing the concept of well-being in environmental interventions. We first review current concepts of well-being before considering the need to balance the complexity and practical applicability of the definition used and to consider both positive and negative components of well-being. A key determinant of how well-being is operationalized is the identity of the organization wishing to monitor it. We describe the trade-offs around the external and internal validity of different approaches to measuring well-being and the relative contributions of qualitative and quantitative information to understanding well-being. We explore how these trade-offs may be decided as a result of a power struggle between stakeholders. Well-being is a complex, multi-dimensional, dynamic concept that cannot be easily defined and measured. Local perspectives are often missed during the project design process as a result of the more powerful voices of national governments and international NGOs, so for equity and local relevance it is important to ensure these perspectives are represented at a high level in project design and implementation.

Socio‐economic impact classification of alien taxa (SEICAT)

“…It is expected that such reports currently constitute the main evidence of impacts on human well‐being until more systematic socio‐economic studies that focus on changes in human activities due to alien taxa are done. General guidelines on how to conduct such studies are available (Palmer‐Fry et al., ; Woodhouse, de Lange, & Milner‐Gulland, ) and we hope that the publication of SEICAT triggers research in this direction. However, even with low quality data and in the presence of large uncertainties, SEICAT allowed a clear, meaningful, and transparent ranking of the species, with the cane toad causing the highest impact on human well‐being, followed by the Asian common toad (whose impacts can be largely avoided), while other amphibians caused only minor or negligible impacts.…”

Incorporating basic needs to reconcile poverty and ecosystem services

“…We directly addressed the challenge identified by Palmer Fry et al. () to incorporate locally valid measures of well‐being to assess environmental outcomes and the call by Milner‐Gulland et al. () to develop empirical evidence and tools to apply well‐being concepts that balance local and universal indicators to inform conservation.…”

'It's not just about fish': Assessing the social impacts of marine protected areas on the wellbeing of coastal communities in New South Wales

“…Subjective measurement is a necessary and critical component of social assessments, rather than using only conventional objective measures [ 9 , 12 – 14 ], as it allows people to express how they feel about impacts. It raises impacts that may not be considered if only objective measures are used [ 15 ].…”