‘From debt relief for nature to the biggest environmental beneficiaries paying more for its preservation, policy can help restore ecology’
Environment at Duke University. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das, he discusses factors shaping effective green strategies:
Q. What is the core of your research?
A. I’m an economist working with different disciplines. My focus is on researching which policy interventions can bring both environmental and livelihoods gains in developing economies.
We often imagine development and conservation as being opposed — can you share how planning achieved both in the Brazilian Amazon?
We must remember that you can impose a policy — but local individuals have a lot of agency. If conservation actions don’t offer local development, they are likely to fail. Impactful conservation actions tend to be much more consistent with local development benefits. A protected area that helps locals, for example, means you can do this in a place where it really matters. Research by David Gill from the Duke Marine Lab shows you can have impacts in marine protected areas when you allow local smallholder activities. This needs community involvement in planning and conditions, resources and governance to ensure these places do as well as protected areas which evict people.
Actions consistent with the interests of locals can enhance the effects of policy — in the Brazilian Amazon, the extractive reserve category, a type of protected area, was effectively invented by the people it would restrict, like rubber tappers. They made an agreement with government to ensure a blend of local livelihoods and conservation, without which they felt other people,
