Compensation, diversion, and the conservation-development tradeoff : field evidence from China

Abstract

Nature reserves play a critical role in biodiversity conservation efforts, but their occupation of lands and resources often conflict with the economic interests of local communities. As a result, policymakers face a tradeoff between conservation and development goals—a dilemma that remains understudied by social scientists. This thesis explores how human society responds to the Conservation-Development Tradeoff (CDT) in two parts. Part one focuses on how policymakers and the affected local communities try to resolve this dilemma. Conventional solutions focus on the “compensation” mechanism---governments compensate local residents to offset the economic hardship caused by conservation measures. However, recent research has shown that this mechanism can be ineffective in developing countries, and people from non-democratic countries have a limited capacity to press their governments for sufficient reimbursement. This paper presents an alternative “diversion” mechanism: communities who are affected by the strict conservation regulations and inadequate compensation are incentivized to migrate to cities for better income before settling there permanently. While compensation was designed by the government to resolve local opposition, the diversion mechanism develops spontaneously by the communities themselves to adapt to the situation when they can rely neither on agricultural practices nor compensation. Based on interviews from three Chinese nature reserves with varying levels of economic development, I find clear evidence that diversion helps to reduce the number of human-wildlife conflicts in the protected areas and can effectively improve the local income level. I also observed that diversion becomes more prevalent as economic development increases. The second part focuses on the society at large, as public opinion can make major impacts on conservation policymaking. It is important to explore the level of public support for conservation policies that are conditional on the tradeoff. Existing surveys have consistently shown strong public support for biodiversity conservation, but the question was presented in the abstract, predominantly in developed countries. I conducted the first comparative survey on public support for biodiversity conservation in the United States and China (a developing country), with a focus on the CDT. The results show that both American and Chinese citizens are highly supportive of conservation in the abstract, but significantly less supportive when made aware of the tradeoff. This dissertation offers three contributions. First, the interviews showed that the diversion mechanism, a practically important yet overlooked strategy. Specifically, future policymaking should incentivize the affected groups to migrate to urban areas, which can both improve the income levels of local communities and contribute to the conservation efforts. Secondly, the surveys showed less support for conservation policies after the respondents learned about the tradeoff, which reveals an overestimated level of public support. Thirdly, this thesis provides novel empirical evidence on how local communities and the public respond to the tradeoff in China, a crucial player in global environmental governance with rich biodiversity and a large low-income population. As many of the affected local communities suffer from inadequate compensation, and public awareness of this is low, findings from this work have profound implications for academic research and conservation policymaking.