Can private management of African protected areas improve socioeconomic and wildlife outcomes?
by Kwok Kin LeeAtlasAI Inequality and Shared Prosperity
African governments increasingly entrust the management of protected areas to private, nongovernmental organizations, with the hope that the significant resources and technical capacities of private organizations will help realize the potential of these areas. Gabriel Englander from the Sustainability and Infrastructure team of the World Bank’s Development Research Group, along with academic co-authors Sean Denny from the University of California, Santa Barbara and Patrick Hunnicutt from the University of Oregon, studied the impact of African Parks (AP)—the largest private manager of protected areas in Africa—on socioeconomic and wildlife outcomes. As part of the study, the team used data on asset wealth from Atlas AI across wide areas of the African continent to test whether AP management enhances local economic well-being in the vicinity of AP parks.
Challenge
From climate change to overfishing, overhunting and pollution, our plant and animal populations across the world are facing different threats, placing us in a biodiversity crisis. A significant expansion in effectively managed protected areas is key to mitigating this global biodiversity crisis.
African governments are increasingly turning to private nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) for assistance. These NGOs may manage parks differently than governments, such as by providing better training to rangers. However, there are concerns over their legitimacy. In addition, thorough assessments of private sector involvement in protected area management are limited.
Solution
The Sustainability and Infrastructure team of the World Bank’s Development Research Group employs the case of AP, a South Africa-based nonprofit NGO that partners with African governments to manage protected areas.
The primary objective of this World Bank study was to estimate how AP management impacts wildlife, socioeconomic, and security- related outcomes relative to a counterfactual scenario in which the organization’s protected areas remained under government management.
To evaluate outcomes between AP and government management, the team leveraged large-scale datasets on wildlife, asset wealth, conflict, and management practices.
For asset wealth, through the Development Data Partnership, they used data from Atlas AI, a private data provider, to test whether AP management improves local economic well-being. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time such wide-area economic well-being data have been used in a multi-dimensional measurement setting to evaluate the impact of private management of protected conservation areas.
Atlas AI used daytime and nighttime optical imagery to predict asset wealth as measured in the demographic and health surveys (DHS) Program. After training a machine learning model on labels derived from DHS data, Atlas AI predicted asset wealth for the continent of Africa at high resolution (1 km by 1 km grid cells) over time from 2003 - 2021. The study sampled these data in the immediate vicinity of both treatment and control locations identified, within a 25km periphery.
On the development and economic well-being dimension in particular, the study found that communities near protected areas destined for AP management (treatment) were already becoming richer at a faster rate than communities near protected areas that would never come under AP management (control). Accordingly, due to the elevated levels of asset wealth immediately before the transfer, any observed subsequent rise in economic well-being could not be solely attributed to AP management with the use of the method employed. The asset wealth changes following the transfer of parks to AP management may have therefore simply reflected a continuation of this preexisting upward trend reflecting other factors at work in the region in addition to AP management, rather than as a sole consequence of AP’s actions.
The study’s results on other dimensions suggest that private management augments tourism and improves wildlife outcomes via reduced elephant poaching and increased bird abundances. However, AP’s management increases the risk of armed groups targeting civilians, which could be an unintended outcome of AP’s improved monitoring and enforcement systems.
Impact
A multi-dimensional understanding of how the performance of private sector management compares to government management will lead to a better understanding that could improve the effectiveness of wildlife conservation in Africa. This study demonstrated how to employ geospatial data on economic well-being in addition to other factors through appropriate statistical methods.
This study’s findings reveal a complex interplay between conservation, economic development, and security under privately managed protected areas in the continent. The findings also underscore the need to strengthen the involvement of local communities in private protected area management, which may help realize the full potential benefits of protected areas for both wildlife and people.