Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-zklqj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T12:43:45.908Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The potential of protected areas to halt deforestation in Ecuador

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2017

YNTZE VAN DER HOEK
YNTZE VAN DER HOEK*
Affiliation:
Universidad Regional Amazónica IKIAM, Tena, Vía Muyuna, Kilómetro 7, Ecuador
*
*Correspondence: Yntze van der Hoek email: yntze.vanderhoek@ikiam.edu.ec
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

Ecuador, a country with nearly unparalleled levels of biodiversity and endemism, has one of the highest deforestation rates of South America. I examined whether governmentally protected areas in Ecuador have been effective at reducing deforestation. After estimating deforestation rates from existing land cover change data for 2000 to 2008, I used a matching approach to compare the rates of forest loss inside and outside protected areas, which corrected for geographic biases in the locations of protected areas. I tested for the effects of protected area age, size and level of protection on the rate of deforestation using generalized linear models. Governmentally protected areas still experienced deforestation – with no apparent effect of age, size and level of protection – of nearly 10,000 ha per year, but deforestation rates were lower inside compared to outside protected areas. Governmental protection led to the avoidance of additional deforestation of 2600–7800 ha of natural forest per year. Actions to mitigate deforestation in Ecuador are of global importance and as such it is promising that protected areas can help diminish deforestation, although the effectiveness of Ecuador's protected areas can still be improved upon.

Keywords

deforestation avoidanceconservation policyconservation efficiencygovernanceneotropicsSouth America

Information

Type
Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , June 2017 , pp. 124 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Achard, F., Beuchle, R., Mayaux, P., Stibig, H.J., Bodart, C., Brink, A., Carboni, S., Desclée, B. & Donnay, F. (2014) Determination of tropical deforestation rates and related carbon losses from 1990 to 2010. Global Change Biology 20: 2540–2554.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Achard, F., Eva, H.D., Stibig, H.-J., Mayaux, P., Gallego, J., Richards, T. & Malingreau, J.-P. (2002) Determination of deforestation rates of the world's humid tropical forests. Science 297: 999–1002.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Andam, K.S., Ferraro, P.J., Pfaff, A., Sanchez-Azofeifa, G.A. & Robalino, J.A. (2008) Measuring the effectiveness of protected area networks in reducing deforestation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105: 16089–16094.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Angelsen, A. (2010). Policies for reduced deforestation and their impact on agricultural production. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107: 19639–19644.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Arima, E.Y., Barreto, P., Araújo, E. & Soares-Filho, B. (2014) Public policies can reduce tropical deforestation: lessons and challenges from Brazil. Land Use Policy 41: 465–473.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barber, C.P., Cochrane, M.A., Souza, C.M. & Laurance, W.F. (2014) Roads, deforestation, and the mitigating effect of protected areas in the Amazon. Biological Conservation 177: 203–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bass, M.S., Finer, M., Jenkins, C.N., Kreft, H., Cisneros-Heredia, D.F., McCracken, S.F., Pitman, N.C., English, P.H., Swing, K., Villa, G. & Di Fiore, A. (2010) Global conservation significance of Ecuador's Yasuní National Park. PLoS One 5: e8767.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brooks, T.M., Mittermeier, R.A., Mittermeier, C.G., Da Fonseca, G.A., Rylands, A.B., Konstant, W.R., Flick, P., Pilgrim, J., Oldfield, S. & Magin, G. (2002) Habitat loss and extinction in the hotspots of biodiversity. Conservation Biology 16: 909–923.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brun, C., Cook, A.R., Lee, J.S.H., Wich, S.A., Koh, L.P. & Carrasco, L.R. (2015) Analysis of deforestation and protected area effectiveness in Indonesia: a comparison of Bayesian spatial models. Global Environmental Change 31: 285–295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chazdon, R.L. (2008) Beyond deforestation: restoring forests and ecosystem services on degraded lands. Science 320: 1458–1460.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cramer, W., Bondeau, A., Schaphoff, S., Lucht, W., Smith, B. & Sitch, S. (2004) Tropical forests and the global carbon cycle: impacts of atmospheric carbon dioxide, climate change and rate of deforestation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 359: 331–343.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Curatola, F., Obermeier, G.F., Gerique, W.A., López, A., Sandoval, M.F., Lehnert, L.W., Thies, B. & Bendix, J. (2015) Land cover change in the Andes of Southern Ecuador – patterns and drivers. Remote Sensing 7: 2509–2542.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farrow, A., Larrea, C., Hyman, G. & Lema, G. (2005) Exploring the spatial variation of food poverty in Ecuador. Food Policy 30: 510–531.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferraro, P.J., Hanauer, M.M., Miteva, D.A., Canavire-Bacarreza, G.J., Pattanayak, S.K. & Sims, K.R. (2013) More strictly protected areas are not necessarily more protective: evidence from Bolivia, Costa Rica, Indonesia, and Thailand. Environmental Research Letters 8: 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiallo, E.A. & Jacobson, S.K. (1995) Local communities and protected areas: attitudes of rural residents towards conservation and Machalilla National Park, Ecuador. Environmental Conservation 22: 241–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finer, M., Babbitt, B., Novoa, S., Ferrarese, F., Pappalardo, S.E., De Marchi, M., Saucedo, M. & Kumar, A. (2015) Future of oil and gas development in the western Amazon. Environmental Research Letters 10: 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finer, M., Pappalardo, S.E, Ferrarese, F. & Marchi, M.D. (2014) High resolution satellite imagery reveals Petroamazonas violated environmental impact study by building road into Yasuní National Park [www document]. URL www.geoyasuni.org/?p=1694 Google Scholar
Gaveau, D.L., Epting, J., Lyne, O., Linkie, M., Kumara, I., Kanninen, M. & Leader‐Williams, N. (2009) Evaluating whether protected areas reduce tropical deforestation in Sumatra. Journal of Biogeography 36: 2165–2175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haddad, N.M., Brudvig, L.A., Clobert, J., Davies, K.F., Gonzalez, A., Holt, R.D., Lovejoy, T.E., Sexton, J.O., Austin, M.P. & Collins, C.D. (2015) Habitat fragmentation and its lasting impact on Earth's ecosystems. Science Advances 1: e1500052.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hansen, M.C., Potapov, P.V., Moore, R., Hancher, M., Turubanova, S.A., Tyukavina, A., Thau, D., Stehman, S.V., Goetz, S.J., Loveland, T.R., Kommareddy, A., Egorov, A., Chini, L., Justice, C.O. & Townshend, J.R.G. (2013) High-resolution global maps of 21st-century forest cover change. Science 342: 850–853.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ho, D.E., Imai, K., King, G. & Stuart, E.A. (2011) MatchIt: nonparametric preprocessing for parametric causal inference. Journal of Statistical Software 42: 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holland, M.B., De Koning, F., Morales, M., Naughton-Treves, L., Robinson, B.E. & Suárez, L. (2014) Complex tenure and deforestation: implications for conservation incentives in the Ecuadorian Amazon. World Development 55: 21–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Htun, N. Z., Mizoue, N., Kajisa, T. & Yoshida, S. (2009) Deforestation and forest degradation as measures of Popa Mountain Park (Myanmar) effectiveness. Environmental Conservation 36: 218–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Instituto Geográfico Militar del Ecuador (2013) Capas de Información Geográfica Base [www document]. URL http://sni.gob.ec/coberturas Google Scholar
Joppa, L. & Pfaff, A. (2010) Reassessing the forest impacts of protection. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1185: 135–149.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Joppa, L.N., Loarie, S.R. & Pimm, S.L. (2008) On the protection of “protected areas”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105: 6673–6678.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lamb, D., Erskine, P.D. & Parrotta, J.A. (2005) Restoration of degraded tropical forest landscapes. Science 310: 1628–1632.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Laurance, W.F. (1999) Reflections on the tropical deforestation crisis. Biological Conservation 91: 109–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawrence, D. & Vandecar, K. (2015) Effects of tropical deforestation on climate and agriculture. Nature Climate Change 5: 27–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leisher, C., Touval, J., Hess, S.M., Boucher, T.M. & Reymondin, L. (2013) Land and forest degradation inside protected areas in Latin America. Diversity 5: 779–795.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, S. L., Edwards, D.P. & Galbraith, D. (2015) Increasing human dominance of tropical forests. Science 349: 827–832.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Malcolm, J.R., Liu, C., Neilson, R.P., Hansen, L. & Hannah, L. (2006) Global warming and extinctions of endemic species from biodiversity hotspots. Conservation Biology 20: 538–548.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mas, J.-F. (2005) Assessing protected area effectiveness using surrounding (buffer) areas environmentally similar to the target area. Environmental monitoring and assessment 105: 69–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mena, C.F., Barbieri, A.F., Walsh, S.J., Erlien, C.M., Holt, F.L. & Bilsborrow, R.E. (2006) Pressure on the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve: development and land use/cover change in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon. World Development 34: 1831–1849.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Messina, J.P., Walsh, S.J., Mena, C.F. & Delamater, P.L. (2006) Land tenure and deforestation patterns in the Ecuadorian Amazon: conflicts in land conservation in frontier settings. Applied Geography 26: 113–128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ministerio del Ambiente (2012) Línea Base de Deforestación del Ecuador Continental. Quito, Ecuador: Ministerio del Ambiente.Google Scholar
Miranda, J.J., Corral, L., Blackman, A., Asner, G. & Lima, E. (2016). Effects of protected areas on forest cover change and local communities: evidence from the Peruvian Amazon. World Development 78: 288–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mittermeier, R.A., Myers, N., Thomsen, J.B., Da Fonseca, G.A. & Olivieri, S. (1998) Biodiversity hotspots and major tropical wilderness areas: approaches to setting conservation priorities. Conservation Biology 12: 516–520.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mosandl, R., Günter, S., Stimm, B. & Weber, M. (2008) Ecuador suffers the highest deforestation rate in South America. In: Gradients in a Tropical Mountain Ecosystem of Ecuador, pp. 37–40. Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myers, N. (1988) Threatened biotas: “hot spots” in tropical forests. Environmentalist 8: 187–208.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nagendra, H. (2008) Do parks work? Impact of protected areas on land cover clearing. Ambio 37: 330–337.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Naughton-Treves, L., Holland, M.B. & Brandon, K. (2005) The role of protected areas in conserving biodiversity and sustaining local livelihoods. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 30: 219–252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nolte, C., Agrawal, A., Silvius, K.M. & Soares-Filho, B.S. (2013) Governance regime and location influence avoided deforestation success of protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110: 4956–4961.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Peralvo, M. & Delgado, J. (2010) Metodología para la Generación del Mapa de Deforestación Histórica. Quito, Ecuador: Ministerio del Ambiente and CONDESAN.Google Scholar
QGIS Development Team (2015) QGIS Geographic Information System. Open Source Geospatial Foundation [www document]. URL http://qgis.osgeo.org Google Scholar
R Core Team (2014) R: a language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria [www document]. URL http://www.R-project.org/ Google Scholar
Robinson, B.E., Holland, M.B. & Naughton-Treves, L. (2014) Does secure land tenure save forests? A meta-analysis of the relationship between land tenure and tropical deforestation. Global Environmental Change 29: 281–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rudel, T. (2000) Organizing for sustainable development, conservation organizations and the struggle to protect tropical rain forests in Esmeraldas, Ecuador. Ambio 29: 78–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rudel, T.K., Bates, D. & Machinguiashi, R. (2002) A tropical forest transition? Agricultural change, out-migration, and secondary forests in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92: 87–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rudel, T.K., Defries, R., Asner, G.P. & Laurance, W.F. (2009) Changing drivers of deforestation and new opportunities for conservation. Conservation Biology 23: 1396–1405.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Russell, J.R., Huang, J., Anand, P., Kucera, K., Sandoval, A.G., Dantzler, K.W., Hickman, D., Jee, J., Kimovec, F.M. & Koppstein, D. (2011) Biodegradation of polyester polyurethane by endophytic fungi. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 77: 6076–6084.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ribeiro de, Castro Solar, R., Barlow, J., Ferreira, J., Berenguer, E., Lees, A.C., Thomson, J.R., Louzada, J., Maués, M., Moura, N.G. & Oliveira, V.H. (2015) How pervasive is biotic homogenization in human‐modified tropical forest landscapes? Ecology Letters 18: 1108–1118.Google Scholar
Sierra, R. (2013) Patrones y Factores de Deforestación en el Ecuador Continental, 1990–2010. Y un Acercamiento a los Próximos 10 Años. Quito, Ecuador: Conservación Internacional Ecuador and Forest Trends.Google Scholar
Tapia-Armijos, M.F., Homeier, J., Espinosa, C.I., Leuschner, C. & de la Cruz, M. (2015) Deforestation and forest fragmentation in South Ecuador since the 1970s – losing a hotspot of biodiversity. PLoS One 10: e0133701.Google Scholar
Wells, M. P. & McShane, T. O. (2004) Integrating protected area management with local needs and aspirations. Ambio 33: 513–519.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wunder, S. (2001) Poverty alleviation and tropical forests – what scope for synergies? World development 29: 1817–1833.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zárate, K.C. (2013). Manual para la Gestión Operativa de las Áreas Protegidas de Ecuador. Quito, Ecuador: Ministerio del Ambiente.Google Scholar