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"LAND USE PLANNING"
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High Carbon Stock forests provide co-benefits for tropical biodiversity
1. Carbon-based policies provide powerful opportunities to unite tropical forest conservation with climate change mitigation. However, their effectiveness in delivering biodiversity co-benefits is dependent on high levels of biodiversity being found in high carbon areas. Previous studies have focussed solely on the co-benefits associated with Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) over large spatial scales, with few empirically testing carbon-biodiversity correlations at management unit scales appropriate to decision-makers. Yet, in development frontiers, where most biodiversity and carbon loss occurs, carbon-based policies are increasingly driven by commodity certification schemes, which are applied at the concession level. 2. Working in a typical human-modified landscape in Southeast Asia, we examined the biodiversity value of land prioritised via application of REDD+ or the High Carbon Stock (HCS) approach, the emerging land-use planning tool for oil palm certification. Carbon stocks were estimated via low- and high-resolution datasets derived from global or local-level biomass. Mammalian species richness was predicted using hierarchical Bayesian multispecies occupancy models of camera-trap data from forest and oil palm habitats. 3. At the community level, HCS forest supported comparable mammal diversity to control sites in continuous forest, while lower carbon strata exhibited reduced species occupancy. 4. No association was found between species richness and carbon when the latter was estimated using coarse-resolution data. However, when using high-resolution, locally validated biomass data, diversity demonstrated positive relationships with carbon for threatened and disturbance-sensitive species, suggesting sensitivity of co-benefits to carbon data sources and the species considered. 5. Policy implications. Our work confirms the potential for environmental certification and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation to work in tandem with conservation to mitigate agricultural impacts on tropical forest carbon stocks and biodiversity. Successful implementation of both approaches could be used to direct development to low carbon, low biodiversity areas in tropical countries.
Journal Article
Cats, connectivity and conservation: incorporating data sets and integrating scales for wildlife management
1. Understanding resource selection and quantifying habitat connectivity are fundamental to conservation planning for both land-use and species management plans. However, data sets available to management authorities for resource selection and connectivity analyses are often highly limited and fragmentary. As a result, measuring connectivity is challenging, and often poorly integrated within conservation planning and wildlife management. To exacerbate the challenge, scale-dependent resource use makes inference across scales problematic, resource use is often modelled in areas where the species is not present, and connectivity is typically measured using a source-to-sink approach, erroneously assuming animals possess predefined destinations. 2. Here, we used a large carnivore, the leopard Panthera pardus, to characterise resource use and landscape connectivity across a vast, biodiverse region of southern Africa. Using a range of data sets to counter data deficiencies inherent in carnivore management, we overcame methodological limitations by employing occupancy modelling and resource selection functions across three orders of selection, and estimated landscape-scale habitat connectivity independent of a priori source and sink locations - using circuit theory. We evaluated whether occupancy modelling on its own was capable of accurately informing habitat connectivity, and identified conservation priorities necessary for applied management. 3. We detected markedly different scale-dependent relationships across all selection orders. Our multi-data, multi-scale approach accurately predicted resource use across multiple scales and demonstrates how management authorities can more suitably utilise fragmentary data sets. We further developed an unbiased landscape-scale depiction of habitat connectivity, and identified key linkages in need of targeted management. We did not find support for the use of occupancy modelling as a proxy for landscape-scale habitat connectivity and further caution its use within a management context. 4. Synthesis and applications. Maintaining habitat connectivity remains a fundamental component of wildlife management and conservation, yet data to inform these biological and ecological processes are often scarce. We present a robust approach that incorporates multi-scale fragmentary data sets (e.g. mortality data, permit data, sightings data), routinely collected by management authorities, to inform wildlife management and land-use planning. We recommend that management authorities employ a multi-data, multi-scale connectivity approach - as we present here - to identify management units at risk of low connectivity.
Journal Article
Consequences of underexplored variation in biodiversity indices used for land-use prioritization
For biodiversity protection to play a persuasive role in land-use planning, conservationists must be able to offer objective systems for ranking which natural areas to protect or convert. Representing biodiversity in spatially explicit indices is challenging because it entails numerous judgments regarding what variables to measure, how to measure them, and how to combine them. Surprisingly few studies have explored this variation. Here, we explore how this variation affects which areas are selected for agricultural conversion by a land-use prioritization model designed to reduce the biodiversity losses associated with agricultural expansion in Zambia. We first explore the similarity between model recommendations generated by three recently published composite indices and a commonly used rarity-weighted species richness metric. We then explore four underlying sources of ecological and methodological variation within these and other approaches, including different terrestrial vertebrate taxonomic groups, different species-richness metrics, different mathematical methods for combining layers, and different spatial resolutions of inputs. The results generated using different biodiversity approaches show very low spatial agreement regarding which areas to convert to agriculture. There is little overlap in areas identified for conversion using previously published indices (mean Jaccard similarity, Jw
, between 0.3 and 3.7%), different taxonomic groups (5.0% < mean Jw
< 13.5%), or different measures of species richness (15.6% < mean Jw
< 33.7%). Even with shared conservation goals, different methods for combining layers and different input spatial resolutions still produce meaningful, though smaller, differences among areas selected for conversion (40.9% < mean Jw
< 67.5%). The choice of taxonomic group had the largest effect on conservation priorities, followed by the choice of species richness metric, the choice of combination method, and finally the choice of spatial resolution. These disagreements highlight the challenge of objectively representing biodiversity in land-use planning tools, and present a credibility challenge for conservation scientists seeking to inform policy making. Our results suggest an urgent need for a more consistent and transparent framework for designing the biodiversity indices used in land-use planning, which we propose here.
Journal Article
Why Tenure Responsive Land-Use Planning Matters: Insights for Land Use Consolidation for Food Security in Rwanda
Land use consolidation aims to address food insecurity challenges in Rwanda. However, there is contradictory evidence on whether this tool has met food security objectives or not. This study addresses two questions: How has the land use consolidation improved (or not improved) food security at the local level? How can food security challenges be addressed using a renewed approach to land use consolidation that adopts a tenure responsive land use planning procedure? We investigate these questions in Nyange Sector (in the Musanze District) of Rwanda using mixed research methods. The study generates theoretical and policy relevant outcomes. Theoretically, it links the concept of tenure responsive land-use planning to food security improvements. Policy wise, it provides an operational framework for implementing land use consolidation to make it more responsive to food security (based on tenure responsive land-use planning measures) in Rwanda.
Journal Article
Crossing Borders
The complex diffusion processes affecting the flow of planning ideas and practices across the globe are illustrated in this book. It raises questions about why and how some ideas and practices attract international attention, and about the invention processes which go on when external influences are woven together with local efforts to meet local specifics and requirements.
Initiated to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the journal Planning Theory and Practice in 2009, this book reflects the themes of the journal.
Taking different intellectual perspectives, this collection takes a critical look at the international diffusion of planning ideas and practices, their impacts on planning practices in different contexts, on the challenge of ‘situating’ planning practices, and on the ethical and methodological issues of international exchange in the planning field.
eBook