Evaluating the Effectiveness of Conservation Incentive Payments to Help Achieve Global Biodiversity Framework Targets

The landmark Global Biodiversity Framework produced at last year’s 15th Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CoP 15) established a number of key targets to help conserve Earth’s biodiversity, including ensuring that protected areas are equitably governed, managing human-wildlife interactions to promote coexistence, developing positive incentives for conservation, and stimulating innovative economic conservation schemes.

We aim to evaluate the effectiveness of conservation incentive payments (CIPs) as a policy tool for achieving these targets primarily through the study of a CIP program being piloted in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA).

In this multi-use landscape, lion attacks on livestock pose a significant financial burden on local people and have prompted many retaliatory lion killings.

To help mitigate this conflict, stakeholders launched a pilot CIP program under which villages earn payments based on the presence of lions on their land.

We intend to conduct a household survey and analyse lion behaviour and conflict data across the NCA to evaluate the impacts of the CIP program. We will also evaluate the scalability of CIPs within Tanzania and undertake a broader review of CIPs worldwide.

The results of our study will shed light on the potential role for CIPs in achieving the key ecological, social, and policy-based targets set forth in the Global Biodiversity Framework and inform the future use of CIPs in Tanzania and beyond.