Abstract
Identifying important areas for conserving biodiversity has attracted much discussion, but relatively few studies have dealt with conflicting socio-economic interests in a manner that is fully accountable. For the Guinean–Congolian forest region, we applied quantitative methods to select a network of coarse-scale areas sufficient to represent all forest mammal and bird species at least once. In a separate exercise, we prioritised 50% of the region to represent the same species as many times as possible. In both cases, we sought to minimise potential conflicts between conservation and other socio-economic imperatives by considering benefit-to-cost ratios. We found that by choosing areas to reduce conflicts, we were able to increase markedly the proportion of selected areas with low or medium conflict and decrease the proportion with high conflict. Nonetheless, we cannot expect that conservation goals will always be met unless some of these conflicts are faced and resolved. By working together with specialists from both the biological and socio-economic fields, we show that easily implemented quantitative tools could be useful for supporting the process of finding important areas for biodiversity conservation, while avoiding much of the conflict with other interests.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ando A., Camm J., Polasky S. and Solow A. 1998. Species distributions, land values, and efficient conservation. Science 279: 2126–2128.
AraÚjo M.B. and Williams P.H. 2000. Selecting areas for species persistence from occurrence data. Biological Conservation 96: 331–395.
Balmford A., Gaston K.J. and Rodrigues A.S.L. 2000. Integrating costs of conservation into international priority setting. Conservation Biology 14: 597–605.
Balmford A., Moore J.L., Brooks T., Burgess N., Hansen L.A., Williams P. et al. 2001. Conservation conflicts across Africa. Science 291: 2616–2619.
Blom A. 2003. The extraordinary biodiversity of the Guinean–Congolian Forest Region. In: Toham A.K., Olson D., Abell R., D'Amico J., Burgess N., Thieme M. et al. (eds), Biological Priorities for Conservation in the Guinean–Congolian Forest and Freshwater Region. Proceedings of Workshop held on March 30–April 2, 2000 in Liberville, Gabon., pp. 13–16 (in press).
Brooks T., Balmford A., Burgess N., Fjeldså J., Hansen L.A., Moore J. et al. 2001. Toward a blueprint for conservation in Africa. BioScience 51: 613–624.
Burgess N.D., de Klerk H., Crowe T.M. and Rahbek C. 2000. A preliminary assessment of congruence between biodiversity patterns in Afrotropical forest birds and forest mammals. Ostrich 71: 286–290.
Burgess N.D., de Klerk H., Fjeldså J., Crowe T.M. and Rahbek C. 1997. Mapping Afrotropical birds: links between atlas studies and conservation priority analyses. Bulletin of the African Bird Club 4: 93–98.
Collar N.J. and Stuart S.N. 1985. Threatened Birds of Africa and Related Islands. ICBP/IUCN Red Data Book, Part 1. 3rd edn. International Council for Bird Preservation, Cambridge, UK.
Cowling R.M., Pressey R.L., Lombard A.T., Desmet P.G. and Ellis A.G. 1999. From representation to persistence: requirements for a sustainable system of conservation areas in the species-rich mediterranean-climate desert of southern Africa. Diversity and Distributions 5: 51–71.
Csuti B., Polasky S., Williams P.H., Pressey R.L., Camm J.D., Kershaw M. et al. 1997. A comparison of reserve selection algorithms using data on terrestrial vertebrates in Oregon. Biological Conservation 80: 83–97.
Dixon J.A. and Sherman P.B. 1990. Economics of Protected Areas. Earthscan Publications, London.
Faith D.P. 1995. Biodiversity and Regional Sustainability Analysis. CSIRO Publications, Lyneham, Australia.
Faith D.P. 1998. Some considerations in the design of a national biodiversity monitoring system for Brazil's protected areas. In: Baker D.S., Ferreira L.M. and Saile P.W. (eds), Proceedings and Papers of the International Workshop on Biodiversity Monitoring in Federal Protected Areas: Defining the Methodology. IBAMA/GTZ, Pirenopolis, Brazil, pp. 51–65.
Faith D.P. and Walker P.A. 1996. Integrating conservation and development: effective trade-offs between biodiversity and cost in the selection of protected areas. Biodiversity and Conservation 5: 431–446.
Faith D.P. and Walker P.A. 1997. Regional sustainability and protected areas – biodiversity protection as part of regional integration of conservation and production. In: Pigram J.J.J. and Sundell R.C. (eds), National Parks and Protected Areas: Selection, Delimitation, and Management. University of New England Press, Armidale, Australia, pp. 297–314.
Faith D.P., Margules C.R. and Walker P.A. 2001a. A biodiversity conservation plan for Papua New Guinea based on biodiversity trade-offs analysis. Pacific Conservation Biology 6: 304–324.
Faith D.P., Walker P.A. and Margules C.R. 2001b. Some future prospects for systematic biodiversity planning in Papua New Guinea – and for biodiversity planning in general. Pacific Conservation Biology 6: 325–343.
Finkel E. 1998. Software helps Australia manage forest debate. Science 281: 1789–1791.
Fonseca G., Balmford A., Bibby C., Boitani L., Brooks T., Burgess N. et al. 2000. Following Africa's lead in setting priorities. Nature (London) 405: 393–394.
Freitag S., Nicholls A.O. and van Jaarsveld A.S. 1996. Nature reserve selection in the Transvaal, South Africa: what data should we be using? Biodiversity and Conservation 5: 685–698.
Howard P., Davenport T. and Kigenyi F. 1997. Planning conservation areas in Uganda's natural forests. Oryx 31: 253–264.
Lombard A.T. 1995. The problems with multi-species conservation: do hotspots, ideal reserves and existing reserves coincide? South African Journal of Zoology 30: 145–164.
Margules C.R. and Pressey R.L. 2000. Systematic conservation planning. Nature (London) 405: 243–253.
Margules C.R., Nicholls A.O. and Pressey R.L. 1988. Selecting networks of reserves to maximise biological diversity. Biological Conservation 43: 63–76.
McNeely J.A. 1997. Assessing methods for setting conservation priorities Investing in Biological Diversity: the Cairns Conference, OECD Proceedings. OECD, Paris, pp. 25–55.
Metrick A. and Weitzman M.L. 1998. Conflicts and choices in biodiversity preservation. Journal of Economic Perspectives 12: 21–34.
Mittermeier R.A., Myers N., Thomsen J.B. and da Fonseca G.A.B. 1998. Biodiversity hotspots and major tropical wilderness areas: approaches to setting conservation priorities. Conservation Biology 12: 516–520.
Moore J., Folkmann M., Balmford A., Brooks T., Burgess N., Hansen L. et al. in preparation. Heuristic and optimal solutions for set-covering problems in conservation biology.
Moran D., Pearce D. and Wendelaar A. 1997. Investing in biodiversity: an economic perspective on global priority setting. Biodiversity Conservation 6: 1219–1243.
Nantel P., Bouchard A., Brouillet L. and Hay S. 1998. Selection of areas for protecting rare plants with integration of land use conflicts: a case study for the west coast of Newfoundland, Canada. Biological Conservation 84: 223–234.
Newmark W.D. and Hough J.L. 2000. Conserving wildlife in Africa: integrated conservation and development projects and beyond. BioScience 50: 585–601.
Nicholls A.O. 1998. Integrating population abundance, dynamics and distribution into broad-scale priority setting. In: Mace G.M., Balmford A. and Ginsberg J.R. (eds), Conservation in a Changing World. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 251–272.
O'Hara D. 2003. Socio-economic context. In: Kamdem Toham A., Olson D., Abell R., D'Amico J., Burgess N., Thieme M. et al. (eds), Biological Priorities for Conservation in the Guinean-Congolian Forest and Freshwater Region. Proceedings of Workshop held on March 30–April 2, 2000 in Libreville, Gabon., pp. 17–29 (in press).
Olson D.M. and Dinerstein E. 1998. The global 200: a representation approach to conserving the Earth's most biologically valuable ecoregions. Conservation Biology 12: 502–515.
Pressey R.L. and Bedward M. 1991. Mapping the environment at different scales: benefits and costs for nature conservation. In: Margules C.R. and Austin M.P. (eds), Nature Conservation: Cost Effective Biological Surveys and Data Analysis. CSIRO, Canberra, Australia, pp. 7–13.
Pressey R.L. and Logan V.S. 1998. Size of selection units for future reserves and its influence on actual vs targeted representation of features: a case study in western New South Wales. Biological Conservation 85: 305–319.
Pressey R.L. and Nicholls A.O. 1989a. Efficiency in conservation evaluation: scoring versus iterative approaches. Biological Conservation 50: 199–218.
Pressey R.L. and Nicholls A.O. 1989b. Application of a numerical algorithm to the selection of reserves in semi-arid New South Wales. Biological Conservation 50: 263–278.
Pressey R.L., Humphries C.J., Margules C.R., Vane-Wright R.I. and Williams P.H. 1993. Beyond opportunism: key principles for systematic reserve selection. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 8: 124–128.
Pressey R.L., Johnson I.R. and Wilson P.D. 1994. Shades of irreplaceability: towards a measure of the contribution of sites to a reservation goal. Biodiversity and Conservation 3: 242–262.
Pressey R.L., Possingham H.P. and Day J.R. 1997. Effectiveness of alternative heuristic algorithms for identifying indicative minimum requirements for conservation reserves. Biological Conservation 80: 207–219.
Rebelo A.G. and Siegfried W.R. 1992. Where should nature reserves be located in the Cape Floristic Region, South Africa? Models for the spatial configuration of a reserve network aimed at maximizing the protection of floral diversity. Conservation Biology 6: 243–252.
Sibley C.G. and Monroe B.L. Jr 1990. Distribution and Taxonomy of Birds of theWorld. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.
Sibley C.G. and Monroe B.L. Jr 1993. A Supplement to Distribution and Taxonomy of Birds of the World. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.
Stoms D.M. 1994. Scale dependence of species richness maps. Professional Geographer 46: 346–358.
Vane-Wright R.I. 1996. Identifying priorities for the conservation of biodiversity: systematic biological criteria within a socio-political framework. In: Gaston K.J. (ed.), Biodiversity: a Biology of Numbers and Difference. Blackwell Science, Oxford, UK, pp. 309–344.
Wilkie D.S., Carpenter J.F. and Zhang Q. 2001. The under-financing of protected areas in the Congo Basin: so many parks and so little willingness-to-pay. Biodiversity and Conservation 10: 691–709.
Williams P.H. 1996. Worldmap 4 windows: software and help document 4. London: distributed privately and from http://www.nhm.ac.uk/science/projects/worldmap/.
Williams P.H. 1998. Key sites for conversation: area-selection methods for biodiversity. In: Mace G.M., Balmford A. and Ginsberg J.R. (eds), Conservation in a Changing World. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 221–249.
Williams P.H. and AraÚjo M.B. 2002. Apples, oranges, and probabilities: integrating multiple factors into biodiversity conservation with consistency. Environmental Modeling and Assessment 7: 139–151.
Williams P.H., Burgess N.D. and Rahbek C. 2000. Flagship species, ecological complementarity, and conserving the diversity of mammals and birds in sub-Saharan Africa. Animal Conservation 3: 249–260.
Wilson D.E. and Reeder D.M. 1993. Mammal Species of the World: a Taxonomic and Geographic Reference. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
Witting L. and Loeschcke V. 1993. Biodiversity conservation: reserve optimisation or loss minimisation? Trends in Ecology and Evolution 8: 417.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Williams, P., Moore, J., Toham, A.K. et al. Integrating biodiversity priorities with conflicting socio-economic values in the Guinean–Congolian forest region. Biodiversity and Conservation 12, 1297–1320 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023092100942
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023092100942