{"title":"Greening for the greater good: Socio-economic impacts of land restoration in the Great Green Wall","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108311","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Our study examines the mid-term socioeconomic impacts of landscape restoration in highly desertification-prone Northern Nigeria through the Action Against Desertification (AAD) program. AAD implemented large-scale restoration and livelihood development activities aimed at increasing household income generation from restoration efforts and fostering alternative agricultural activities in an improved ecosystem. Using a multi-method strategy, we assess the impacts of landscape restoration at the household level. We leverage pre-restoration remote-sensed data and machine learning algorithms to identify comparable land sites to the program's restoration areas. Comparison households are selected from communities bordering these sites, replicating the AAD's targeting process. Our impact evaluation strategy employs the doubly-robust inverse-probability weighting regression adjustment model. Key findings indicate that land restoration activities did not negatively impact participant households' food security levels, despite some communal land use restrictions. Moreover, there was a reduction in moderate food insecurity observed. Household livelihood strategies in restoration areas shifted towards more climate-resilient activities, with decreased reliance on crop sales and increased participation in sales of livestock by-products and high-value Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFP). Compared to participants that were involved in the program at a later stage, early participants experienced larger impacts, further validating these findings. Our results highlight the role of participatory approaches to restoration, and the need for multi-scale approaches that include the identification of communities’ immediate needs but also, increase market access, to enhance the synergies of restoration’s biophysical and socioeconomic outcomes. Our analysis also offers an innovative approach for future ex-post evaluations of land restoration programs. The lack of evidence from rigorous methods is a recurrent issue in environmental interventions.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51021,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":6.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Ecological Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800924002088","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Our study examines the mid-term socioeconomic impacts of landscape restoration in highly desertification-prone Northern Nigeria through the Action Against Desertification (AAD) program. AAD implemented large-scale restoration and livelihood development activities aimed at increasing household income generation from restoration efforts and fostering alternative agricultural activities in an improved ecosystem. Using a multi-method strategy, we assess the impacts of landscape restoration at the household level. We leverage pre-restoration remote-sensed data and machine learning algorithms to identify comparable land sites to the program's restoration areas. Comparison households are selected from communities bordering these sites, replicating the AAD's targeting process. Our impact evaluation strategy employs the doubly-robust inverse-probability weighting regression adjustment model. Key findings indicate that land restoration activities did not negatively impact participant households' food security levels, despite some communal land use restrictions. Moreover, there was a reduction in moderate food insecurity observed. Household livelihood strategies in restoration areas shifted towards more climate-resilient activities, with decreased reliance on crop sales and increased participation in sales of livestock by-products and high-value Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFP). Compared to participants that were involved in the program at a later stage, early participants experienced larger impacts, further validating these findings. Our results highlight the role of participatory approaches to restoration, and the need for multi-scale approaches that include the identification of communities’ immediate needs but also, increase market access, to enhance the synergies of restoration’s biophysical and socioeconomic outcomes. Our analysis also offers an innovative approach for future ex-post evaluations of land restoration programs. The lack of evidence from rigorous methods is a recurrent issue in environmental interventions.
期刊介绍:
Ecological Economics is concerned with extending and integrating the understanding of the interfaces and interplay between "nature''s household" (ecosystems) and "humanity''s household" (the economy). Ecological economics is an interdisciplinary field defined by a set of concrete problems or challenges related to governing economic activity in a way that promotes human well-being, sustainability, and justice. The journal thus emphasizes critical work that draws on and integrates elements of ecological science, economics, and the analysis of values, behaviors, cultural practices, institutional structures, and societal dynamics. The journal is transdisciplinary in spirit and methodologically open, drawing on the insights offered by a variety of intellectual traditions, and appealing to a diverse readership.
Specific research areas covered include: valuation of natural resources, sustainable agriculture and development, ecologically integrated technology, integrated ecologic-economic modelling at scales from local to regional to global, implications of thermodynamics for economics and ecology, renewable resource management and conservation, critical assessments of the basic assumptions underlying current economic and ecological paradigms and the implications of alternative assumptions, economic and ecological consequences of genetically engineered organisms, and gene pool inventory and management, alternative principles for valuing natural wealth, integrating natural resources and environmental services into national income and wealth accounts, methods of implementing efficient environmental policies, case studies of economic-ecologic conflict or harmony, etc. New issues in this area are rapidly emerging and will find a ready forum in Ecological Economics.