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EXAMPLE
STELLA in the Congo Basin Forest (the Tri National de la Sangha Landscape)
How STELLA explores the interface of conservation and development
To better understand exactly how conservation and development dynamics influence each other, STELLA modelling can be used. When building a model of the landscape, all aspects which are of importance to Natural Resource Management are modelled and thus made explicit. Once explicit, we can explore the trade-offs and synergies between conservation and development outcomes. An example of a trade-off would be: if we decrease hunting by 10%, how much will the households lose on income and how much will the animal population win? An example of how STELLA modelling can show us how conservation and development can influence each other is given in the STELLA output graph on the right. The Figure shows what will happen to the number of gorillas being hunted under a certain scenario. This scenario that is being explored concerns the closure of the logging concessions after 20 years due to an unsustainable exploitation of the forest, leaving it “empty” (without timber trees of extractable size). The STELLA output graph shows us now that the number of gorillas being poached increases highly right after the closure of the logging concessions. In the past, in the TNS landscape the trend has been seen that a sudden loss in income (as after the cacao crisis and after the closure of a concession in CAR) poaching peaks since people try to make up for their income loss on the short term by hunting. So, the closing of the sawmill of the logging concessions will impact on local development, that is to say the former sawmill employers will lose their jobs and thus their income.
This negative impact on development is expected to impact negatively on the conservation outcome by an increased number of gorillas being killed. This example shows us that in order to get best outcomes for the landscape, future major impacts on both conservation and development should be explored.
How STELLA explores the potential impact of different NRM options
Once we have created a model of the landscape, we can explore the impact of different interventions on conservation and development outcomes. With the model we test which entities are changed more easily than others, to focus on those interventions with the highest impact, and we test which interventions have a positive impact on both conservation and development outcomes. Also, we explore the effectiveness of different interventions under different future scenarios. For example, in the previous example of unsustainable logging, STELLA can reveal what the effect of investing in certification schemes and more sustainable timber exploitation could be on the long term on both conservation and development outcomes.
In this example, we have explored the impact of two different NRM strategies on
the population of elephants and the average household income. Furthermore, we
explore their effectiveness under 2 different scenarios concerning the budget
for NRM: one with a fixed NRM budget over the next 25 years and one with a
budget diminishing over a time span of 30 years to 30% of the starting budget.
For the first NRM strategy explored 100% of the budget is spend on
anti-poaching, for the second, part of the budget is spend on “better
governance” and awareness creation.
Better governance information box What do we mean by “better governance”? In this landscape, a lot of money is generated by (often international) logging and safari hunting companies. These companies pay high amounts of taxes for the extraction of the natural resources. According to the Cameroonian forestry law (1994), part of this tax money (about 50%) is destined to flow back into the communes from where the natural resources were exploited: about 40% is destined to the commune and 10% is destined to the communities. However, this money is being managed badly by the local mayors and the lump sum is disappearing in their pockets instead of being invested in local development projects. The recently introduced “community managed safari hunting grounds” (Zones de Chasse d’Intérêt Communautaire, ZICGC) avoid the mayor’s mismanagement by giving the safari taxes directly to a village structure (COVAREF) which uses it for local development projects, though this concerns a lot smaller amount of money than the forest taxes. The better management scenario thus implies the supporting and putting in place of similar village level structures which can directly receive and manage the money from the forest taxes and use it directly for local development projects. In this better governance scenario, we also invest some of the budget in awareness creation to make the local people aware that the benefits they are receiving (the tax money) comes directly from their local resources and that they should thus manage them well. |
The result of these scenarios is displayed in the output graphs. The first figure shows us that a mere anti-poaching policy with a fixed NRM budget secures a big elephant population in the landscape, though when looking at the average household revenue we see that poverty is not alleviated under this policy (a “win”-“lose” situation). For the second NRM strategy explored with a fixed budget, part of the anti-poaching budget is now spend on better governance and awareness creation. We now see that the elephant population decreases a bit in the beginning to stabilize and even increase a little after 10 years, ending after 25 years with almost as big an elephant population as under the mere anti-poaching scenario. When looking at the impact of the better governance scenario on the average household we now see a substantial increase of the revenue after 8 years due to the money for local development projects (a win-win situation).
The second figure shows us the effectiveness of these strategies under a decreasing NRM budget. When comparing again the 2 NRM strategies we now see that the conservation outcome (the elephant population) ‘scores’ better on the long term under the better governance scenario than under the mere anti-poaching scenario. This reveals that there is no sustained effect from anti-poaching and its effect decreases with a decreasing budget, so to safe-guard the elephant population under an uncertain future conservation budget only investing in anti-poaching does not appear a secure conservation method.
For those in possession of a version of STELLA on
their computer, you can download the following pdf file containing a
step-by-step example of how to start building a landscape model.
Download (PDF size 332 KB)