BRS: CANCELLED

Jeff Sayer "How change happens in forest landscapes"

Abstract: Academic biodiversity science struggles to deal with the complex realities of places where biodiversity conservation happens. Conservation interventions themselves often focus on symptoms and neglect underlying drivers of biodiversity loss. Assessment of the impacts of numerous attempts to address the linked problems of human poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation have presented scientific challenges. It is often hard to assemble evidence that interventions have achieved either of these objectives. I will present the difficulties that we have encountered in our attempts to monitor long-term change in environmental and human livelihood values of tropical forest landscapes in Asia and Africa. I will argue that long-term engagement in such landscapes can provide evidence that improves the cost-effectiveness of biodiversity conservation investments.