The last two weeks our Warwick colleagues Dr Herizo Andrianadrasana, Dr Jess Savage and Dr Chris Malesios have been visiting Madagascar to explore the impact of migration dynamics on the sustainable management of areas of high biodiversity value. The fieldwork is part of the project Migration & Management of Protected Areas, funded by the University of Warwick. It aims to unravel social-ecological complexities potentially linking poverty and deforestation and co-design of policy pathways with local stakeholders towards more effective and sustainable management of protected areas in the region. Through a number of workshops and meetings the research team, in collaboration with local partners, have been collecting data to understand people's insights and produce clear findings that can inform future policy decisions in one of the world's most important biodiversity hotspots.

Nature protected areas are a key policy tool for biodiversity protection, and public support for protected areas is a key element for their success. Now in its final year, the FIDELIO project team have published two articles on their research into the social factors affecting public support for protected areas based on their statistical modelling work on thousands of public survey responses from across Europe. Both articles are fully open access and may be downloaded here:

‘Exploring local public support for protected areas: What social factors influence stated and active support among local people?’ Environmental Science and Policy, 145, 250-261. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2023.04.003 . 

‘Using perceived impacts, governance and social indicators to explain support for protected areas.’ Environmental Research Letters 18(5). https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/acc95b .

A two day workshop was organised 13-14 June by Nikoleta Jones, James McGinlay and Alfie Begley from IGSD bringing together practitioners and researchers across Europe who have been involved in social impact assessments of protected areas. The workshop follows the work conducted under the FIDELIO project during which over 15 assessments have been conducted across several countries. The FIDELIO project has explored why some Protected Areas are more effective than others setting at its core the unravelling of complexities in social-ecological systems and the important role of social outcomes of these conservation policies. During the workshop the main outcomes of the project were discussed including the level of public support for protected areas, their social impacts and also the spatial distribution of social impacts in the local communities. We were very excited to discuss new ways of improving social value and impact assessments for Protected Areas and explored pathways that will facilitate countries across Europe to meet the targets outlined in the new Global Biodiversity Framework including the potential expansion and increase of protected areas across the world.