Conservation by local people in the Niassa National Reserve: money or in-kind payments to adopt conservation-friendly practices

The expansion of Protected Areas (PAs) has been considered as the main strategy to contain deforestation and forest degradation in Developing Countries (DCs), and secure most of the vulnerable and endangered species, including the large carnivores and herbivores of African Savannas. Mozambique is one of DC which has also embarked in this expansion of PAs, with a current network of PAs covering 25% of the natural forest. In most of Mozambican PAs, there is also an unprecedented growth of human population, whose livelihoods depends on harvesting natural resources. Illegal or unregulated harvesting of natural resources imposes a huge threat to biodiversity conservation, which needs to be urgently addressed through policies aimed at changing people’s behaviors to conserve biodiversity the country’s PAs. The Niassa National Reserve (NNR) is the largest PA in the country encompasses 5.3% of all-natural forest and 45% of the overall land under PA in the country. Using the NNR as a case study, we aim to explore policy ways to improve the conservation status of PAs in Mozambique and DCs in general, through identifying and analyzing the role of the drivers for local people engagement in activities that threat biodiversity conservation. We explore possible incentive measures that PA residents may be willing to accept to collaborate with park authorities and other relevant stakeholders operating in the reserve. This main objective was addressed by surveying conservation experts spread through the country and local households in the NNR. As regards the expert survey, Cluster Analysis was applied to identify the different experts’ views about to the main practices that threaten biodiversity conservation in the NNR, the underlining drivers for local people involvement with such practices, the main responsible for each practice and the effectiveness of the new proposed compensation measures. A cluster procedure was also used to identify the different Livelihood and Farming Systems (LFS) prevailing in the reserve, based on data from the household survey. A Multinomial Logistic Model (MLM) was also estimated to understand the drivers of household choice of LFS. The results showed that outsider conduct most of the illegal activities that strongly threat biodiversity conservation in the reserve (poaching, illegal logging and mining). At the same time, local people tend to engage in illegal activities that they need to carry out to cope with their daily needs. Most of the new in-kind incentives explored in the surveys, showed a greater acceptance from local people compared to those currently applied in the reserve. Moreover, livelihood systems were mainly driven by socio-economic factors, while FS were mostly driven by biophysical conditions. Finally, households who were employed and had diversified farming and off-farming activities, were better off, more resilient to climate change and crop raiding animals and held more conservation friendly attitudes