Assessing Medium-term Impacts of Conservation Interventions on Local Livelihoods in Northern Cambodia

The success of conservation interventions often depends on the multifaceted and sometimes competing interests and motivations that lead local people to sustainably manage natural resources in the first place. Yet despite an extensive literature exploring the effects of conservation on human livelihoods, there is a lack of robust evidence about which type of conservation intervention works, for whom, and how. This is partly because the social impacts of conservation interventions often affect multiple aspects of human well-being, with changes taking place over long periods during which unintended feedbacks can occur. This paper assesses the medium-term impacts of Protected Areas (PAs) and of three Payment for Environmental Services (PES) projects on three socio-economic indicators across 16 villages in Northern Cambodia. We present a multi-period evaluation including three panel surveys over six years from villages inside and outside PAs to clarify the mechanisms through which social effects of conservation take place and how this translates into the development pathways adopted by households. While livelihood improvements were recorded across all villages, we found that PAs slightly reduce households’ socio-economic status, though does not impede their development. PAs also protect traditional livelihoods. Participants in one of the three PES projects recorded higher economic status and agricultural productivity than non-participants, suggesting that there can be important social co-benefits to conservation interventions when programs are well-designed to respond to local contexts.