BC3 Seminars: Conservation Legacies: Understanding the Social-Ecological Impacts of International Biodiversity Aid

Seminar Title:
Conservation Legacies: Understanding the Social-Ecological Impacts of International Biodiversity Aid

Abstract:

Financial support is critical to achieving global biodiversity conservation goals.  However, information about the allocation and the effectiveness of biodiversity aid, the largest source of funding for international conservation, remains lacking. This seminar presents new research on the impacts of international aid for biodiversity conservation in tropical countries. It describes findings from a global study of the effect of conservation funding on threatened species and then focuses on a case study of a conservation aid project implemented in Benin’s W National Park, one the largest protected areas in West Africa. Specially, it examines how the European Union-funded ECOPAS project (Ecosystèmes Protégés en Afrique Soudano-Sahélienne) affected mammal species abundance and the ability of households around the Park to access natural and financial capital.  Using a mixed methods approach based on a quasi-experimental research design, the study reports on these impacts and explores the key role of contestation over property rights in shaping them.  The presentation concludes by placing findings from the W region in broader international context and by sketching out future research directions

Lecturer:
Daniel Charles Miller, Assistant Professor at Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences (NRES)

Lecturer´s personal webpage: http://nres.illinois.edu/directory/dcmiller

Daniel C. Miller is Assistant Professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Dr. Miller’s research and teaching focus on international environmental politics and policy.  He is especially interested in understanding the conservation and development impacts of international aid in tropical countries and the political factors that shape those impacts.  He works in a variety of settings around the world, but has a strong geographic interest in Africa and on forests more generally.  He is increasingly interested in understanding the impacts of agroforestry interventions and their relationship to forests.

Dr. Miller completed his Ph.D. in the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan and earned undergraduate and Master’s degrees in Political Science at the University of Illinois. He currently serves as Vice-President of the Society for Conservation Biology’s Social Science Working Group and is a member of the AidData Research Consortium. Prior to joining the faculty at Illinois, Dr. Miller was Senior Forestry Specialist at the Program on Forests at the World Bank.  Before that he was Program Associate for Conservation and Sustainable Development at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Rural Community Development Advisor for Yayasan Dian Tama, a local NGO in West Kalimanatan, Indonesia.