Managing protected areas in developing countries

Resource extraction and agricultural encroachment threaten the conservation of protected areas in many developing countries. Initially, enforcement was used to control these threats. More recently, protected area managers have implemented integrated conservation and development programs (ICDPs), which attempt to conserve protected areas and promote local development.;This dissertation develops a model of protected area (PA) management to assess the effectiveness of enforcement and ICDP policies. Household decision making is modeled in a number of market cases to reflect the widespread, but not universal, lack of markets in developing countries. The results determine how the protected area manager should allocate a limited management budget among enforcement and ICDP policies when: (1) the PA manager is only concerned with maximizing protected area conservation; and (2) the PA manager must also ensure that local welfare does not decline as a result of conservation activities.;When the protected area manager is only concerned with maximizing PA conservation, missing markets have a significant impact. Relative to the case where markets are complete, more ICDP policies should be implemented when the labor market alone is missing, while more enforcement policies should be implemented when the resource market is missing. Furthermore, missing markets make both types of policies less effective. In all market cases, model results suggest that enforcement policies need to play an important role in protected area conservation.;When the protected area manager must ensure that local welfare does not fall as a results of conservation efforts, ICDP policies are implemented to compensate local households for the costs imposed by enforcement. However, for specific assumptions about missing markets and policy costs, the management plan that maximizes protected area conservation also can increase local welfare. When such Pareto improving policies are available, there is no tradeoff between conservation and development.;In all other cases, increased protected area conservation reduces household welfare. Given the continued need for enforcement policies to achieve conservation objectives, ICDP policies appear best suited as a means of compensating local households for the costs of protected area conservation. These results suggest the need for increased support for protected area conservation in developing countries.