The discourse and reality of "win-win" interventions for forests and people in the Peruvian Amazon
type: CreativeWork
description: Local projects aiming to jointly reduce deforestation, climate change and poverty are increasingly popular. Yet, despite widespread claims of “win-win” success, there is growing evidence of significant trade-offs. My doctoral research examines three globally widespread strategies to achieve “win-win” outcomes by both conserving forests and improving the well-being of local people: 1) voluntary incentive-based mechanisms such as Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) and sustainable intensification, 2) protected area enforcement alongside livelihood compensation, 3) community-based natural resource management. In the region of San Martín in northern Peru, over 50 million US dollars have been committed to these approaches since 2008 by international actors such as Disney, Hugo Boss and Althelia Ecosphere. This thesis compares the perspectives of organisations and local community members across 15 project sites in this region regarding these strategies and their implications for local people and forests. Organisational perspectives were investigated through 36 semi-structured interviews with project managers and a review of 103 project documents. Local perspectives were explored through 15 participatory workshops and 270 day-long semi-ethnographic mixed method interviews with project beneficiary and non-beneficiary households. The main body of this thesis uncovers a significant gap between “win-win” project theories of change and outcomes in San Martín. Combined quantitative and qualitative analyses demonstrate the role of different social, economic, political and ecological factors in producing and sustaining conservation and well-being outcomes. These outcomes are explored through twenty-seven distinct ways of framing “successful” outcomes for forests and/or people, based on diverse community and external perspectives. This permitted an examination of what interventions appeared to be achieving given the broader context, as well as the implications of how “success” is …
abstract: Local projects aiming to jointly reduce deforestation, climate change and poverty are increasingly popular. Yet, despite widespread claims of “win-win” success, there is growing evidence of significant trade-offs. My doctoral research examines three globally widespread strategies to achieve “win-win” outcomes by both conserving forests and improving the well-being of local people: 1) voluntary incentive-based mechanisms such as Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) and sustainable intensification, 2) protected area enforcement alongside livelihood compensation, 3) community-based natural resource management. In the region of San Martín in northern Peru, over 50 million US dollars have been committed to these approaches since 2008 by international actors such as Disney, Hugo Boss and Althelia Ecosphere. This thesis compares the perspectives of organisations and local community members across 15 project sites in this region regarding these strategies and their implications for local people and forests. Organisational perspectives were investigated through 36 semi-structured interviews with project managers and a review of 103 project documents. Local perspectives were explored through 15 participatory workshops and 270 day-long semi-ethnographic mixed method interviews with project beneficiary and non-beneficiary households. The main body of this thesis uncovers a significant gap between “win-win” project theories of change and outcomes in San Martín. Combined quantitative and qualitative analyses demonstrate the role of different social, economic, political and ecological factors in producing and sustaining conservation and well-being outcomes. These outcomes are explored through twenty-seven distinct ways of framing “successful” outcomes for forests and/or people, based on diverse community and external perspectives. This permitted an examination of what interventions appeared to be achieving given the broader context, as well as the implications of how “success” is …
author: Chambers, Josephine Michael
language: en
keywords: conservation, development, Peru, discourse, win-win
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/c1b36a81-eb2a-445a-aa74-442d5fa91cd3/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2018-10-20
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:20Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.23735