- A Nature study finds Ethiopia’s protected areas significantly reduced deforestation and agricultural expansion between 2000-2020, showing stronger-than-expected conservation performance.
- The study also identifies clear “trade-offs,” with households near many protected areas reporting lower food security and wellbeing, while a smaller share of sites achieved “win-win” outcomes for both people and nature.
- “Win-win” outcomes that deliver better outcomes for both people and nature occurred in protected areas where conservation objectives were more closely aligned with local livelihood systems, said the authors, and is likely to require more than simply increasing protected area budgets.
- Researchers say there are some important caveats to their estimates, such as difference in time periods for environmental and wellbeing data and a possible missing confounder but say they believe the results are overall robust.
A new study published in the journal Nature shows that Ethiopia’s protected areas successfully slowed deforestation, limited agricultural expansion and helped maintain grasslands. But the study also suggests the same conservation gains may also be linked to declines in food security and wellbeing for nearby communities — while underlining some caveats in their findings.
The study, conducted through collaboration between researchers in Ethiopia and the UK, and the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority, assessed both environmental and social outcomes across 25 protected areas in Ethiopia during the period 2000–2020. They measured forest cover, agricultural expansion, grasslands, food security, dietary diversity and material wellbeing.
While protected areas were broadly effective at reducing environmental degradation despite mounting pressures from population growth, agricultural expansion, and land demand, the researchers found “trade-offs” between environmental and social outcomes in their assessments.
Twelve of these protected areas experienced positive environmental performance at the cost of social wellbeing. Meanwhile, five of the protected areas had “win-win” outcomes for biodiversity and social outcomes and three protected areas had “lose-lose” outcomes.
“Ethiopia is exceptionally biodiverse, but also faces major challenges around poverty, food security and demand for land,” said Sophie Jago, lead author of the study and research assistant at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the UK.
“The fact that protected areas are delivering measurable benefits for nature in this context is important … The difficult finding is that these environmental gains have come with costs for nearby communities, particularly around food security.”
The authors emphasized important caveats to their estimates of the impact of Ethiopia’s protected areas. The study uses difference in time periods for environmental and wellbeing data, due to what national data was available. They also muse of a possible missing confounder. But, the study stated, sensitivity analyses show such a variable would have to be unusually powerful and that they believe the results are overall robust.
“Material wellbeing also declined significantly in our main analysis, but that result was less consistent across the robustness checks, so we interpret it more cautiously,” said Wendawek Abebe, a co-author of the research from Addis Ababa University.
“We also could only assess outcomes for which reliable national-scale data were available. We measured forest cover, agricultural expansion, grasslands, food security, dietary diversity and material wellbeing.”
More effective than critics assumed
To establish causation, the researchers used a quasi-experimental approach — a method that estimates what would likely have happened if an area had not been protected by comparing it with similar unprotected areas. They also compared households living near protected areas with similar households located farther away.
“Protected areas are not placed randomly. They are often in more remote areas, at higher elevations, or on land less suitable for farming,” said Abebe. “If we simply compared protected and unprotected places, we could get a misleading picture of their impacts.”
According to the authors, they didn’t simply compare outcomes before and after protected areas were established since this meant they could only focus on protected areas created after 2000 (when the government data was consistent), which represents just a quarter of Ethiopia’s protected areas.
The researchers focused on protected areas as they existed in 2000 to assess their performance under Ethiopia’s current system of government. They examined environmental changes between 2000 and 2020/21, while household well-being outcomes were measured between 2011 and 2016. While this was a short timeframe that may miss longer running events, said the authors, it was the longest timeframe they could track.
The study found that strict protected areas reduced forest loss by roughly 25% and agricultural expansion by about 44% compared with similar unprotected landscapes. Less strictly protected areas also slowed habitat conversion and reduced grassland loss.
According to the authors, the findings suggest Ethiopia’s conservation areas are functioning more effectively than “many critics” have assumed, despite long-standing concerns over weak institutional capacity and financial constraints.
But the social findings are far different.
“Protected areas often deliver benefits for biodiversity and the wider world, while the costs are more likely to be felt locally by people living closest to them,” Jago noted.
Households living within 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) of protected areas experienced declines in food security compared with statistically similar households farther away. Measures of material wellbeing also fell, although dietary diversity showed no clear change. Researchers estimate this may correspond to nearly 3.9 million fewer household-months of adequate food among communities living near protected areas during the study period.
According to sources, these impacts may occur because communities lose access to land and resources, or, in some cases, because environmental authorities are not working sufficiently with communities to adapt their livelihoods.
“Overall, while there are important caveats [to the study], the evidence that households near protected areas experienced worse food security outcomes is strong,” said Abebe.
Still, the researchers caution against interpreting the findings as evidence that conservation should be abandoned.
“This doesn’t mean conservation shouldn’t happen,” she said. “It means conservation needs to be better supported, better funded and designed in ways that reduce local costs and improve outcomes for nearby communities.”
How to get more “win-wins”
“Some protected areas in the study appear to deliver better outcomes for both people and nature, which suggests these trade-offs are not inevitable and there are places we can learn from,” Jago noted.
According to the study, these more balanced outcomes tended to occur where conservation objectives were more closely aligned with local livelihood systems.
“Creating win-win outcomes is likely to require more than simply increasing protected area budgets,” said Wendawok. The study found that protected areas with larger budgets were associated with stronger environmental outcomes, but not necessarily improved wellbeing for nearby communities.
The researchers suggest this may be because protected area institutions are primarily funded and mandated to protect biodiversity rather than provide direct livelihood support.
That gap, the authors argue, highlights a broader limitation within many conservation systems.
“A key implication is that protected area managers cannot solve these challenges alone,” Jago said “Fair and effective conservation will require support from governments, funders and organizations working across conservation, food security, livelihoods and development.”
As of September 2024, protected areas cover roughly 9.4% of Ethiopia’s land area. The study warns that expansion may become increasingly difficult because many ecologically important and underrepresented ecosystems overlap with land already used for agriculture and grazing. Additionally, pressure on land is likely to increase with the country’s population expected to nearly double by 2050.
“Expanding protected areas without first addressing effectiveness, management capacity and local impacts could make conservation harder to sustain,” the researchers said.
The study suggests this creates a major policy challenge for Ethiopia: expanding conservation may benefit biodiversity, but could also intensify pressure on rural livelihoods unless local impacts are addressed more effectively.
Mekbeb E. Tessema, an independent biodiversity, climate change and environmental consultant and CEO of the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Think Tank, said the study provides some of the strongest evidence to date on conservation-livelihood trade-offs in Ethiopia.
According to Tessema, the findings are particularly relevant as countries pursue the global biodiversity goal of protecting 30% of the Earth’s land and oceans by 2030.
“In the context of the global 30-by-30 target, the study sends a warning signal: conservation expansion that ignores social costs risks undermining both ecological and political sustainability,” he said.
Banner image: Small children from Rira village stand by the roadside near their humble home within the within the Bale Mountains National Park. Image by Solomon Yimer for Mongabay.
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Citations:
Jago, S., Gizaw, G., Genanaw, B., Langley, J., Lulekal, E., White, J. D. M., . . . Borrell, J. S. (2026). Trade-offs between nature and people in Ethiopia’s protected areas demonstrate challenges in translating global conservation targets into national realities. Nature Ecology & Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-026-03047-9
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