I work almost exclusively in situations where there is tension between conservation aims and the livelihood interests of local people. I approach this work from an interdisciplinary background, drawing on extensive experience in conservation and rural development, as well as theory and evidence from social psychology, development and behavioral economics, environmental anthropology and other fields. I focus on outputs that are accessible to a wide range of stakeholders and result in change on the ground.
You can learn more about specific projects below, and access publications through ResearchGate or ORCID.
I am interested in how we can increase tolerance for lions, leopards, hyenas and other large carnivores among pastoralists that are trying to support their families in an increasingly wild environment. I work with the Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence at Colorado State University, the Salerno Lab, and non-profit partner Lion Landscapes on field-based research near Ruaha National Park in southern Tanzania. My research is centered on understanding and improving factors that influence how tolerant people are of sharing space with dangerous species in parts of the world where carnivores routinely threaten human safety.
I'm particularly interested in the influence that fear, vulnerability, and agency have on tolerance. In principle, interventions that decrease human vulnerability (through improved health, food security, income diversification, etc.) should increase human capacity to cope with other stressors, but in practice, we have limited evidence. Can addressing human vulnerability increase pastoralists' tolerance for living alongside large carnivores, and increase their ability to cope with other pressures like climate change and widespread land-use conversion in more adaptive ways? And what are the most effective ways to move the needle on vulnerability?
These are questions I'm engaging with throughout my dissertation, but part of my work specifically explores the performance of NGO-delivered social protection (e.g. food aid, welfare programs, school meals, ambulance services, health insurance) against recipient-directed social protection (e.g. unconditional cash transfers) to decrease vulnerability. Do recipients make different life or livelihood decisions when given unrestricted versus more restricted assistance? If so, how do those decisions influence their tolerance for carnivores and vulnerability to environmental and financial shocks? Do either of these approaches stimulate durable, transformative adaptation that helps rural households become more resilient to shocks over the long run? Through respectful engagement with local pastoralist communities, I aim to draw out insights to inform future program design considerations and to ensure that scarce conservation dollars are doing the most good they can for people and predators on the frontlines of a changing world.
While tree-planting is often touted as a win-win climate solution, in many developing countries, governments are attempting to establish or re-establish forests on public land that provides subsistence resources for communities. Learning from these conflicts is critical to the success of future reforestation efforts, and Malawi— one of the poorest countries in the world— provides an excellent case study. Under the Bonn Challenge, the government committed to reforest over 30% of the country by 2030, but at least in the south, few trees planted under government projects survive. To understand why these efforts fail and how to turn the tide, I organized eight focus groups with stakeholders that represented a spectrum of agency and economic security to address two questions: What has kept forest restoration in Malawi from being socially or ecologically successful? What is the one thing that will be critical to “get right” in order for future restoration efforts to have socially and ecologically beneficial outcomes?
Citizens and natural resource professionals alike emphasized that until Malawi’s government invests in economic development in forest-adjacent communities, the poor have no back-up livelihood strategies except exploiting forest lands, undermining reforestation. Multiple groups agreed that training and funding for entrepreneurs, access to improved agricultural technologies, and alternative employment opportunities were crucial to poverty alleviation. This study suggests that diverse stakeholders shared a lot of common ground when they envisioned solutions, and that giving the poor a voice in reforestation planning is imperative to addressing underlying socioeconomic problems, preempting conflicts, and poising future reforestation efforts for success in drawing down carbon.
This study was published in People and Nature as an Open Access article, and is free to download.