July 1, 2014

Tropical Countries' Growing Wealth May Aid Conservation



While inadequate funding has hampered international efforts to conserve biodiversity in tropical forests, a new Duke University-led study finds that people in a growing number of tropical countries may be willing to shoulder more of the costs on their own.

“In wealthier developing countries, there has been a significant increase in public demand for conservation, which has not yet been matched by an equivalent increase in protective actions by the governments of those countries,” said Jeffrey R. Vincent, a Duke environmental economist who led the study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.