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.