We study the impact of Ecuador's national forest conservation incentives program on reported land conflicts. Data come from a survey of >900 households located within 49 indigenous and Afro‐Ecuadorian communities holding communal conservation contracts. We use quasi‐experimental methods to test for relationships between program participation and changes in land conflicts.

Local communities in Africa benefit from protected areas through a number of activities such as grazing their livestock and revenues gained from touristic activities such as trophy hunting. These two activities are not independent because the feeding habits of large herbivores such as elephants prevent bush encroachment, thus maintaining healthy grasslands or pastures for livestock.

Zimbabwe’s community-based conservation model, which brings together peasant farmers in a tourism-focused approach to wildlife management, has enjoyed limited success since its inception during the mid-1980s, due to a number of reasons. There has been increased human-wildlife conflict, and it is hard to enforce rules against poaching. Community involvement in wildlife conservation is one of the major factors influencing the success of integrated conservation and development projects. These projects can fail if there is lack of ownership of the project.

Protected areas (PAs) can mitigate climate change by reducing carbon emissions that result from forest loss. Carbon emissions from forest degradation are a large component of forest loss and are often driven by the extraction decisions of resource-dependent households. PA policies must reflect how villagers use forests to be effective. Here, a spatial Nash equilibrium of extractors’ uncoordinated forest extraction pattern decisions establishes a baseline of forest-use patterns.