The importance of equity in payments to encourage coexistence with large mammals

Large mammals often impose significant costs such as livestock depredation or crop foraging on rural communities, and this can lead to the retaliatory killing of threatened wildlife populations. One conservation approach—payments to encourage coexistence (PEC)—aims to reduce these costs through financial mechanisms, such as compensation, insurance, revenue sharing, and conservation performance payments. Little is known about the equitability of PEC, however, despite its moral and instrumental importance, prevalence as a conservation approach, and the fact that other financial tools for conservation are often inequitable. We used examples from the literature to examine the capability of PEC—as currently perceived and implemented—to be inequitable. We recommend improving the equitability of current and future schemes through the cooperative design of schemes that promote compensatory equity and greater consideration of conservation performance payments and by changing the international model for funding PEC to reduce global coexistence inequalities. New and existing programs must address issues of equitability across scales to ensure that conservation efforts are not undermined by diminished social legitimacy.

coexistencia con grandes mamíferos.Tanto los programas nuevos como los ya existentes deben abordar los temas de equidad a todas las escalas para asegurar que los esfuerzos de conservación no se vean perjudicados por una legitimidad social disminuida.

PAYING FOR COEXISTENCE
Large mammals are often considered charismatic and attributed with significant existence value by many, particularly those who do not live alongside them (Dickman et al., 2011;Macdonald, 2001;Vasudev & Goswami, 2020;Vasudev et al., 2020).Such species, whether carnivorous or herbivorous, also perform a highly influential role in maintaining biodiversity and in wider ecosystem dynamics, yet they have seen severe reductions in population and range (Malhi et al., 2016;Ripple et al., 2014).These declines are often ascribed, at least in part, to competition between large mammals and humans over space and resources (Denninger Snyder & Rentsch, 2020;Nyhus, 2016;Van Eeden et al., 2018).Human−wildlife conflict is 1 aspect of human−wildlife relations (Dickman, 2010;Pooley et al., 2017).Understandings of it vary (Pooley et al., 2021), but its effects on human communities and wildlife populations are well documented (Bauer et al., 2022;Thirgood et al., 2005).People living alongside large mammals often face increased personal risk, fear, cultural losses, and negative effects on health associated with this proximity (Jacobsen et al., 2021;Jadhav & Barua, 2012;Tan, 2021).They may also face economic losses through livestock predation and damage to crops and property (Dickman et al., 2011;Nyhus, 2016).Although indirect factors are also important (Dickman, 2010;Jacobsen et al., 2021;Kansky & Knight, 2014), these economic losses can result in antagonistic behaviors-such as the preemptive or retaliatory killing of threatened wildlife-being viewed more favorably (Holmern et al., 2007;Karanth et al., 2013;Marchini & Macdonald, 2012;Nyirenda et al., 2015;Ogada et al., 2003;Romañach et al., 2007).
There are various approaches that aim to reduce the economic costs associated with living alongside large mammals.These "payments to encourage coexistence" (PEC) are diverse and include compensation, insurance, revenue-sharing initiatives, and conservation performance payments (CPPs) (Dickman et al., 2011: 13937).They seek to rectify the "market failure," whereby the high global valuation of large mammals has failed to translate into effective local cost reduction (Macdonald, 2001;Nelson, 2009: 381).By offsetting some or all of the economic costs of human−wildlife conflict, PEC aim to encourage human−wildlife coexistence.Although the meaning and usefulness of the concept is plastic and contested (Fiasco & Massarella, 2022), human−wildlife coexistence is generally seen as a desirable, dynamic, and locally grounded state, in which human and wildlife populations persist in shared spaces at an acceptable level of friction and cost to both (see Pooley et al., 2021).
We focused on the latter because, whereas the literature on the equitability of broader incentives for conservation is well developed (e.g., Calvet-Mir et al., 2015;Pascual et al., 2014), little has been written in the context of PEC.We interrogated the simplified discourse that suggests economic incentives, such as PEC, work well for both nature and people.We do so because left unchallenged, this conceptual "win-win" underplays tradeoffs and risks ill-informed conservation strategies that lack legitimacy and reproduce local inequalities (Corbera, 2012: 615).

CONCEPTUALIZING EQUITY
Equity in conservation can be conceptualized in different ways.We followed Crosman et al. (2022) in considering equity as what is fair and just, particularly for the less powerful.Importantly, we viewed equitability as a spectrum, and considered positive and negative factors.

Equity as a moral imperative
Conservation tools cannot address all social wrongs, but it is imperative that the use of economic incentives does not exacerbate them (Adams et al., 2004;Tan, 2021).Despite this, evidence suggests that economic tools for conservation may struggle to deliver both equitable and efficient outcomes (Calvet-Mir et al., 2015;Pascual et al., 2010Pascual et al., , 2014)).They can also deepen existing inequalities through mechanisms such as elite capture, whereby wealthy or powerful groups benefit disproportionately at the cost of others (Dickman et al., 2011;Hayes et al., 2019).
Inequitable conservation risks the erosion of cultures and the marginalization of vulnerable people (Holland & Roe, 2021).Some argue that equitable participation is not just a vital component of well-being (Prilleltensky, 2013), but a basic human right for those affected by conservation actions (Dietsch et al., 2021).

Equity as an instrumental concern
Concerns over equitability can also come from an instrumental viewpoint.For example, communities are less likely to engage with conservation measures if they are unfairly burdened or excluded from their design and implementation (Martin et al., 2015;Vucetich et al., 2018).Inequity can fuel antagonism toward conservation entities and have negative consequences for people and wildlife (Dietsch et al., 2021;Rakotonarivo et al., 2021a).Correspondingly, greater levels of social equity can make conservation interventions more effective (Rakotonarivo et al., 2021a) and aid the resolution of many conflicts over conservation, for example by increasing social engagement and collaboration, promoting unity within the community, and increasing trust between participants and conservation authorities (Rakotonarivo et al., 2021b;Young et al., 2016).
Using examples from the literature, we explored the equitability and inequitability of PEC, and provide 3 recommendations to inform a fairer and more legitimate conservation approach.

DIMENSIONS OF INEQUITY IN PEC
In some contexts, PEC-as currently conceived and implemented-may exacerbate social inequalities and even contribute to the conflict they seek to address.These dimensions of inequity fall broadly into 6 themes-wealth, gender, landrights, location, legitimacy, and trustworthiness.

Wealth
Engagement with PEC can be costly, and disproportionately so for those with lower incomes.For example, a majority of sheep owners in central Italy refused to engage with an insurance scheme for livestock lost to wolves (Canis lupus) because they were first obliged to dispose of carcasses-an expensive requirement (Marino et al., 2016).Similarly, the €250 personal excess income fee in a Finnish compensation scheme is a more significant barrier to engagement for poor reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) herders than it is for their wealthier counterparts, because the fee represents a larger proportion of their income (Heikkinen et al., 2011).
In some contexts, the requirement or expectation to pay bribes to "help officials arrive at expedient conclusions" is frequently noted as a similar obstacle (Johnson et al., 2018;Madhusudan, 2003: 315).Some schemes seem more overtly inequitable with regard to wealth.One Kenyan compensation scheme reinforced existing social inequalities by excluding people who did not own livestock from the fund, but they were still saddled with associated community-wide obligations.These individuals were some of the poorest members of the community-where wealth was measured primarily in terms of livestock ownership-and were underprivileged in terms of access to other possible forms of income generation.Their exclusion from this PEC, therefore, compounded this inequality (Anyango-van Zwieten et al., 2015).

Gender
In many contexts, women are more vulnerable to predators, perceive them as more dangerous, and are less tolerant of them than men (Dickman et al., 2013;Harvey et al., 2017;van der Meer & Dullemont, 2021).Despite this, women are less likely to report conflict with wildlife to local authorities (Johnson et al., 2018), and female heads of households can struggle to access compensation without male support (Jadhav & Barua, 2012;Ogra, 2009;Ogra & Badola, 2008).

Landrights
Proof of landrights is another common obstacle in PEC schemes.In India, a significant proportion of compensation for crop and livestock losses goes unclaimed due to a lack of official landrights.The insistence on producing this proof is "without basis" and effectively functions to impede access to compensation for most households (Madhusudan, 2003: 473).Tenant farmers can also get a bad deal when compensation is instead paid to landowners (Ogra, 2009;Ogra & Badola, 2008).In other cases, they may be excluded from compensation altogether on the basis that they are only leaseholders, despite their eligibility under wider law (Bhattacharjee & Parthasarathy, 2013).Issues of landrights closely intertwine with those of wealth and gender.Ogra (2009) notes that tenant farmers on the periphery of Rajaji National Park tend to be women and that they face greater difficulties when attempting to claim compensation due to a lack of proof of landrights or details of the sharecropping arrangement.
The matter of land ownership is not only an issue for people who might wish to claim compensation, but also for the authorities responsible.In South Africa, multiple government departments have unclear responsibilities for various species inside and outside of Kruger National Park (including a department specifically for the border fence).Additionally, the lands where most conflict occurs are under unclear ownership, even though they ought to have been officially returned to local communities according to the Communal Land Rights Act (number 11 of 2004) (Anthony et al., 2010).This type of bureaucratic complexity-stemming from ambiguous or contested land tenure-can seriously impede individuals' engagement with PEC.

Location
Because compensation payments often do not reimburse travel costs, claimants in remote regions incur higher transaction costs, sacrificing time and paid work to travel across isolated areas (Jadhav & Barua, 2012;Madhusudan, 2003;Sengupta et al., 2020).Furthermore, these locations often lack public transport infrastructure, and it is likely that this results in lower initial compensation claim rates (Pozo et al., 2021).
Similarly, individuals' access to compensation may depend on their proximity to protected areas.For example, while crop losses do not differ significantly between households inside and outside the buffer zone around Kanha Tiger Reserve, India, those outside were less likely to claim and obtain compensation, and received lower sums on average (Karanth et al., 2012).It may simply be that the governing authorities are reluctant to disburse funds in areas where charismatic megafauna (i.e., tigers [Panthera tigris]) are absent (Miller et al., 2016).

Legitimacy
The perceived legitimacy of a conservation approach is likely to relate to its environmental success (Witter, 2021).As the following examples show, however, PEC schemes are sometimes seen as illegitimate by potential participants due to different understandings at a core level.In Arizona (United States), for instance, most livestock producers believe that compensation is simply a publicity stunt by environmental organizations (Vynne, 2009).In Italy, insurance and compensation are perceived by some as illegitimate; a significant minority of farmers do not engage with insurance as a matter of principle (Marino et al., 2016: 233).They believe it unjust that they should have to insure their livestock against damage from wolves, which they view as state property.Some of these farmers oppose compensation of any type on the grounds that it would legitimize wolf presence (Marino et al., 2016).Likewise, a majority of Botswanan farmers, questioned by McNutt et al. (2017), believe the government owns and benefits most from wildlife, yet does not adequately support those who incur the costs.

Trustworthiness
Trust is widely considered fundamental to conservation management and success (Dietsch et al., 2021).Trust-whether in institutions or in individuals-mediates perceptions of equitability (Nyaupane et al., 2009).Mistrust in PEC can be attributed to various factors, including corruption (Ogra & Badola, 2008), procedural exclusion (Marino et al., 2016), uneven access to information (Anthony et al., 2010), perceived lack of political will (Marino et al., 2016;Vynne, 2009), and broken promises (Anthony, 2021).In 1 Finnish compensation scheme, reindeer herders must spend time attempting to find and prove livestock losses (Heikkinen et al., 2011).Their perspective is frequently ignored, despite their local ecological knowledge, and relations with hunters and environmentalists are characterized by mistrust (Heikkinen et al., 2011).

RECOMMENDATIONS
Given the diversity of PEC, the negative aspects we highlight are unlikely to be exhaustive; rather, they illustrate the capability of PEC to be inequitable.Crucially, however, this is not an inherent characteristic; PEC can function as vehicles of social good too.Based on examples from the literature, we make 3 broad recommendations to improve the equitability of PEC: cooperatively design PEC with compensatory equity in mind; increase consideration of CPPs and the technologies to guide their implementation; and source PEC funding from the Global North to reduce global coexistence inequalities.

Compensatory and cooperative approaches
The equitability of PEC should be a principle consideration of scheme designers.By taking a more active role in ensuring social equity, PEC can increase community engagement, improve collaboration, and promote unity among participants-even when they are required to contribute financially (Alexander et al., 2021;Rosen et al., 2012).For example, an insurance scheme in Pakistan provides access to primary education for girls in participating villages (Rosen et al., 2012).This compensatory equity approach (Nyaupane et al., 2009) recognizes the stark gender inequality in terms of access to, and quality of, education in the local context (Aslam, 2009;Khan et al., 2015).Factors such as gender, therefore, do not function simply as dimensions of inequity, but rather as complex elements that can be used to fulfill social goals.
Cooperative participation is also crucial, because it can help to increase trust between participants and the organization or authority implementing it.This is the case in a CPP in northern Sweden, where Sami reindeer-herding villages are paid based on the number of lynx (Lynx lynx) and wolverine (Gulo gulo) reproductions on village lands.There, carnivore numbers are monitored cooperatively by the authorities and reindeer herders.This reduces mistrust between the groups because people more readily accept estimates and data that they helped produce (Persson et al., 2015).

Greater consideration of CPPs
CPPs avoid the moral hazard associated with other PECwhere people may be incentivized to reduce livestock protection to claim financial compensation-and are the only PEC that "directly incentivizes" human−wildlife coexistence (Dickman et al., 2011: 13942).Some scholars argue that such payments are likely to be more efficient because "you get what you pay for" (Ferraro & Kiss, 2002: 1719).They also frame conservationists and the people living alongside wildlife as equals, building trust through reciprocal obligation (Hussain, 2019: 83−84).
Furthermore, while ex post compensation and insurance schemes-which comprise the vast majority of PEC (Ravenelle & Nyhus, 2017)-target livestock owners by default, some of the costs associated with living alongside large mammals, such as fear, are not experienced solely by livestock owners (Jacobsen et al., 2021).Conversely, because CPPs can be paid to collectives, they may incorporate previously excluded or marginalized groups in a more equitable manner.This is particularly promising because it is known that some demographic sectors, such as women, may value wildlife-derived benefits more than other groups (Keane et al., 2016), and that once appropriately engaged, can contribute to more equitable conservation (Alexander et al., 2022).Indeed, a shift from compensation and insurance-based schemes to CPPs has been widely recommended (Ravenelle & Nyhus, 2017).
Although CPPs provide many opportunities to improve the equitability of PEC, they are not inherently equitable.As with all PEC, care must be taken to ensure that governance systems are suitably cooperative and well-adapted to the local context.In particular, caution must be taken to avoid elite capture, especially where votes on collective decision-making remain proportionate to livestock ownership, or where landrights are unclear (Zabel & Holm-Müller, 2008;Zabel et al., 2014).This latter problem is important because well-delineated group boundaries are crucial in ensuring that payments go to those bearing the costs of coexisting with wildlife (Zabel & Holm-Müller, 2008).This can, however, be difficult to ensure in contexts where the target species is particularly wide-ranging.Fortunately, recent advances in technology may be able to overcome this obstacle.For example, telemetry data from radiocollared lions (Panthera leo) has recently been used to estimate the cost of lion presence across communal conservancies in Namibia (Heydinger et al., 2022).This approach would enable differentiated payments to be made that more accurately reflect the unequal and dynamic distribution of lions and their impacts across the landscape.In a similar vein, advances in environmental DNA sampling (Booth et al., 2023) and acoustic monitoring (Markova-Nenova et al., 2023) may provide another way in which species presence can be established and equitable payments guided.

Reducing global coexistence inequalities
The equitability of PEC is also a problem at the global level.Recognizing the "coexistence inequality" whereby the costs of living alongside wildlife are disproportionately borne by rural people in the Global South (Jordan et al., 2020;Macdonald, 2001: 803;Braczkowski et al., 2023), some argue that the costs of implementing PEC should be borne by the international community (Dickman et al., 2011).
The potential for the wider adoption of PEC, funded by the Global North, to reduce these broad-scale coexistence inequalities should therefore be explored further.Scholars suggest that similar approaches could incorporate diverse funding streams, such as conservation credits, donor grants, and state-based levies, which could include a substantial carbon tax (Dickman et al., 2011;Fletcher & Büscher, 2020).Such a model could potentially be less vulnerable to shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, but would face difficulties regarding scalability (Lindsey et al., 2020).Similarly, while this type of approach could form part of a transformative economic reconstruction (Sandbrook et al., 2022) and help rich countries increase their relative conservation effort (Lindsey et al., 2017), there are concerns that such an approach would simply represent a continuation of a neoliberal paradigm which risks entrenching power imbalances and undermining conservation effectiveness (Corbera, 2012;Fletcher & Büscher, 2017;Kolinjivadi et al., 2019).The details of such a shift in funding and framing are, therefore, crucial in determining its effectiveness and equitability.

CONCLUDING REMARKS
Ensuring that conservation actions are equitable is not only a moral imperative, but an instrumental one.Despite this, it is evident that PEC can exacerbate as well as ameliorate social inequalities.It is imperative that schemes are developed in a participatory manner because this can integrate issues of equity, governance, and norms in a way that has the best chance to achieve socially and ecologically sustainable outcomes (Amit & Jacobson, 2018).Scheme designers should consider how PEC affect preexisting inequities (and vice versa) and how the impacts of PEC may vary across social groups and time (Crosman et al., 2022).There is a need for compensatory equity approaches in PEC, for greater consideration of CPPs, and for global funding patterns to better reflect current global coexistence inequalities (Figure 1).Future research should explore how the costs and benefits associated with living alongside wildlife influence people's behavior.Additionally, little is known about the psychological and social mechanisms by which PEC influence different groups, and how this may relate to effectiveness and equitability.A failure to ensure the fairness of PEC at both local and global scales diminishes its legitimacy and jeopardizes the sustainability of conservation efforts.

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1Current barriers to equitable payments to encourage coexistence (PEC) and recommendations to overcome them, which include conservation performance payments (CPPs).