Optimal conservation outcomes consider donor geography and their willingness to support more distant projects
Donors give more to nearby projects, but priority conservation areas are often distant. Modeling shows that balancing donor geography with high‑impact sites improves biodiversity outcomes. Optimal strategies spread protection spending, integrate donation data early, and build local donor capacity while encouraging flexible giving.
Subject Tags
- Social Sciences
Abstract
Private donors are often willing to give more to support conservation activities, like protecting land, when these take place nearby. However, population centers in which most donors live may be far from conservation priority areas. Here we examine how conservation organizations can best balance pursuing high impact conservation projects with their need to raise funds. We develop general principles governing optimal protected area siting by representing distance decay in people's willingness to give to conservation as an increase in the effective cost of more distant projects. We illustrate these principles through applications to terrestrial vertebrate conservation and donation patterns to a private land trust in two U.S. states, California and North Carolina. In both states, we find a negative association between donation levels and conservation priorities, a pattern shaped by the lower cost of land protection in rural areas. A protected area strategy that gives some consideration to the distribution of donors while not compromising on protecting places that offer the highest conservation impact ensures the greatest improvement in biodiversity. This optimal strategy spreads spending on protected areas more than would have been optimal if ignoring spatial patterns in philanthropic giving. The optimal solution makes clear the value of integrating donation data and philanthropy staff earlier in the priority setting process. It emphasizes that the value of a conservation dollar depends on where it is donated, which suggests the need to cultivate local donor capacity in priority areas and persuade more distant donors to relax spatial restrictions on giving.
Citation
Armsworth, P.R., Dilkina, B., Fargione, J., Fisher, M., Fovargue, R., Harris, J., Jackson, H.B., Le Bouille, D. and Nolte, C., 2024. Optimal conservation outcomes consider donor geography and their willingness to support more distant projects. Biological Conservation, 297, p.110734. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2024.110734
TNC Authors
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Joe Fargione
Director of Science, North America
The Nature Conservancy
Email: jfargione@tnc.org -
Maria Fisher
Campaign Manager
The Nature Conservancy
Email: mfisher@tnc.org