Livelihood vulnerability and human-wildlife interactions across protected areas

Protected Areas (PAs) are important wildlife refuges and act as climate change buffers, but they may impact human livelihoods, particularly engendering a high risk of negative human-wildlife interactions (HWI). Understanding synergies and trade-offs among the drivers of overall human vulnerability within PAs is needed to ensure good outcomes for conservation and human well-being. We examined how climate variability, HWI, and socio-demographics affect livelihood vulnerability across three PAs in Mozambique, Southeast Africa. We used structured questionnaires to obtain information on livelihood vulnerability and social-ecological context-specific variables. We applied principal component analysis to understand synergies and trade-offs between the dimensions of vulnerability and linear models to test the effect of social-ecological drivers on vulnerability. We show that households are mostly vulnerable within PAs due to exposure to climate variability and to HWI, and their low capacity to employ livelihood strategies or to have a strong social network. Furthermore, we show that vulnerability to HWI and climate variability increases with distance to strict protection areas within the PAs and distance to rivers, which implies that proximity to strict protection areas and rivers within PAs still promotes better livelihood conditions than elsewhere. On the other hand, we also found that lower access to infrastructure and other livelihood assets enhances vulnerability, which reflects a trade-off within PAs that potentially limits the benefits of socially inclusive conservation. Our results show that the impacts of PAs, HWI, and climate on community vulnerability should not be viewed in isolation, but instead, conservation and livelihood improvement strategies should reflect their interconnectedness. Although livelihood vulnerability appears to be shaped by these general effects of PAs, it is important also to consider the local PA context when addressing or mitigating livelihood vulnerability in and around them.