Profiling unauthorized natural resource users for better targeting of conservation interventions

Unauthorized use of natural resources is a key threat to many protected areas. Approaches to reducing this threat include law enforcement and integrated conservation and development (ICD) projects, but for such ICDs to be targeted effectively, it is important to understand who is illegally using which natural resources and why. The nature of unauthorized behavior makes it difficult to ascertain this information through direct questioning. Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda, has many ICD projects, including authorizing some local people to use certain nontimber forest resources from the park. However, despite over 25 years of ICD, unauthorized resource use continues. We used household surveys, indirect questioning (unmatched count technique), and focus group discussions to generate profiles of authorized and unauthorized resource users and to explore motivations for unauthorized activity. Overall, unauthorized resource use was most common among people from poor households who lived closest to the park boundary and farthest from roads and trading centers. Other motivations for unauthorized resource use included crop raiding by wild animals, inequity of revenue sharing, and lack of employment, factors that created resentment among the poorest communities. In some communities, benefits obtained from ICD were reported to be the greatest deterrents against unauthorized activity, although law enforcement ranked highest overall. Despite the sensitive nature of exploring unauthorized resource use, management‐relevant insights into the profiles and motivations of unauthorized resource users can be gained from a combination of survey techniques, as adopted here. To reduce unauthorized activity at Bwindi, we suggest ICD benefit the poorest people living in remote areas and near the park boundary by providing affordable alternative sources of forest products and addressing crop raiding. To prevent resentment from driving further unauthorized activity, ICDs should be managed transparently and equitably

Holding Ugandan Police to Account:Case study of the Police Accountability and Reform Project

This chapter presents the research findings of a case study of an accountability project implemented with the Uganda Police Force between 2010 and 2013. The project set up a series of workshops involving the police and a variety of societal actors, and organized activities to create awareness of changes to the public order management regime. The impact of the accountability project was assessed by comparing feedback from police districts where the project was implemented with that from districts that did not take part. Analysis of crime statistics does not show a difference between the two groups of districts. A survey conducted among 600 police officers demonstrates that the project has influenced the way in which they respond to integrity issues in their day-to-day work. Interviews with 23 middle- and high-ranking police officers show an enhanced awareness of accountability issues related to the treatment of civilians and their rights. Although the project is not a sufficient condition for behavioural change, it may lead to changes in attitudes, which are a necessary condition for changes in the behaviour of the police toward the public

Holding Ugandan Police to Account:Case study of the Police Accountability and Reform Project

This chapter presents the research findings of a case study of an accountability project implemented with the Uganda Police Force between 2010 and 2013. The project set up a series of workshops involving the police and a variety of societal actors, and organized activities to create awareness of changes to the public order management regime. The impact of the accountability project was assessed by comparing feedback from police districts where the project was implemented with that from districts that did not take part. Analysis of crime statistics does not show a difference between the two groups of districts. A survey conducted among 600 police officers demonstrates that the project has influenced the way in which they respond to integrity issues in their day-to-day work. Interviews with 23 middle- and high-ranking police officers show an enhanced awareness of accountability issues related to the treatment of civilians and their rights. Although the project is not a sufficient condition for behavioural change, it may lead to changes in attitudes, which are a necessary condition for changes in the behaviour of the police toward the public

Improving police integrity in Uganda: Impact assessment of the police accountability and reform project

Uganda and in particular the Ugandan police are perceived as highly corrupt. To address the integrity of police officers, an intervention called the Police Accountability and Reform Project (PARP) was implemented in selected police districts between 2010 and early 2013. This paper studies the impact of PARP for a sample of 600 police officers who were interviewed about police integrity by means of 12 hypothetical vignette cases depicting context-specific, undesirable behavior of varying degrees of severity. The assessments of the cases by the police officers are analyzed using propensity score matching, inverse probability weighting, and seemingly unrelated regression techniques. We show that the self-selection of police officers into the program is unlikely to drive the results. The results suggest that officers participating in PARP activities (1) judge the presented cases of misconduct more severely, (2) are more inclined to report misconduct, and (3) also expect their colleagues to judge misbehavior at the police level more critically although the latter two coefficient estimates are smaller in size. This suggests that PARP activities have affected the perception of police officers but only encouraged them moderately to actually take action against bad practices

Can citizen scientists provide a reliable geo-hydrological hazard inventory? An analysis of biases, sensitivity and precision for the Rwenzori Mountains, Uganda

Spatio-temporal inventory of natural hazards is a challenging task especially in rural or remote areas in the Global South where data collection at regional scale is difficult. Citizen science, i.e. involvement of no-experts in collecting information and co-creation of knowledge with experts to solve societal and environmental problems, has been suggested as a viable approach to tackle this bottleneck, although the reliability of the resulting data is often questioned. Here we analyse an inventory of geo-hydrological hazards (landslides and floods) reported by a network of citizen scientists in the Rwenzori Mountains, Uganda, established since 2017. We assess the precision, sensitivity and potential biases affecting this citizen science-based hazard inventory. We compare the citizen science-based records with two independent inventories, one collected through systematic fieldwork and another by PlanetScope satellite imagery mapping for the period between May 2019 and May 2020. The precision of the geo-observer data is higher (99% and 100% for landslides and floods, respectively) than that of satellite-based data (44% and 84%, respectively) indicative of fewer false positives in the former inventory. Also, citizen scientists have a higher sensitivity in reporting landslides (51%) compared to satellite imagery (39%) in addition to being able to report the events a few days after the occurrence. In contrast, the sensitivity of satellite-based flood detection is higher than that of citizen scientists. The probability of landslide events being reported by citizen scientists depends both on citizen scientists and hazard specific features (impact, landslide-citizen scientist home distance, landslide-road access distance and altitude). Although satellite imagery mapping could result in a spatially less biased inventory, small landslides are often missed while shallow ones can easily be confused with freshly cleared vegetation. Also, in a dominantly cloudy environment, it can take several days to weeks before a cloud-free satellite image can be obtained. In summary, the typically rapid response time of citizen scientists can result in faster information with high reliability at the risk of missing out almost half of the occurrences. Citizen scientists also provide more data on impact and type of land use, something difficult to achieve using satellite imagery. Working with farmers at village level as citizen scientists can facilitate covering a wider geographical area while reducing the area monitored by each citizen scientist at the same time

Can citizen scientists provide a reliable geo-hydrological hazard inventory? An analysis of biases, sensitivity and precision for the Rwenzori Mountains, Uganda

status: publishe