Ecosystem Services Programs Research Articles

Multi-level social-ecological networks in a payments for ecosystem services programme in central Veracruz, Mexico

SummaryPayments for ecosystem services (PES) programmes have been considered an important conservation mechanism to avoid deforestation. These environmental policies act in social and ecological contexts at different spatial scales. We evaluated the social-ecological fit between stakeholders and ecosystem processes in a local PES programme across three levels: social, ecological and social-ecological. We explored collaboration among stakeholders, assessed connectivity between forest units and evaluated conservation activity links between stakeholders and forest units. In addition, to increase programme effectiveness, we classified forest units based on their social and ecological importance. Our main findings suggest that non-governmental organizations occupy brokerage positions between landowners and government in a dense collaboration network. We also found a partial spatial misfit between conservation activity links and the forest units that provide the most hydrological services to Xalapa. We conclude that conservation efforts should be directed towards the middle and high part of the Pixquiac sub-watershed and that the role of non-governmental organizations as mediators should be strengthened to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the local PES programme.

Payments for ecosystem services programs, institutional bricolage, and common pool resource management: Evidence from village collective-managed irrigation systems in China

This study investigates the effect of payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs on common pool resource management in the context of village collective-managed irrigation systems (VMISs) in China. Drawing on institutional bricolage theory, we propose that the functioning of a PES program depends on its combination with local institutions. We infer transaction cost-reduction and trust-strengthening mechanisms as the two pathways for institutional bricolage to illustrate the process whereby a PES program enables a VMIS to internalise positive externalities. Based on data from a field survey at the household level, our empirical results confirm that a PES program is an effective means of improving the performance of VMISs in terms of environmental, economic, and equitable benefits, because it aligns benefits for the village collective with those for the overall society. We conclude that a PES program is of greater benefit to communities with local institutions and that PES programs and local institutions exert an interactive impact as they reinforce each other's effect on common pool resource management.

Effectiveness of Costa Rica’s Conservation Portfolio to Lower Deforestation, Protect Primates, and Increase Community Participation

Common approaches to reverse the trend of tropical deforestation and loss of wildlife include systems of protected areas (PAs) such as national parks, payments for ecosystem services programs (PES) that provide financial rewards to landowners protecting their forests, and ecotourism that attempts to increase local economic gains and protect biodiversity while minimizing detrimental ecological effects from tourists. For example, Costa Rica successfully reversed deforestation by restoring forest cover from 24.4% in 1985 to >50% by 2011 through implementation of national environmental protection policies in the 1990s that included a portfolio of PAs, PES, and ecotourism. However, the social-ecological effectiveness of this conservation portfolio in terms of interactions between deforestation, biodiversity, and community participation is not clear across local scales. Therefore, we conducted multitemporal geospatial analysis to determine forest cover change from 2001-2017, broad census surveys to determine primate species richness and group encounter rate, and surveyed private landowners to determine participation in PES and ecotourism across four regions of Costa Rica. Net forest loss varied sevenfold across regions and occurred in both protected and non-protected areas across all regions from 2001-2017, although rates were lower inside protected areas. Primate group encounter rate varied significantly across all regions with an elevenfold difference between the region with the most primates compared to the region with the least. All but one region contained the full community of primate species present. Participation in conservation incentives also varied sevenfold across regions, with those reporting the highest participation having the highest primate density and diversity, as well as the lowest deforestation rates. These results suggest that the most effective strategy to simultaneously curb tropical deforestation, protect primates, and ensure community benefits may depend on a complete portfolio of PAs, PES, and ecotourism, rather than a subset of these strategies. Future studies will explore finer scale differences and similarities across PA, PES, and ecotourism forests, including measures of primate physiology and behavior, forest structure, and pesticide exposure.

Effects of payments for ecosystem services programs in China on rural household labor allocation and land use: Identifying complex pathways

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) is increasingly used in developing countries to secure the sustainable provision of vital ecosystem services. The largest PES programs in the world are embedded in China’s new forest policies, which aim to expand forest cover for soil and water conservation and improve livelihoods of rural people. The objective of this study is to identify the complex pathways of the impacts of two PES programs , the Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program (CCFP) and the Ecological Welfare Forest Program (EWFP), on household livelihood decisions, and to quantify the direct and indirect impacts along the identified pathways. We fulfill this objective by developing an integrated conceptual framework and applying a Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM), based on household survey data from Anhui, China. Labor allocation (for on-farm work, local paid work, local business, or out-migration) and land use decisions (i.e., rent in, maintain, rent out, or abandon cropland) for participating households are key to understand PES program effects on livelihoods. Results show that the PES programs have only small direct effects but significant indirect effects via the mediating factor of capital assets. Moreover, group heterogeneity analysis shows that lower-income households do not benefit more than the better-off households from the PES programs, while households with medium wealth increase dependence on agriculture. In addition, household demographics, individual attributes, and geographic settings differ in their impacts on labor allocation and land use decisions. We conclude that CCFP and EWFP would be more efficient in conserving the environment while improving the economic welfare of lower-income households if capital assets were taken into account in the design of compensation schemes.

Participation in payments for ecosystem services programs in the Global South: A systematic review

This article presents a systematic review of the factors and motivations that explain participation in payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs in the Global South. PES are voluntary conservation incentive programs and participation is determined by eligibility, willingness, and ability to participate. Following the PRISMA guidelines, we review 78 studies and summarize how willingness (financial and non-financial motivations) and ability (based on the capital assets framework) to participate are measured and the direction of influence of these variables. An increasing number of studies assess the role of both financial and non-financial motivators on PES participation. Financial and non-financial motivators, including pro-social, pro-environmental, and risk reduction, positively influence willingness to participate. Most studies consider the role of at least one capital asset in determining ability to participate in PES programs. In general, participants in PES programs have more capital assets than non-participants. Our findings suggest that the theory behind how PES mechanisms work needs to be updated to account for more complex behavioral theories and a wider set of factors and motivations. Results from this systematic review can be used to inform the design of PES programs and help shed light on why PES programs achieve their environmental or socioeconomic objectives.

Divergent socioeconomic-ecological outcomes of China’s conversion of cropland to forest program in the subtropical mountainous area and the semi-arid Loess Plateau

China’s Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program (CCFP) is one of the world’s largest Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs. Its socioeconomic-ecological effects are of great interest to both scholars and policy-makers. However, little is known about how the socioeconomic-ecological outcomes of CCFP differ across geographic regions. This study integrates household survey data, satellite imagery, and statistical models to examine labor migration and forest dynamics under CCFP. The investigation is carried out at two mountainous sites with distinct biophysical and socioeconomic conditions, one in a subtropical mountainous region (Anhui) and the other in the semi-arid Loess Plateau (Shanxi). We found divergent CCFP outcomes on migration behavior, stimulating both local- and distant-migration in the Anhui site while discouraging distant-migration in the Shanxi site, after controlling for factors at the individual, household, community and regional levels. Forest recovery is positively associated with distant-migration in Anhui but with local-migration in Shanxi. Contextual factors interact with demographic-socioeconomic factors to influence household livelihoods in both areas, leading to various socio-ecological pathways from CCFP participation to enhanced forest sustainability. Regional differences should therefore be taken into account in the design of future large-scale PES programs.

Understanding direct and indirect effects of Payment for Ecosystem Services on resource use and wildlife

Abstract Payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs have been implemented worldwide to balance human needs and ecosystem conservation. However, the effects of PES programs on economic activities and the associated effects on wildlife remain unclear. China’s Grain-to-Green program (GTGP) that aims to convert cropland to forest or grassland represents one of the largest PES programs in the world. We combine household surveys with wildlife camera data to ask whether GTGP is associated with direct or indirect effects on economic activities, wildlife occupancy and wildlife species richness. We also consider how resource use and extraction, wildlife occupancy, and species richness differ between GTGP and natural forest sites. We found that farming and the amount of fuelwood extracted from forests have declined, while the collection of other forest resources remained largely unchanged. While residents engaged less in cattle grazing after GTGP implementation, goat grazing and pig forage collection remained unchanged. Paired camera trap and household survey data analyses suggest that presence of humans and dogs was positively related to resource collection, and negatively related to wildlife occupancy, which likely contributed to the lower wildlife species richness detected at GTGP forest relative to natural forest. The results suggest that while PES programs, like GTGP, may reduce some human impacts on forest ecosystems (i.e. reduced firewood collection and cattle grazing) and provide habitat for wildlife through afforestation, the persistence of other types of resource use may limit the positive benefits of PES to wildlife diversity. Our results suggest there may be opportunities for PES programs to extend the multi-benefit approach of balancing human needs and ecosystem services to increase potential benefits to wildlife and biodiversity.

Protecting warming lakes through climate-adaptive PES mechanisms

Climate change can adversely impact the quality of environmental services provided under Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs, thereby reducing their effectiveness. In this paper, a modelling framework is developed to explore how PES negotiations between forestry and fishery-based communities may be affected when warming reduces the stock of fish as well as forest biomass growth rates. Under a PES arrangement, forestry-based communities afforest the lake's catchment region, which helps improve fish stock abundance through reduced sediment loading. When climate warming adversely impacts fish yields, the value of restoring degraded lands in the catchment region increases, making the negotiating powers of the fishing and forestry dependent communities dynamic. Results suggest that the prospect of a climate-driven negotiating power in the future calls for higher PES payments by the fishing community in order to incentivize early restoration. Warming could also affect forest biomass growth rates in the long run. However, findings from this study suggest that warming driven forest biomass growth rate decline may have a relatively lower impact on PES negotiations compared to the direct impact of warming on lake's fish productivity.

Does China’s major Payment for Ecosystem Services program meet the “gold criteria”? Targeting strategies of different decision-makers

Payment for Ecosystem Service (PES) was perceived as an instrument to reconcile ecological conservation and poverty alleviation. Targeting the gold criteria-high ecological additionality, low opportunity costs and pro-poverty- is the key to achieving the multiple goals, but evidence on PES targeting evaluation remains piecemeal, less considering the roles of decision-makers. This study contributes to this work by figuring out the targeting strategies and the vital criteria in the world’s largest PES program- China’s Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP) and its new stage (NSLCP). Based on the survey data of households and land plots, this paper aims to answer two questions: one is how well the program targeted the gold criteria in terms of desired ecological benefits, cost-effectiveness and equity; the other is how well the governments’ and landholders’ targeting strategies performed compared to the gold criteria. The results showed that the targeting criteria that significantly affected land or household enrollment included slope, location, opportunity costs, income poverty, etc. It indicates the program did not meet gold criteria, with a good targeting for ecological benefits and cost-effectiveness but still lack of equity in distribution of enrollment, benefits and rights. It also empirically demonstrated that the roles of decision-makers played a part in targeting process, and rights distribution during program implementation would turn out different targeting outcomes. More specifically, the governments’ targeting strategies were more unified and stronger environmental-oriented than the landholders’. They cared more about its performance and costs for implementation and monitoring over the landholders’ opportunity costs. Moreover, in governments’ targeting strategies, income poverty was an obstacle to NSLCP participation, although the poor participants would bring more cost-effective outcomes and favor the sustainability of the program. Government-selected parcels owned greater losses and higher reconversion risk than those targeted by landholders. Therefore, this study suggests to develop scientific index system and techniques for targeting and evaluation, and to improve autonomy distribution and payment schemes, for achieving maximum targeting outcomes in ecological, economic, and pro-poor benefits.

Measuring the net benefits of payments for hydrological services programs in Mexico

A number of studies show that payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs contribute to reducing deforestation, but few have measured the impact on ecosystem service provision or compared economic benefits and costs of these programs. We integrate impact evaluation and ecosystem service measurement to examine the effects of PES programs in Veracruz, Mexico. We use quasi-experimental methods to measure the effect of enrolling in PES on forest cover. We link these changes in forest cover to field-calibrated measures of water regulation and carbon storage. After converting these changes in ecosystem services to monetary values we calculate the net benefits of the programs. We find that PES reduces losses of forest cover but that the additional gains in forest cover are small. However, these gains in forest lead to positive water regulation and carbon storage services. The net benefits of the PES programs over a 10-year period are as large as USD 3.2 million for watershed services and USD 4.9 million for water plus carbon storage. However, when there is no additionality in forest cover due to PES, the programs result in economic losses. Adopting this type of integrated modeling of PES impacts sheds light on the economic efficiency of these approaches.

Reimagining instrument constituencies: the case of conservation policy in Mexico

Throughout the developing world, payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs are popular policy instruments that allow those who rely on such amenities as drinking water and clean air to pay the landowners who, in turn, provide and care for those services so the resources are protected and sustainably available in the future. Despite the popularity of PES programs as policy instruments, they have been proven largely ineffective in achieving their long-term goals. Specifically, they have failed to conserve the targeted ecosystem services. We examine Mexican instrument constituencies that have promoted use of a PES program, the payments for hydrological services (PHS) program. Instrument constituencies are groups of policy actors who are bound by an interest in a particular policy instrument or solution. Although the PHS program has been in existence for nearly 20 years, the evidence points to policy drift and overall policy failure. The path-dependent nature of the instrument constituency and resulting feedbacks have crowded out any chance of more effective forest or water conservation programs from being established. A case-based counterfactual analysis is employed to consider alternative program choices that could exist in the absence of a PHS instrument constituency.

A Place at the Well: The Imperative for Farmer Inclusion in Water Conservation Policy Design

AbstractAchieving cleaner water for rural and suburban communities in a sustainable way requires approaches tailored to the unique socioeconomic, ecological, and historic contexts embedded in a particular community and place. Water quality trading (WQT) is a payment for ecosystem services style policy that is currently popular across North America as a mechanism to reduce water pollution from rural communities. Yet this approach is failing to generate markets with enough trades to measurably improve waterways. Some failures are attributed to poor program design and others to stakeholder communities who are averse to the premise or morality of WQT. However, rural communities are not homogenous and many are in fact amenable to payment for ecosystem services policies such as WQT. Although our case study identified Tennessee watersheds as “feasible” locations, we present evidence that the typical program design parameters would fail, despite having a willing population of farmers. We argue that identifying amenable communities or feasible locations simplifies the agency of stakeholders and is ultimately insufficient to make ecosystem services programs work unless the design and implementation phases of the programs include local stakeholders.

Governance of Payments for Ecosystem Ecosystem services influences social and environmental outcomes in Costa Rica

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs are used to achieve both ecosystem services and human well-being objectives. PES employs various governance structures, from top-down, national programs to local, community-managed initiatives. We compare the land use, ecosystem services and human well-being impacts of Costa Rica's national PES program with local PES programs in the Bellbird Biological Corridor. We found no difference in well-being between local PES participants and the control group; however, national PES participants had significantly larger properties and incomes than non-participants. Although many of the national PES sites contain large forested areas, the program did not incentivize changes in land use and therefore did not generate additionality. Reforestation activities are widespread in the study area and have generated locally-important ecosystem services; however, these activities cannot be attributed to current local PES due to widespread reforestation within the control group. Nonetheless, participants in local PES have planted a greater diversity of tree species, suggesting reforestation under local PES may have improved ecological benefits. Our findings suggest that while the additional, non-economic benefits of PES in this region are limited, local PES has more effectively engaged with those who are less economically prosperous, and reforestation has improved ecosystem services provisioning.

Predicted effects of Chinese national park policy on wildlife habitat provisioning: Experience from a plateau wetland ecosystem

Abstract Understanding the ecological consequences of conservation policies on wildlife is critical for species conservation and policy implementation. China began to call for establishing a national park system in 2013 and used national parks as the predominant feature for its system of protected areas in 2019. Payment for ecosystem services (PES) and relocation constitute two important management strategies in new Chinese national parks and protected area system. To better understand the potential outcomes of such programs, we studied the winter foraging distribution of the threatened Black-necked Crane (Grus nigricollis), a flagship species of plateau wetlands, in Dashanbao Protected Area, SW China. Field survey data were combined with environmental variables and land use maps to model winter foraging habitat with respect to human settlements subject to PES and relocation. High suitability for foraging was mapped in the core zone around crane roosting sites, villages, and far from disturbance (e.g. main roads). Aiming at converting farmland to wetland, the payment for ecosystem services programs increased probability of occurrence of cranes by changing land cover in appropriate areas relative to crane roosts and other spatially distributed variables. Surprisingly, areas within 1 km of villages were recognized as highly suitable foraging habitats for cranes, which depend on waste grain in farmland in winter, revealing the potential risk of relocation-induced food shortage for wintering cranes. We argue that as an effective strategy in improving wildlife habitat, PES should be encouraged and relocation programs that change the existing long-term established human-wildlife interactions should be implemented only under full understanding of these relationships. As a pioneer study of the effects of conservation policy on wetland ecosystems in China, this study could shed light on conservation management for such ecosystem and species showing high dependence on a human modified environment. Future work should also focus on the social effects of these conservation strategies, especially relocation, during national park planning in China.

Policy lessons from spatiotemporal enrollment patterns of payment for ecosystem service programs in Argentina

Payment for ecosystem services schemes (PES) are lauded as a market-based solution to curtail deforestation and restore degraded ecosystems. However, PES programs often fail to conserve sites under strong long-term deforestation pressures. Underperformance, in part, is likely due to adverse selection. Spatial adverse selection occurs when landowners are more likely to enroll parcels with low deforestation pressure than parcels with high deforestation pressure. Temporal adverse selection arises when parcels are enrolled for short time periods. In both cases, financial resources are allocated without having a sizeable impact on long-term land use change. Improving program performance to overcome these shortcomings requires understanding attributes of landowners and their parcels across large scales to identify spatial and temporal enrollment patterns that drive adverse selection. In this paper, we examine these patterns in Argentina’s PES program in Chaco forest, a global deforestation hotspot. Our study area covers 252,319 km2. Results from multinomial logistic regression models showed that large parcels of enrolled land and parcels owned by absentee landowners exhibit greater evidence of spatiotemporal adverse selection than smaller parcels or parcels owned by local landowners. Furthermore, parcels managed under land use plans for conservation and restoration are more likely to be associated with adverse selection than parcels managed for financial returns such as harvest of non-timber forest products, silviculture, and silvopasture. However, prior to recommending that PES programs focus on land uses with higher potential earnings, a greater understanding is needed of the degree to which these land uses meet ecological and biodiversity goals of PES programs. We suggest that increased spatial targeting of enrollment, along with enrollment of local landowners and further incentives for land uses that support conservation and restoration, could promote long-term conservation of forest lands.

Assessing the effects of payments for ecosystem services programs on forest structure and species biodiversity

Globally, biodiversity has declined at an unprecedented rate, challenging the viability of ecosystems, species, and ecological functions and their corresponding services. Payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs have been established and implemented worldwide to combat the degradation or loss of essential ecosystems and ecosystem services without sacrificing the well-being of people. With an overarching goal of reducing soil erosion, China’s Grain-to-Green program (GTGP) converts cropland to forest or grassland. As one of the largest PES programs in the world, GTGP has great potential to offer biodiversity conservation co-benefits. To consider how GTGP may influence biodiversity, we measured forest structure and plant and wildlife species diversity at both GTGP forest and natural forest sites in Fangjingshan National Nature Reserve, China. We also evaluated the relationship between canopy cover and biodiversity measures to test whether forest cover, the most commonly measured and reported ecological metric of PES programs, might act as a good proxy for other biodiversity related parameters. We found that forest cover and species diversity increased after GTGP implementation as understory and overstory plant cover, and understory and midstory plant diversity at GTGP sites were similar to natural forest. Our results suggest that GTGP may also have been associated with increased habitat for protected and vulnerable wildlife species including Elliot’s pheasant (Syrmaticus ellioti), hog badger (Arctonyx collaris), and wild boar (Sus scrofa). Nevertheless, we identified key differences between GTGP forest and natural forest, particularly variation in forest types and heterogeneity of overstory vegetation. As a result, plant overstory diversity and wildlife species richness at GTGP forest were significantly lower than at natural forest. Our findings suggest, while forest cover may be a good proxy for some metrics of forest structure, it does not serve as a robust proxy for many biodiversity parameters. These findings highlight the need for and importance of robust and representative indicators or proxy variables for measuring ecological effects of PES programs on compositional and structural diversity. We demonstrate that PES may lead to biodiversity co-benefits, but changes in program implementation could improve the return on investment of PES programs to support conservation of biodiversity.

Scale and landscape features matter for understanding the performance of large payments for ecosystem services

Various payment for ecosystem services (PES) programmes are becoming very common across the globe due to ever-strengthening conservation policies and aspirations for socio-ecological sustainability. Nevertheless, quantifying the performance of PES at large spatial scales remains very challenging. Here, a biophysically-based indicator approach is formulated to assess the effectiveness of a new large-scale PES program in China. Structural equation modelling was also used to reveal the possible landscape features that might impact the effectiveness of the PES. The results suggested the overall effectiveness of the PES implementation, but the effectiveness suggested by the analysis tended to decrease with increasingly fine spatial scales from the whole PES implementing region down to 100 km2 grids. The selected landscape features combined to explain 27% of the variability in the effectiveness of the PES programme. The spatial scale and landscape dependency of the effectiveness of PES could provide new insight to support the planning and adaptive management of large PES programmes.

Payments for ecosystem services and conditional cash transfers in a policy mix: Microlevel interactions in Selva Lacandona, Mexico

AbstractPayments for ecosystem services (PES) programs have been increasingly studied with a policy mix perspective. So far, the focus has been on PES' interplay with other conservation instruments and resulting environmental outcomes at meso‐ and macrolevels. Though PES often operate among “poor” forest‐dwelling communities in the Global South, our knowledge on PES' interactions with poverty alleviation policies is scarce, especially at the microlevel. This article examines PES' interactions—in terms of joint coverage, management, and spending of revenues, and socioeconomic effects of participation—with a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program in a case study of six communities in Selva Lacandona, Chiapas, Mexico. The article builds a dual framework combining policy mix analysis with an actor‐oriented approach focused on participants' microagency, and is based on in‐depth, qualitative research. Results reveal widespread joint PES and CCT coverage, and patterns of specialization between different household members regarding the management and spending of program revenues. Results also show positive, multilevel policy interactions as participants combine resources to pursue individual and collective socioeconomic strategies. The article highlights the creative ways in which local stakeholders integrate individual policies within their broader livelihoods, and how coordination failures among policy‐implementing institutions and deficient public services limit participants' ability to achieve sustained livelihood improvements. The article also highlights how a focus on microlevel policy interactions complements meso‐ and macrolevel analyses for a better understanding of PES' role in a policy mix and concludes by providing some recommendations for building implementation synergies and improving program design.

Effect of charcoal production and woodland type on soil organic carbon and total nitrogen in drylands of southern Mozambique

African woodland ecosystems function as important reservoirs for soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN). However, these ecosystem functions are particularly sensitive to social-ecological factors, the impacts of which remain understudied. Here, we examine how SOC and TN and other soil properties vary across woodland types and how charcoal production, the main source of woodland disturbance in the study area, changes these factors in dry woodlands of southern Africa, focusing on three woodland ecosystems that represent the main types in southern Mozambique: Androstachys forest, Combretum woodland and Mopane woodlands. Drawing on data from soil surveys at 0–5 cm and 0–30 cm depth in different vegetation types as well as both distant from and proximate to sites of active charcoal production, we estimate that these woodlands in Mabalane District store on average 19 ± 10 (±SE) Mg ha−1 of SOC, and 2.2 ± 0.9 Mg ha−1 of TN at 0–30 cm, significantly lower than values reported for other woodlands in the region such as Miombo. Our analysis shows that the woodland types do not differ in terms of the amount of SOC and TN stored in soil, and that soil in the charcoal kilns had twice the amount of SOC (30.0 ± 1.8 Mg ha−1) and TN (4.5 ± 0.5 Mg ha−1) compared with non-charcoal soils. This study adds to our understanding of the impact of charcoal production on soil SOC and TN in dry woodlands of southern Africa, and demonstrates some localised impacts of charcoal production. We discuss the implications of our findings in the light of emerging carbon-based payments for ecosystem services programmes in the region.

Hidden cost of conservation: A demonstration using losses from human-wildlife conflicts under a payments for ecosystem services program

As global efforts to protect ecosystems expand, there is increasing concern about conservation costs borne by rural communities. To date, these costs have often been narrowly estimated in terms of foregone livelihood opportunities directly caused by conservation, while unintended human burdens that accrue with ecological gains from conservation are often ignored. As a first attempt to quantify this previously hidden cost, we estimated the impact of converting cropland to forest under one of the world’s largest conservation policies, China’s Grain-to-Green Program (GTGP), on crop raiding in a demonstration site using the matching approach. We found that GTGP afforestation was responsible for 64 % of the crop damage by wildlife on remaining cropland, a cost worth 27 % of GTGP’s total payment to farmers. Our study highlights that the conservation cost to communities through influencing human-wildlife conflicts can be substantial, which should be quantified and considered in global conservation efforts to avoid unintended burdens on rural communities.