Dear Counterfactual Enthusiasts,
Welcome to the second edition of the bi-annual SCB IEWG Research Briefings, where we explore the latest insights in conservation impact evaluation. Our featured studies reflect the growing potential of counterfactual approaches to improve conservation. This edition has been timed to arrive shortly before the holidays, with the aim of sparking reflection on the year, and the hope of inspiring you with new ideas to bring forward into 2026. Enjoy!
Fire management for climate resilience
Rising from the ashes: treatments stabilize carbon storage in California’s frequent-fire forests estimates the climate mitigation impact of forest thinning. This paper uses a natural experimental design embedded within a difference-in-differences framework with a novel use of a placebo group to quantify uncertainty from selection bias and stochastic variability. They found that clustered, strategically placed treatments were the most effective firebreaks.
What determines protected area placement?
Global prioritization schemes vary in their impact on the placement of protected areas asks whether conservation prioritizations affected the designation of new parks. They found that it did for Last of the Wild areas but not for Biodiversity Hotspots where more human pressures hinder designation. Supporting local initiatives and promoting human-wildlife coexistence outside parks are key complementary strategies.
Uncovering risks to strengthen interventions
Conservation impacts and hidden actions in a randomized controlled trial of a marine pay-to-release program is the first randomized control trial of an incentive-based marine conservation intervention that was found to yield mixed results for the sharks and rays it was designed to protect. The paper highlights the importance of creating systems that facilitate learning and adaptive management to improve conservation outcomes.
Effect depends on context
Agricultural technology adoption and deforestation: Evidence from a randomized control trial shows that in Nigeria when adopting improved agricultural inputs, deforestation trends are affected by the land cover characteristics in which farms are located. The adoption of the same technological improvements led to an intensification in deforestation in areas of sparse pre-intervention tree cover whereas the opposite effect was seen in areas of denser forest.
The role of ecotourism in forest conservation
Economic development and environmental conservation: Evidence from ecotourism assesses the effect of ecotourism on deforestation and economic development through a randomized control trial in Colombia. The promotion of ecotourism in randomly selected municipalities decreased deforestation around ecotourism sites. The author suggests that the economic opportunities provided by the increased number of tourists and workers in the treated areas have a critical role in encouraging local communities to preserve forests
Assessing agroecological interventions at landscape scale
India’s agroecology programme, ‘Zero Budget Natural Farming’, delivers biodiversity and economic benefits without lowering yields applies a quasi-experimental design to an existing conservation programme. While the authors were missing pre-intervention measurements, as is often the case when those assessing a programme are not involved in its development, they are very transparent in documenting assumptions with clear documentation of confounders and they perform extensive robustness checks.
🌟 Spotlight: SCB IEWG Special Issue
In the previous research brief, we highlighted some papers from the Special issue on impact evaluation for conservation: bridging research and practice. We are thrilled to announce that the full issue has now been published in Conservation Science and Practice.
This special issue brings together contributions from members of the counterfactual community, offering clear entry points to practitioners and researchers seeking to causally evaluate conservation programmes, including introductory guidance, practical case studies, and lessons from researcher-practitioner teams bringing impact evaluation into organisational practice. There’s a lot of hard-won experience in these papers, and some genuinely hopeful paths forward.
REDD+
REDD+ projects: still limited climate benefits
Tropical forest carbon offsets deliver partial gains amid persistent over-crediting assesses 52 voluntary REDD+ projects in tropical regions and found that only a minority of projects showed a statistically significant reduction in deforestation, and only 19% reduced as much deforestation and emissions as they had targeted. Only 13% of carbon offsets were found to be supported by the counterfactual analysis using the synthetic control method.
Is it because of the omitted variable bias?
Unobserved confounders do not explain over-crediting in avoided deforestation carbon projects (preprint) digs deeper into the reasons why recent research has found that voluntary REDD+ projects have not been as effective as their proponents originally claimed. One leading argument is that independent estimates omitted certain socioeconomic variables in the analyses. However, this study assesses their sensitivity to unobserved confounders and shows that the omitted variable bias is unlikely to account for the reported over-crediting.
DIGGING INTO COUNTERFACTUAL METHODS
Methodological roadmap
Estimating causal effects with observational data: Guidelines for agricultural and applied economists is a working paper that shows that observational-data studies can support causal inference, provided they follow rigorous design and transparent reporting standards.
Improving research design
Challenges in statistics: A dozen challenges in causality and causal inference (preprint) provides a technical overview of causal-inference methods. Key takeaways for conservation are that strong domain knowledge is essential for generating meaningful evidence; sensitivity checks are essential; and creative, context-specific approaches are needed to evaluate impacts in complex interconnected ecological systems with dynamic spillovers.
Causation for ecologists
Best practices for moving from correlation to causation in ecological research (preprint) provides a workflow that attempts to guide ecological research to be more causal rather than just associational. It includes best practice tips as well as useful resources on causal assumptions and definitions in the supplementary materials.
Complementing measurement with meaning
The value of qualitative approaches to impact evaluation in biodiversity conservation provides a conceptual model of qualitative approaches that can help understand why change occurs. This is complementary to and not a substitution for quantitative methods, and demonstrates a practical approach for conservation practitioners to think in terms of effectiveness.
📚 Final Word
Our featured articles highlight the growing uptake of impact evaluation and counterfactual thinking in conservation. They show that although interest has risen quickly, our field has lacked clear frameworks and best practices, and some of these papers are helping to close this gap. Equipped with the lessons they provide, we can accelerate the adoption of rigorous causal methods in our research. Where these approaches have been applied, the emphasis on scrutinizing assumptions and uncertainty ultimately strengthens the evidence behind the conclusions, giving us a more reliable foundation for conservation decisions.
Until next time,
The SCB Impact Evaluation Working Group (IEWG)
With contributions from Lynn Riley and Iris Berger
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