Conservation programs are wasting money because they can’t prove what actually works, scientists warn

Nearly two decades ago, researchers Paul Ferraro and Subhrendu Pattanayak delivered a sobering message to the conservation world: most environmental programs had no solid proof they were actually working. Their aptly titled paper “Money for Nothing?” highlighted a critical flaw in conservation efforts—the lack of causal evidence to demonstrate real impact.

This warning proved prescient when a landmark 2008 study revealed that protected areas weren’t as effective at preventing deforestation as previously believed. The research, led by Kwaw Andam and including Ferraro, discovered that earlier studies had been fooled by location bias. Protected areas often appeared successful simply because they were established in remote locations far from roads and towns—places where deforestation was already unlikely to occur. When researchers accounted for this geographic advantage, the conservation impact looked far less impressive.

The protected area findings illustrate a fundamental problem plaguing conservation efforts: the dangerous reliance on correlation rather than causation. While it’s easy to observe that forests inside park boundaries remain intact while surrounding areas are cleared, proving that protection status actually caused this difference requires much more rigorous analysis. Without accounting for factors like remoteness, terrain difficulty, or economic conditions, conservation programs may be claiming credit for outcomes that would have happened anyway.

This evidence gap has serious consequences as biodiversity continues declining worldwide despite decades of conservation investment. Scarce funding may be flowing to well-intentioned but ineffective programs while truly impactful approaches remain underfunded and underutilized.