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Sagar, H. S. Sathya Chandra, Raynor, Jennifer, Edwards, Felicity A., Sanderson, Fiona J., Jones, Sorrel, Yu, Douglas W. 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8551-5609, Bush, Alex, Persche, Maia E., Bodasing, Tarik, Taire, Michael E., Gottesman, Ben, Feika, Mohamed A., Nyallay, Mohamed and Buřivalová, Zuzana
(2026)
Carbon finance initiatives can provide biodiversity benefits.
Conservation Science and Practice, 8 (4).
ISSN 2578-4854
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Abstract
Carbon finance initiatives such as Reducing Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), designed to mitigate climate change, offer an opportunity to also protect biodiversity. However, managing forests to store and sequester carbon does not necessarily conserve biodiversity. We evaluated the biodiversity co-benefits of the Gola-REDD+ initiative in the tropical forests of Sierra Leone, using bioacoustics and DNA metabarcoding under a quasi-experimental study design. We used soundscape saturation (SS) as a measure of vocalizing diversity, and e-DNA arthropod community as a complementary measure of biodiversity to examine whether a Gola-REDD+ financed protected area (Treatment-PA) conserved biodiversity more than (1) a multiuse community land (Control-CL) and (2) a PA without REDD+ finance (Control-PA). We found that REDD+ financing is associated with additional biodiversity co-benefits in the Treatment-PA compared to both control areas. Our study makes three key contributions. First, we provide concrete evidence on a carbon finance (REDD+) project's effectiveness in conserving faunal diversity while sequestering carbon. Second, we present a gold-standard causal inference study design for evaluating biodiversity co-benefits of conservation strategies. Third, we highlight the role of conservation technologies like bioacoustics and DNA metabarcoding in informing conservation policy.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Data Availability Statement: All data and code will be made available upon request to the corresponding authors. |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | bioacoustics,biodiversity conservation benefits,carbon finance,quasi-experimental design,redd+,regression discontinuity,tropical forest,global and planetary change,ecology,environmental science (miscellaneous),nature and landscape conservation,sdg 13 - climate action,sdg 15 - life on land ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2300/2306 |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Organisms and the Environment |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 04 Aug 2026 15:00 |
| Last Modified: | 07 Aug 2026 10:03 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103980 |
| DOI: | 10.1111/csp2.70254 |
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