Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Protecting Paradise: A Cross-National Analysis Of Biome-Protection Policies, Candace Archer, Shannon Orr

Political Science Faculty Publications

Land protection policies such as creating and preserving national parks have been promoted to counter global threats to the environment and to conserve biodiversity. We know little, however, about the country characteristics that might be good predictors of whether states will choose to protect land or not. What factors within a state need to be the focus of global attention or need to be encouraged to promote land-protection policies? Using the global standard of 10% ecoregion protection, we test four categories of predictors–biodiversity, environmental threats, politics (such as treaty participation and NGO activity), and economics (such as GDP and trade …