And speaking of that particular Brainfood, looking back at it I noticed that three of the papers could perhaps be mashed up. They looked at the impacts of proximity to protected areas, proximity to oil palm plantations and agricultural intensification on different key development outcomes ((Including, incidentally, stunting, the subject of yet another of the Brainfood papers)). Bringing all the results together suggests that for communities to do really well they need to:
- be near protected areas
- be near oil palm plantations
- have decent access to markets and tourists (i.e. roads)
- intensify their agriculture from either a very low or a quite high initial level
I now want some GIS whizkid to pinpoint where all these conditions coincide for a veritable perfect storm of well-being.