MPAs are often associated with high poverty, being by design targeted at relatively untouched areas with low economic potential. Establishing an MPA can thus create a financial and social burden on resource-dependent communities, even if the benefits of doing so would bring higher yields or revenue in the future. Some stakeholders may benefit greatly from commercial activities (e.g., tourism, sale of higher-value products), while at the same time others are left out of the management processes, sometimes even those having most at stake. 

Because MPAs will most likely affect user groups disproportionately, inequality issues among stakeholders can easily arise.  Some aspects of MPA design, implementation, and management may contribute to positive ecological and well-being outcomes, while others will require tradeoffs. This coexistence of both co-benefits and trade-offs among stakeholder groups leads to tricky questions of equity, justice, and power in the design, implementation, and management of MPAs. There is a general lack of knowledge regarding how inequalities influence MPA outcomes. 

In brief, MPAs are a driver of inequalities in communities that rely heavily on marine resources, and a powerful tool to help reduce them. While being an important aspect of the well-being of the people involved and of the success of MPAs, inequality assessments and metrics are currently largely absent in the design, implementation and management of MPAs. This research project aimed at a deeper understanding of the inequality dynamics in MPAs in Indonesia, drawing upon existing data and specific case studies. It helped us gain better knowledge of how inequalities influence biological and social outcomes in MPAs, and brought insights on how to integrate inequality assessments and indicators in existing MPA policies in the country, at every level of governance.

Find out more about the Extension in Indonesia

This project first went through a scoping phase which enabled to better understand the role of MPAs and its link to inequalities. It then aimed to develop a framework for analyzing inequalities and their dynamics in MPAs in Indonesia, and a toolbox for mainstreaming inequalities in the design, implementation and management of MPAs. It has also fed into the policy dialogue conducted by the EU and AFD on marine resource management and environmental protection. 

This project therefore resulted in: 

• A working paper summarizing the current knowledge on marine protected areas and inequalities in Indonesia (carried out by LPEM).
• An in-depth research project on the links between inequality reductions and the management of marine protected areas, including cases studies of three MPAs (performed by the SMERU Institute).
• Training and capacity building activities with practitioners and MPA managers on the inclusion of inequalities in MPA management practices.
   

You will find below the different publications related to this project :

• The benefits of Marine Protected Areas in fighting inequality and fostering environmental sustainability in Indonesia
• Balancing conservation and community welfare: Enhancing the management of Marine Protected Areas in Indonesia
• Can social inclusion benefit ecosystems?

Watch the replay of the "Research Conversations" webinar on this topic (July 2023):

In Indonesia, poverty has been declined since 2006 from 17.75% to 9.41% in 2019 due to strong economic growth and other poverty reduction efforts. The inequality, however, remains considerably high. Since 2010, Indonesia’s Gini ratio remains above 0.38. The poverty and inequality situation has been worsen post-pandemic. Indonesia’s headcount poverty rate back to double digit, 10.14% in 2021, while the Gini ratio climbed to 0.384, its highest rate since 2018. While focus on economic inequality is important, the picture of inequality in Indonesia should be assessed through a multi-dimensional aspect, not limited to households income or expenditure. 

Indonesia is a fourth most-populous and also the largest archipelagic country in the world. It makes any policy context should be assessed carefully throughout population groups, income class, and geographical location due to the difference in the provision of public infrastructure and policy efforts within the country. As such, a comprehensive inequality diagnostic report is needed to assess overall condition of inequality in Indonesia not only using monetary indicator (income or expenditure), but also social assets, in terms of access to education, health, water and sanitation, employment, and other basic infrastructures needed for households. 

The Extension of the Research Facility on Inequalities will cooperate with leading research center, LPEM FEB UI, and national statistical office, BPS, to conduct comprehensive inequality assessment and produce an inequality diagnostic report as the basis for launching a national dialogue about inequality and stimulate policy interventions to overcome inequality.

Find out more about the Extension in Indonesia

The objectives of the Inequality Diagnostic Research in Indonesia are: 

1. to produce a working paper which will consolidate data and resources (papers) around inequality issues to profile the prevailing situation of inequality in Indonesia.
2. to conduct capacity building activities for national research center and the national statistical office in performing data analysis for the Inequality Diagnostic Research Report.
3. to introduce specific tools for multidimensional inequalities diagnostic in Indonesia.

This research has led to a comprehensive Inequality Diagnostic Research Report in Indonesia and contributes to public debate and discussion on Inequality in Indonesia. Indeed, this project performed a thorough analysis of multi-dimensional aspect of inequality in Indonesia and a comprehensive breakdown based on income groups, geographical locations, and gender. It also includes analysis of prior policies that have been taken by the government to reduce inequality and how it performs overtime. The output of this research will help government to identify priorities and policy options in order to further reduce them.
 

You will find below the research publications related to this project:

• The Inequality Diagnostic Report: Indonesia
• When Information Feeds Social Transformation in Indonesia: Understanding and Addressing Inequality outside Java through Diagnostic Dissemination

In South Africa, the social grant system is relatively comprehensive in scope, directly benefiting one in three individuals, and mainly empowering the most vulnerable such as children, the elderly and people with disabilities from poor households. Despite the progressiveness of this system, there remains a lack of assistance to the unemployed, who are presumed to be able to support themselves through the labor market (Ferguson, 2015). However, such a view overlooks the widespread and structural nature of unemployment in South Africa, where over 70% of the unemployed have been unemployed for more than a year. 

In this light, the expansion of the country's social grant system in response to the Covid-19 pandemic played an important role in filling this gap. On the margins of the system, a special Covid-19 grant of R350 was introduced to support this previously unreached and important group of unemployed adults. With one of the highest official unemployment rates in the world (32.6 percent in the first quarter of 2021), the grant was an important form of support for millions of vulnerable adults and was the first to use an explicit labor market eligibility criterion that could be considered a "labor market vulnerability transfer."

Find out more about the Extension in South Africa

Conducted by the UCT-DPRU team, the objective of this research project was to quantitatively study whether the Covid-19 grant acted as a source of labor market recovery by leading to increased investment in productive labor market activities. 

To do this, the research aimed to provide a detailed and quantitative descriptive analysis of transitions in labor market outcomes among Covid-19 grant recipients (measuring whether individuals moved from vulnerable to more productive activities, for example), as well as an analysis of the correlation between grant receipt and labor market outcomes. Finally, it estimated the causal effects of subsidy receipt on a range of productive labor market activities. 

The analysis exploited representative survey data collected during the pandemic in South Africa (from the National Income Dynamics Study: Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey, NIDS-CRAM) to answer the following cross-sectional and longitudinal questions about the role of the subsidy: 

• What is the correlational relationship between receipt and job-seeking behavior, labor market participation, and the probability of finding a job ?
• What is the correlation between receipt of the subsidy and the transition from a relatively unproductive labor market state to a more productive state over time?
• Does this relationship vary across different groups and subgroups of recipients?

You will find below the research paper related to this project:

• Can cash transfers to the unemployed support economic activity ? Evidence from South Africa. 

In Mexico, more than 40 percent of the population is under the official poverty line. At the same time, Mexico is characterized by a society in which the socioeconomic origin condition is highly related to life achievement, especially on the extremes of the socioeconomic distribution (Vélez-Grajales et al, 2014). On this matter, empirical evidence shows that once the population is divided by quintiles, 48 out of 100 that were born in the lowest quintile stay there for the rest of their lives. Above the rest of them, i.e. those who are able to move to another quintile, 22 reach the second quintile. In summary, previous result leaves in poverty 70 percent of those with origin in the first quintile. It has to be noted that only 4 out of 100 that were born in the lowest quintile will move up to the top quintile.

On the other hand, above those that were born in the top quintile, 52 out of each 100 stay there for the rest of their lives. Moreover, above those that experience downward mobility, 28 out of each 100 move to the fourth quintile, i.e., 80 out of each 100 that were born in the top quintile will stay at least in the fourth quintile. Finally, it has to be noted that only 2 out of 100 that were born in the top quintile will move down to the lowest quintile. This means social mobility is very low.

This project is part of the first phase of the Research Facility on Inequalities, coordinated by AFD and funded by the European Commission's Directorate-General for International Partnerships over the 2017-2020 period. The first phase of the Facility has led to the conduct of 22 research projects and the publication of around 100 research papers and policy briefs.

How are economic inequality and social mobility related? Is it possible that the highest levels of socioeconomic persistence (lower social mobility) in terms of origin determined, in part, both perception and tolerance against economic inequality? The Mexican case, which is one where socioeconomic regional disparities are significant, represents a good option to analyze if such relationship holds. Moreover, there is still a gap in the literature for explaining the mechanisms behind the observed negative relationship.

Additionally, an important and relevant unanswered question for the Mexican case is the perception of Mexicans about inequality and social mobility levels. What if Mexicans think that the country is one of equal opportunities and results for all? Policy implications should be different among different perception scenarios. In any case, it is necessary to get information in order to understand the mechanisms at household and local level that explain the potential distance between perception and reality.

First, using a multivariate analysis method, relative intergenerational mobility can be estimated for each macro-region of the country. Several inequality measures will be estimated, but for several points in time. The researchers have chosen to do so because it is possible that not current but origin economic inequality is the relevant one for intergenerational social mobility. Once the relationship is estimated, a discussion on the mechanisms behind it should be developed. The empirical analysis will be mainly based on the “Encuesta ESRU de Movilidad Social en México 2017”.

Additionally, work with groups in 4 different cities with different levels of socioeconomic performance will be held. The researchers expect to do fieldwork in at least two different spots within each city: one for a group of medium-high socioeconomic level and one of medium-low socioeconomic level. The interview will include a measure for both inequality and social mobility. In such a way, the researchers will be able to understand in a better way the relationship between perceptions and objective measures on the variables of research interest.

See this project's 2 minutes pitch from Alice Krozer, researcher at Colegio de México:

You may find the research papers and the policy briefs linked to this project here :

Research papers:
- Social mobility in Mexico. What can we learn from its regional variation?
- Perceptions of inequality and social mobility in Mexico

Policy briefs:
- Wide regional differences in social mobility across Mexico
- Inaccurate public perceptions of inequality and social mobility in Mexico

Find the presentation of the research paper "Perceptions of inequality and social mobility in Mexico" by Aurora Ramirez Alvarez (Colegio de Mexico) during the first webinar of the Research Facility on Inequalities: