Nature Conservancy Magazine: Spring 2008 - The Poverty Question

Cutting Baobab tree bark for ropes, Madagascar

Conservation Experts

Barney Dickson is head of international policy at Fauna & Flora International, where he leads FFI’s work on several international biodiversity conventions. He is co-editor of two books, including Biodiversity and the Precautionary Principle (2005) and is currently co-editing a third. He publishes on many topics, including poverty and conservation.

Yolanda Kakabadse N. is the former minister of the environment for Ecuador and former president of The World Conservation Union (IUCN). She is currently chair of a panel of the Global Environment Facility and is senior adviser to Fundación Futuro Latinoamericano, which promotes constructive dialogue about sustainable development. She formerly served on the Conservancy’s board.

Peter Kareiva is chief scientist for the Conservancy and cofounder of the Natural Capital Project, a joint project of the Conservancy, Stanford University and WWF that makes economic arguments for protecting nature. His article “Conservation for the People” appeared in Scientific American‘s October 2007 issue. He is currently writing a report on his research of World Bank projects.

Craig Leisher is a senior policy adviser to the Conservancy and lead author of the recent study “Nature’s Investment Bank: How Marine Protected Areas Contribute to Poverty Reduction." He is a former program director for WWF Indochina and a former environment adviser for the U.N. Development Program.

Kent H. Redford directs the Wildlife Conservation Society Institute and formerly directed conservation science for the Conservancy’s Latin American and Caribbean programs. He speaks frequently on the poverty question and is co-author of the paper “What Is the Role for Conservation Organizations in Poverty Alleviation in the World’s Wild Places?” in submission with Oryx.

Senior Editor Courtney Leatherman interviewed the experts separately and condensed their responses.

Nature Conservancy: Why should conservationists care about poverty alleviation?

Leisher: That’s a key question. I have heard people make the argument, “Let’s leave poverty to the experts; it’s enough of a challenge to do conservation.” I think it’s a false dichotomy. You can’t separate the people from the place. Much of the world’s biodiversity is in the poorest places: Brazil, the Congo, Indonesia — the cradles of biodiversity on land.

Kareiva: There’s no way you can do a lot of our high-priority conservation projects without working in areas that have a lot of poverty.

Redford: The question is, What does “a lot of poverty” mean? Our study has shown [see Redford bio at right], if you’re working in relatively wild areas, many of the people are poor. But there aren’t many people. Poverty rates are very high, but that doesn’t mean the numbers of poor people are very high. And that still doesn’t tell you what you’re supposed to do. That is a statement about correlation, not causation or action. There could be lots of poor people in an area where I was working, and I could choose not to lift a finger to help them — or I could devote myself to poverty alleviation.

Kareiva: I guess “a lot of poverty” is a little too casual. What I meant was: Where there is the likelihood of great risk to conservation efforts because of the needs of local poor. If you are the Conservancy, you’d better not be blind to the needs of the poor who live in or nearby to your conservation project area. Desperately poor people will risk anything to get the resources they need in order to feed their families.

Dickson: There is a pragmatic case for working with poor local people who are making use of the natural resources: You will end up with better conservation if you work with poor people if they benefit from your activities. That is the pragmatic argument. I don’t think it’s always true in all cases. But there is an ethical or political commitment that says that it is unfair to place the costs of international conservation on the poorest and most vulnerable people. And that commitment applies in all cases.

Leisher: We have a moral and practical need to show how conservation benefits people. If people have to sacrifice for conservation, and they’re already poor, that violates the rule of “first do no harm.”

Kakabadse N.: I have a different perspective and language to describe it. The slogan of poverty reduction is not a fair presentation of what I would describe as my work or the work of conservation groups. We work for society. I don’t work for the tree or the protected area or the species alone. They are important because they serve a purpose to society. So we have to be concerned about the use and misuse of natural resources and the impact on the quality of life of people. Conservation groups should be dealing with the health of the ecosystem. That addresses poverty, but the work is related to conservation.

Kareiva: I believe that, in some places, by promoting conservation you can help the well-being of the poor. In cases where the poor make their living through resources — fisheries or bush meat or timber products — to the extent that poor people owe their living to natural systems, it’s in their interest that those resources are better managed. To make it sustainable. So that meshes with our goals.

Kakabadse N.: The approach of conservationists should be investing in providing the people with a tool that would allow them to meet their needs without affecting their environment. The idea is providing them with alternatives that would become options instead of cutting a tree. Our gap is still that we haven’t found enough economic solutions or alternatives. Ecotourism will never pay the local community as much as felling the timber of the surrounding trees.

Redford: Conservationists have a moral responsibility to think about poverty and, where and when possible, to do something about alleviating it. However, we and our supporters are primarily involved in our mission — preservation of biodiversity — and we should only be engaged in poverty alleviation when it works to advance that mission.

Dickson: Conservation organizations are conservation organizations. Their primary concern is with conservation, and that is right and proper. But where we do have a responsibility is in relation to the poor people who are or may be affected by our conservation activities. What conservation organizations ought to do is at least try to make sure that they don’t make matters worse for poor people and, if possible, contribute to their livelihoods.

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