IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature

The Poverty Toolkit

About 70 poor countries are engaged in PRSP processes which involve a comprehensive and participatory diagnosis of poverty, the prioritization of actions to be taken, and the development of targets, indicators and systems for monitoring and evaluating progress towards them. Monitoring is based on data gathered by national statistical institutions, and on sectoral poverty monitoring.

However, the poverty case for the forest sector has scarcely begun to be made to National Governments.  PROFOR, IUCN, ODI, CIFOR and Winrock International decided to remedy this by producing the Poverty-Forests Toolkit. Testing and development took place originally in Indonesian Papua and Tanzania, and is currently ongoing in Uganda, Ghana, Madagascar and Cameroon. In 2008 it will be used in China and south-east Asia.  For more information, see the article from arborvitae 35, entitled "The poverty-forests toolkit".

The Poverty-Forests toolkit uses modified forest-focused PRA techniques to identify levels of forest dependence among richer and poorer local people and as they affect men and women. After a wealth-ranking exercise, the toolkit gathers data on trends over the past 30 year or so and helps villagers to identify what they think are the key forest problems in their area, and their potential solutions. The toolkit is being adapted for use in landscape management activities and with other tools. The original version can be downloaded from the PROFOR website at http://www.profor.info/toolkits.html. The updated version can be obtained directly from gillshepherd@compuserve.com

Knowledge Management and Learning

Knowledge management learning is at the heart of Livelihoods and Landscapes.  What we learn, how we use it to adapt activities, and to whom we direct new knowledge will determine the success of Livelihoods and Landscapes.

Learning will be used to continuously revaluate and redirect activities. In this sense, Livelihoods and Landscapes adopts an Action Research approach to influencing the complex and dynamic socio-political and biological dynamics of the landscapes in which the initiative operates. This means that activities and outputs that do not materialise as expected become the lessons which reinvent activities in each landscape. Knowledge Management and Learning is therefore intimately linked to the monitoring and evaluation process.

Livelihoods and Landscapes’ stakeholders are as varied as the landscapes in which the initiative operates. They include local community user groups, governments and multinational organizations, amongst many others. The emphasis of Knowledge Management and Learning in Livelihoods and Landscapes is on empowering stakeholders in each landscape so that those stakeholders are part of the learning processes, not simply recipients at the end of a chain, and that learning outputs are delivered in a timely and appropriate manner.

Finally, the geographic scope of Livelihoods and Landscapes is considerable, with activities organized in 25  countries. This gives us the opportunity to ‘scale-up’ learning by taking knowledge based on grounded experience from several landscapes and drawing out lessons that are relevant at regional and international levels. In particular, lessons aimed at multilateral policy formulation are expected to emerge in this way. Such lessons, informed by and informing policy/practice linkages, will be a valuable tool to ensure that Livelihoods and Landscapes leads to real and sustainable change. For more information see "An Operational Framework for Learning within the Livelihoods and Landscape Strategy".