This book is a collaborative effort among IUCN, WWF, CARE, and the World Bank to assess where we all agree on the key issues around poverty and protected areas. Recognising that most poverty is rural, as are most protected areas, a relationship between these two aspects of land use is an intimate one, though it is often ignored. But given the much higher profile now being given to poverty issues by development agencies and governments, it is timely to determine how poverty relates to conservation efforts that involve protected areas. This booklet contains numerous very useful perspectives in this regard.
At a practical level, forming a more effective link between protected areas and poverty reduction might include measures such as:
improving knowledge of the values of ecosystem services to build the case for the contribution of protected areas to the rural poor;
designing management systems that permit certain subsistence activities in some categories of protected areas and provide a safety net for poverty reduction strategies;
making local protected area agencies more aware of poverty issues in order to ensure that their management activities do not inadvertently contribute to greater poverty;
ensuring that the finance and economic planning ministries are well aware of the values of protected areas and the goods and services they provide (aiming to ensure that poverty reduction strategies do not lead to inappropriate activities in protected areas);
ensuring that decisions about an individual protected area and its relations with surrounding communities involve those communities as interested parties with clearly-defined rights;
providing access, under a permit system, to certain limited use of resources that are harvested in a non-destructive manner (such as medicinal plants, seeds, or grass);
providing goods in the form of fish, birds, and mammals, that disperse out of the protected areas and are subsequently harvested by local communities outside the protected areas;
providing opportunities to develop a tourist industry based on the protected area; and
providing access to infrastructure, such as roads, electricity, improved communications and health care associated with supporting the protected area infrastructure.
A healthy environment is not sufficient in itself to alleviate poverty, but equally, any attempt at poverty alleviation that ignores environmental realities will soon be undermined. Discussing poverty along with protected areas may well lead to trade-offs between poverty reduction and conservation interests, but these need to be addressed in a positive way that does not disadvantage either of the two perspectives inappropriately. This discussion will also force protected area managers to better articulate their policies and their contribution to the well being of society (not only the poor). Protected areas are seldom designed specifically to alleviate poverty, but this does not mean that they are therefore isolated from sustainable development and the alleviation of poverty. The challenge is to define appropriate roles for protected areas that will enable them to continue to make their fundamental contribution to conserving biodiversity at a time when demands for development are increasingly urgent. This paper suggests many possible approaches that can be taken to deliver a greater share of the benefits of conservation to the rural poor, and thereby strengthen public support for protected areas.
Jeffrey A. McNeely
Chief Scientist
IUCN – The World Conservation Union
Rue Mauverney 28
CH-1196 Gland
Switzerland