The Challenge of Scaling-up Pro-poor Conservation

IUCN encourages governments, donors, investors and conservationist to be bold in their vision and not to settle for policy interventions that address only the minimum needs of the poor. Attempts to link conservation and development by putting environmental assets into the hands of the poor are all too often restricted to localized project activities. A superficial commitment to mainstreaming the environment in the fight against poverty is likely to fail on all counts, risking "sustainable poverty" and continued environmental degradation.

Most countries' poverty alleviation strategies fail to recognize the importance of the environment as a sector, taking it only into account as a cross-cutting issue such as environmental health or environmental education. In practice this means missing a golden opportunity to use the only asset that is readily available to the poor, but which they are often unable to exploit productively and sustainably due to legal, technical and other constraints. Traditionally, environment ministries have excluded themselves from the poverty debate. They now need to more fully engage in broader sustainable development issues, assuming an active role in promoting the environment as a key poverty reduction sector and building a convincing case for greater national and donor investment in biological assets for the benefit of poor people.

For more detailed information, download IUCN's working paper Beyond Rhetoric: Putting Conservation to Work for the Poor (in English - PDF 103kb; in Spanish PDF 100kb)