Key Questions

What is IUCN's understanding of “poverty”?

Most definitions of poverty relate to the ability to attain a standard of living. This has usually implied a certain minimum income (commonly USD 2 per day) or more broadly the ability to purchase a basket of goods and services deemed to contain the minimum required calories and non-food items. The most popular approach to measure poverty has been to establish a poverty line based on income, average per capita expenditure or other measures of current consumption.

However, definitions of poverty have evolved recently to embrace health, social, and institutional dimensions. Social indicators provide information not captured by monetary measures of poverty, for instance access to public goods and services.

The World Bank’s World Development Report (WDR) 2000/2001 described poverty as “pronounced deprivation in wellbeing” and pointed out that poverty has multiple dimensions falling into one of the following categories: low levels of education and health, vulnerability and exposure to risk (such as violence, crime, natural disasters) and voicelessness and powerlessness. It is this broader definition that IUCN has adopted in its own work.

What does “conservation” mean to us?

Our understanding of conservation has a broad meaning, including management of natural resources sustainably as well as their protection and restoration, rather than in the narrow sense of maintaining an original state, or preservation.

Why is IUCN concerned about poverty?

IUCN has identified the following three reasons for linking poverty reduction with conservation:
1. A focus on the needs of the poor is ethically unavoidable, especially when conservation activities risk negatively affecting poor people by transferring the real costs of conserving global and national public goods to the local level.

2. Conservation, as in the case of ecosystem restoration, ought to contribute actively to poverty reduction more broadly where it can, simply because it can.

3. While it is unrealistic to assume that linking conservation and development will always (or even usually) maximise both social and conservation outcomes, it will often lead to better conservation outcomes than could have been achieved otherwise.

What do we understand by “Sustainable Livelihoods”?

Sustainable livelihoods are a micro perspective of sustainable development, and are a way of assessing the effectiveness of development interventions. Livelihoods can be defined as the ways in which people make a living, they comprise the capabilities, assets -both material and social resources- and activities required for a means of living. Poverty can thus be thought of as a state of reduced or limited livelihood opportunities. A livelihood is sustainable when it can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks and maintain or enhance its capacities and assets both now and in the future, while not undermining the natural resource base.

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