Much has been made in recent years of the importance of biodiversity, and associated ecosystem services, for human well-being. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, for example, lays out a conceptual framework that identifies biodiversity as underpinning the delivery of a range of ecosystem services—provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting—that in turn contribute to well-being and poverty reduction. At the same time, the 2002 Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity developed a strategic plan to ‘achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss’ as a contribution to poverty alleviation'. This target was subsequently included in the UN Millennium Development Goals in 2006. More recently, the 2010 Conference of Parties adopted a decision on the ‘integration of biodiversity into poverty eradication and development’ and the current Convention on Biological Diversity Strategic Plan for Biodiversity has as its mission the halting of the loss of biodiversity ‘thereby contributing to human well-being and poverty eradication’.
But what is the evidence for these links? This edited volume seeks to answer this question with contributions based on the presentations made at a symposium hosted by the Zoological Society of London in April 2010. The introduction follows the philosophy of Socrates: ‘The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms’, stressing the importance of being clear about what we mean by ‘biodiversity’ and the difference between biodiversity per se and the interventions involved in biodiversity conservation. The book is then divided into sections, each with several chapters exploring a range of related issues: the potential for synergies between biodiversity, ecosystem services and poverty; the links in different ecosystems—forest, coasts, drylands and agricultural landscapes; the impacts on poverty of different conservation interventions—protected area management, species conservation, community-based natural resource management and conservation-friendly enterprise development; and benefit distribution and the role of local organizations. The final section looks at the global picture, asking whether addressing global poverty can help save biodiversity, whether investing more in conservation can solve poverty, or whether there are much larger questions to be answered about how we choose to live, to develop economically, and to govern the sharing of the world's resources.
In the concluding chapter the editors address the ultimate question of what contribution biodiversity and its conservation can really make in tackling global poverty. As elucidated in several of the preceding chapters, they acknowledge that the evidence base is limited, with a tendency for those promoting the links to talk in generalizations. Much of what is said and written about these relationships seems to be largely based on myth and assumption. This resonates with my own experience working at the interface between conservation, livelihoods and environmental governance. This helpful book goes some way towards dispelling some of those myths and challenging those assumptions. For example, the editors conclude there is evidence that people living in poverty are often disproportionately dependent on biodiversity for subsistence, income and as a safety net or insurance against risk. Although in some circumstances biodiversity conservation can help people move out of poverty, in other cases it can be a poverty trap. There is also, crucially, acknowledgement that the contribution that biodiversity and its conservation makes to poverty differs greatly between individuals and between households. So biodiversity conservation—and the maintenance of ecosystem services—may contribute to poverty alleviation for some people in some places but it cannot be taken as read that conservation will inevitably be beneficial for the poor. The authors finally stress the importance of recognizing that biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation are both inherently political processes. Good governance will be needed at all levels if conservation is truly to have a positive impact on the lives of the women and men, girls and boys who live closest to the biodiversity that conservationists are seeking to maintain and enhance.
