Linking Conservation and Poverty Reduction

'This book aims to inspire the conservation community not to regard poverty reduction as someone else's job but to take responsibility for it as part of ecosystem restoration. Though no solutions are perfect,the text and examples given offer encouraging and useful guidance.' Gill Shepherd, poverty and landscapes thematic leader, IUCN Forest Conservation Programme. 'This book could be the catalyst for a real paradigm shift - not just in capital cities and international conference centres, but also on the ground in locations where poor people are struggling to make a living.' Policy Matters (praise for the first edition).

High levels of rural poverty in many of the world's ecosystems make it an ethical and practical imperative to find more equitable and realistic ways of achieving conservation. Livelihoods of the rural poor and options for conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity are so intimately entwined that they are better addressed through an integrated approach, irrespective of whether the primary motivation is one of development or one of conservation. This highly accessible book, a revised edition of the 2005 book Poverty and Conservation: Landscapes, People and Power, offers a grand overview of the issues and a conceptual framework for addressing poverty reduction in the context of conservation, and conservation in the context of poverty reduction. It will appeal to professionals working in the field as well as to students across the fields of conservation, development and sustainability. It looks at the rationale for addressing the links between conservation and poverty reduction, arguing that such a focus is both ethically essential and a source of opportunities. It alsoreviews experiences in dealing with people and conservation and identifies some key lessons and concepts. The book presents cases studies illustrating various approaches and a discussion of some of the issues that appear when implementing combined conservation and poverty reduction. The book emphasizes the importance of multiple spatial scales and negotiating trade-offs between scales. It also tackles the complex issue of institutional landscapes and the way in which changes at various institutional levels can lead to different and often more positive outcomes. The Final part summarizes some of the main features of the authors' integrated approach and identifies some of the challenges involved in efforts to combine conservation and poverty reduction. Published with IUCN - The World Conservation Union.

Robert J. Fisher is at the University of Sydney. Stewart Maginnis heads IUCN's Forest Conservation Programme and is co-editor of Forests in Landscapes (2005) and The Forest Landscape Restoration Handbook (2007). William Jackson is Deputy Director General of IUCN and co-author of Forest Quality (2006). Edmund Barrow is coordinator of Forest Conservation and the Livelihoods and Landscapes Strategy for IUCN in Africa. Sally Jeanrenaud is Coordinator of the Future of Sustainability Initiative at IUCN. Andrew Ingles is coordinator of Forest Conservation and the Livelihoods and Landscapes Strategy for IUCN in Asia. Richard Friend, previously worked for IUCN in the Lao PDR, and is now Scientist - Fisheries Institutions & Policy for the Greater Mekong Region at the WorldFish Center. Rati Mehrotra, formerly Environmental Economics & Social Equity Officer at IUCN, is the Managing Partner of M-Power Services and NSOE Fellow at Duke University, USA. Taghi Farvar of CENESTA (Centre for Sustainable Development, Iran) is the Chair of IUCN's Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy (CEESP) and the Executive Secretary of WAMIP, the World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous Peoples. Michelle Laurie, worked with the IUCN Forest Conservation Programme from 2003 to 2007, and now works with local and international organizations to improve their capacity to collaborate, learn and share knowledge more effectively. Gonzalo Oviedo, an anthropologist and environmentalist from Ecuador, is Senior Adviser on Social Policy at IUCN, where he leads the Conservation for Poverty Reduction Initiative.