Nature Conservancy Magazine: Spring 2008

Villagers laying irrigation pipe, Zambia

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Nature's Investment Bank
In one of the first studies of its kind, The Nature Conservancy has worked with leading academics on a study that conclusively proves that marine protected areas (MPAs) can help alleviate poverty.

The Poverty / Conservation Equation
Some of the poorest countries are among the richest in biodiversity — a fact conservationists can’t afford to ignore. Nature Conservancy Magazine, Summer 2006

With poverty front and center on the international development agenda, what does that mean for conservation?

By Courtney Leatherman

It seems that everywhere we turn these days, conservation and environmental organizations — including The Nature Conservancy — are talking about people: encouraging sustainable development, improving human well-being.

That broader focus — some would say shift in focus — is attributable to a series of world summits and international support for the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, which made eradicating “extreme poverty” the world’s top development priority. Signed onto by more than 180 countries, the goals call for halving the proportion of people living in poverty by 2015.

According to the Poverty and Conservation Learning Group, an initiative begun in 2005 by the International Institute for Environment and Development, “all sectors of society are urged to contribute to [that] achievement.”

But what — if anything — does that mean for conservation organizations? Potentially a lot, say Kent Redford and Steven Sanderson of the Wildlife Conservation Society in a 2003 paper published in the British journal Oryx. “Achieving the goal of liberating half the world’s poor from their poverty by 2015,” they predict, “will either mark the true beginning of sustainability or the end of biodiversity at the hands of best-intentioned policies.”

Should conservation groups wear the mantle of poverty alleviation? And if so, how would it fit? To gather some insight on the issue, Nature Conservancy asked five conservation experts to share their views.

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