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		Nature Conservancy Magazine: Summer 2006 Nature Conservancy Magazine Waiting for the Sky Poverty, Conservation   Audio chat Full Circle Nature Stories Podcast Nature Landmarks Nature Books Nature Travel Nature Preserves Subscribe Previous Issues

The Poverty / Conservation Equation

Page 6

While providing their keepers with a honeycomb harvest, bees also help enrich many ecosystems by pollinating crops and other plants. Photo © Carolyn Drake   Framing the Debate Does Conservation Matter to the Poor? by Jeffrey Sachs Is Poverty Relevant to Conservation? by M.A. Sanjayan Can We Conserve Ecosystems by Fighting Poverty? by Gregory Mock

But finding “win-win” solutions is not always easy. For every success story like Los Dajaos, many more projects fail, often because “solutions” are conceived without consulting all stakeholders. Or because the projects rely solely on one economic activity, such as ecotourism, that depends on factors often beyond local communities’ control.

The Federation of Farmers for Progress, another umbrella organization in the highlands of the Dominican Republic, has struggled. The group, founded in 1992 to improve the livelihoods of farmers living within the buffer zone of Valle Nuevo National Park, first had to defend its members against a government eviction order, and later block construction of a gold mine and a reservoir, which would have forced them off the land. In the past few years the federation has begun experimenting with sustainable agriculture. It may take another decade before those efforts bear fruit.

“This is a process,” says the Conservancy’s Ferrer, during a visit to the federation’s experimental greenhouses in the mountain hamlet of Hoyo del Pino. “There aren’t easy solutions.”

But Los Dajaos stands as a testament that pro-poor conservation is possible and can change lives. The Conservancy is helping scale up these “best practices” in other communities.

Projects are under way in the buffer zone around two national parks in the highlands, and there are plans to extend conservation programs to another three parks. These efforts will help preserve biodiversity and keep erosion from clogging the rivers. And cleaner rivers will aid the thousands of farmers living in the central plains, who rely on the water for irrigation. They will also help restore Samaná Bay, 120 miles down river.

“It’s all thanks to the strawberries,” says Moronta, showing off his split-level wood and concrete house perched on a sliver of hilltop with a truck parked out front. On either side of the narrow clearing, steep slopes carpeted with emerald coffee bushes and banana trees plunge hundreds of yards downhill.

Moronta’s 12 children were born in a wooden shack on this land, including one child who died for lack of a nearby doctor. Today, two of his children are attending college, acquiring skills that will help improve the family farm.

“I wouldn’t trade this place for the finest chalet in the city,” says Moronta, taking in the expanse of pine forest, which glistens after the rain. “We live in the mountains, and we have to learn to live from the mountains.”

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Based in Mexico City, Marion Lloyd has observed firsthand the links between poverty and biodiversity destruction while reporting for The Boston Globe. Photographer Carolyn Drake published a documentary essay on Brooklyn’s Lubavitch Jews in the February 2006 issue of National Geographic magazine.