NATURE, POWER, AND POVERTY

ECOSYSTEMS ARE— OR CAN BE—THE WEALTH OF THE POOR.
For many of the 1.1 billion people living in severe poverty, nature is a daily lifeline—an asset for those with few other material means. This is especially true for the rural poor, who comprise three-quarters of all poor households worldwide. Harvests from forests, fisheries, and farm fields are a primary source of rural income, and a fall-back when other sources of employment falter. But programs to reduce poverty often fail to account for the important link between environment and the livelihoods of the rural poor. As a consequence, the full potential of ecosystems as a wealth-creating asset for the poor—not just a survival mechanism— has yet to be effectively tapped.

The thesis of World Resources 2005 is that income from ecosystems—what we call environmental income —can act as a fundamental stepping stone in the economic empowerment of the rural poor. This requires that the poor manage ecosystems so that they support stable productivity over time. Productive ecosystems are the basis of a sustainable income stream from nature.

But for the poor to tap that income, they must be able to reap the benefits of their good stewardship. Unfortunately, the poor are rarely in such a position of power over natural resources. An array of governance failures typically intervene: lack of legal ownership and access to ecosystems, political marginalization, and exclusion from the decisions that affect how these ecosystems are managed.Without addressing these failures, there is little chance of using the economic potential of ecosystems to reduce rural poverty.

Making governance more friendly to the poor means tackling issues of property rights, access to information and decision-making, adequate representation, institutional transparency, and fairness in sharing the costs and benefits of resource management. These are all aspects of democratic governance—decision-making that respects the rights and needs of those who depend on resources. For the poor, democratic governance is the door to equity and one of the building blocks of sustainability.

This fusion of ecosystem management and good governance is also necessary to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, the set of eight goals adopted by the international community in 2000 to address world poverty. As the foundation of rural livelihoods, ecosystems are central to real progress toward the health, nutrition, sanitation, and environmental targets embedded in the Millennium Development Goals. Indeed, without empowering the poor to responsibly manage their environment for economic gain, we cannot effectively attend to rural poverty in its many dimensions. (See Box 1.1.)

The goal of this report is to highlight the vital role of ecosystems and their governance—of nature and power—in poverty reduction. The report’s central question is: Who controls ecosystems, and how can this control be reconfigured to allow the poor to use their natural assets as sustainable sources of wealth creation, vehicles of political empowerment, and avenues of integration into the national and global economies?