Building on the Strength of Ecosystems

As this chapter demonstrates, environmental income is critical to the survival of the poor within the typical rural economy in developing countries. On average, income from small-scale agriculture and the collection of wild products such as nontimber forest products together account for some two-thirds of the household incomes of families in poverty. Without income from ecosystem goods and services, rural poverty would unquestionably be deeper and more widespread—a lesson to remember as the pace of ecosystem degradation picks up worldwide.

But as important as environmental income is to the poor today, it is typically not used as a route out of poverty. Usually, the poor use environmental income more as a support for current levels of consumption or as a safety net to keep from falling further into poverty. They generally do not have the means or empowerment to use environmental income as a tool for true wealth creation. As Chapter 3 will show, behind this failure to capitalize on the potential of ecosystems for income is an array of governance failures. The challenge is to alter this state of affairs, increasing the access of the poor to local ecosystem potential and their capacity for managing this potential sustainably and profitably, with viable models for turning nature’s productivity into income.

Essential to meeting this challenge is realizing that environmental income is not separate from but part and parcel of today’s rural economies. It is intimately tied to other forms of income, such as wage labor and self-employment income. It is tied also to the urban economy through remittances as well as the inevitable reliance of cities on the environmental output of ecosystems. Helping the poor to increase their environmental income, then, must be seen as supporting rural economic growth more generally. It both widens and secures the range of income options available, and can support a transition to higher-paying employment that carries the poor beyond the subsistence level.