Linking Conservation and Poverty Reduction

This highly accessible book, developed from the IUCN report 'Poverty and Conservation', 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 also reviews experiences in dealing with people and conservation and identifies some key lessons and concepts. The next section presents illustrative cases studies of successes 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.

Robert 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 coordiantor 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