BARCELONA,
SPAIN, October 8, 2008 - Expanding nature-based
enterprises can increase income for the
world’s rural poor. This approach, as outlined
in the latest World Resources Report 2008,
can also develop the rural poor’s resilience
to social and environmental threats such
as climate change.
Three-quarters of the
2.6 billion people who live on less that
$2 a day are dependent upon local natural
resources for their livelihoods. Threats
such as climate change and ecosystem degradation
are beginning to strain those livelihoods,
and it will be necessary to shape development
strategies that build resilience against
such threats and ensure stable and prosperous
communities.
World Resources 2008:
Roots of Resilience - released here today
as part of the IUCN World Conservation Congress
- closely examines existing community-based
efforts. The report argues that properly
fostered nature-based enterprises can improve
rural livelihoods and, in the process, create
resilience to economic, social, and environmental
threats.
Achim Steiner, under-secretary general and
executive director, United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP), said, “Poverty will never
be made history unless we invest in more
intelligent management of the world’s nature-based
assets. There are now countless models and
case studies of how ecosystems can be managed
to boost rural livelihoods and incomes while
meeting the goal of environmental sustainability.
“Mainstreaming and making
these models and blueprints more commonplace
and widespread is now a matter of great
urgency in a world challenged by climate
change, in a world where we are pushing,
if not pushing past the regenerative limits
of the planet’s life support systems,” Steiner
added.
Roots of Resilience
concludes that expanding the scale of already
successful models requires an emphasis on
three critical elements:
• Ownership: A groundwork
of good governance must both transfer to
the poor legal authority over local resources
and elicit local demand for better management
of resources.
• Capacity: Local communities must have
the ability to manage ecosystems competently,
carry out ecosystem-based enterprises, and
distribute the income from these enterprises
fairly.
• Connection: Establishing adaptive networks
that connect and strengthen nature-based
enterprises will give them the ability to
adapt, learn, link to markets, and mature
into businesses that can sustain themselves
and enter the economic mainstream.
“Local communities clearly
have an interest to sustain the ecosystems
on which they depend,” added Manish Bapna,
executive vice president, World Resources
Institute (WRI). “But all too often, they
face a disabling, not an enabling environment.
Governments and donors have a crucial role
to play in constructing the right policies
and institutions necessary to protect ecosystems
and grow the wealth and resilience of the
poor.”
One of dozens of examples
from the report is an effort in Bangladesh
to help villagers sustainably manage fisheries
and wetlands. Before the program was implemented
fishing was difficult, waterfowl had been
eliminated and fierce competition for fishing
rights had disrupted the lives of villagers
that depended on the ecosystem for their
income. Once the pilot program was implemented,
however, villagers were granted new fishing
rights that included responsibility for
managing the fisheries. They were also trained
to manage fisheries and supported with micro-loans
to start new businesses. The results, over
the past eight years, included a reversal
of the degraded bird and fish habitat, a
140 percent increase in fish catches, and
a 33 percent rise in local income.
The report includes
recommendations for national governments,
donors, and the private sector to help create
enabling environments that nurture rural
enterprises and the resilience that can
come with their growth.
“The international community
must fast-track this model to the center
stage of development policy. By doing so,
countries can bring a new level of commitment
and creativity to the poverty- and environment-related
Millennium Development Goals,” said Veerle
Vandeweerd, director of the Environment
and Energy Group at the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP).
World Bank President
Robert Zoellick writes in the foreword to
the report, “Increased resilience must be
part of the response to the risks of climate
change. The efforts that foster resilience
chart the first steps on the path out of
poverty.”
