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Distinct positions underpin ecosystem services for poverty alleviation
CAR OLINE HOWE,ESTEV E CORBE RA,BHASKAR VIRA DANIEL BROCK IN G T O N andWILLIAM M. ADAMS
Abstract As the concept of ecosystem services is applied more widely in conservation, its users will encounter the issue of poverty alleviation. Policy initiatives involving eco- system services are often marked by their use of win-win narratives that conceal the trade-offs they must entail. Modelling this paper on an earlier essay about conservation and poverty, we explore the different views that underlie ap- parent agreement. Weidentify five positions that reflect dif- ferent mixes of concern for ecosystem condition, poverty and economic growth, and we suggest that acknowledging these helps to uncover the subjacent goals of policy inter- ventions and the trade-offs they involve in practice. Recognizing their existence and foundations can ultimately support the emergence of more legitimate and robust policies.
Keywords Biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services, policy, poverty, trade-offs
Introduction
As these schemes expand, and particularly as they spread across the biodiverse tropics and global South, they will come up against problems of poverty alleviation. These en- counters will expose conservationists to policies that seek to combine both the conservation of ecosystem services and the alleviation of poverty. Such policies can deny potential conflicts in their objectives and may be based on fundamen- tally different goals. This paper attempts to clarify the confusion in policies that neglect trade-offs between competing goals relating to
R
CAROLINE HOWE* (Corresponding author) and DANIEL BROCKINGTON Sheffield Institute for International Development, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK E-mail
c.howe.01@
cantab.net
ESTEVE CORBERa Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain
BHASKAR VIRA andWILLIAM M. ADAMS Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
*Also at: Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, London, UK
Received 12 August 2017. Revision requested 17 November 2017. Accepted 1 February 2018. First published online 30 April 2018.
esearch, policy and new initiatives in conservation are increasingly using the language of ecosystem services.
conservation and poverty alleviation. It is modelled on a paper published in 2004 that analysed fractious debates about conservation policy and poverty reduction (Adams et al., 2004). The authors of that paper identified four dis- tinct positions taken by those who were writing and think- ing about the relations between conservation and poverty alleviation. These positions were:
(1) The view that conservation and poverty are separate policy realms and should be addressed separately;
(2) The view that poverty matters to conservation because it constrains success;
(3) The view that where poverty alleviation and conserva- tion clash, poverty alleviation should take priority; and,
(4) The view that resource conservation is important whereas other dimensions of conservation (e.g. species conservation) are not.
In pointing out these distinctions Adams et al., sought to
categorize types of arguments visible in the discursive land- scape, not necessarily associating each position with specific individuals. It offered a heuristic device, holding up amirror to divided constituencies to point out more clearly the intel- lectual fault lines that ran through their disputes. Here, we take the same approach. We identify different
positions in work on poverty alleviation and ecosystem ser- vices that occur on gradients of concern for poverty, eco- nomic growth and environmental health. However, we do not seek to assign them to particular people or organiza- tions. We are, again, identifying arguments, not social groups or epistemic communities. The same person may hold different positions in different circumstances, as we will illustrate below. The evolving debates about ecosystem services, poverty alleviation and conservation have similarities and differ- ences to the poverty and conservation debates a decade ago, and require a new mirror. The main similarity is that policy initiatives involving ecosystem services are notable for the uniformity of the win-win rhetoric within which they are framed (i.e. that it is possible both to alleviate pov- erty and enjoy healthy ecosystems at the same time), as was the discourse about conservation and poverty in the 2000s. The difference between the debates then and the debates now is that win-win rhetoric was widely rejected by critics of conservation’s social impact in a way that is not happen- ing within current debates. Policy initiatives use the concept
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Oryx, 2020, 54(3), 375–382 © 2018 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605318000261
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