This report presents the results of a review of the Poverty Reduction in the Doi Mae Salong Landscape focusing on the achievements of the project in contributing to poverty reduction and issues such as the sustainability and efficiency of the project.
It is commonly claimed that forest tenure reform that provides rural people with rights to access and use of forest resources can contribute to improved forest management and poverty alleviation. But, at least with respect to poverty alleviation, there are few experiences with formal forest tenure reform that have demonstrated this to date. Given how difficult it is to achieve pro-poor tenure reform, an important question is whether modest informal changes can achieve results.
This paper examines how interventions intended to improve functionality and productivity of forested landscapes to improve livelihoods of the poorest populations, might actually yield co-benefits in terms of biodiversity conservation. It argues in favour of a landscape approach to achieve these co-benefits.
The Doi Mae Salong watershed in the north-west of Thailand is the headwater of the Mae Chan River, a tributary of the Mekong River. As such, it is an extremely important landscape for the economy of the region. The landscape has the particularity of being designated a Military Reserved Area and coming under the control and command of the Royal Thai Armed Forces (RTAF). Poor and unsustainable agricultural practices, forest encroachment, and a lack of understanding of the impacts of activities on the watershed further downstream had resulted in the landscape being severely degraded.
This paper describes Livelihoods and Landscapes Strategy interventions in the Wassa Amenfi West Landscape in the western region of Ghana. The landscape extends over an area of about 120,000 ha. It is a mixed landscape with a variety of agricultural uses; the most important is cocoa farming. At the start of the LLS intervention, parts of the landscape, particularly forested areas were quite degraded, while levels of poverty among the communities that rely on natural resource exploitation were quite high.
This book 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 emphasizes the importance of multiple scales and negotiating trade-offs between scales and tackles the complex issue of institutional landscapes and the way in which changes at various institutional levels can lead to different and more positive outcomes.
Análisis de las razones del por qué quienes se dedican al desarrollo, no pueden ignorar que muchas poblaciones pobres dependen de los recursos naturales. La publicación presta particular atención al potencial de la conservación para contribuir activamente con el desarrollo sustentable a largo plazo y con la reducción de la pobreza.
Explores various approaches including those which are forest-related such as community forestry and joint forest management as well as those concerned with protected areas. Covers key issues of theory and implementation and methodolgies for implementation
Despite endorsements of the concept of sustainable development and the linking of sustainable development with the Millennium Development Goals, progress towards the eradication of poverty has been disappointing. The underlying principles of sustainable development need to be more critically and actively applied to both poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation.
