Biodiversity Conservation and Poverty Alleviation: Exploring the Evidence for a Link

Biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation are both important societal goals demanding increasing international attention. While they may seem to be unrelated, the international policy frameworks that guide action to address them make an explicit assumption that conserving biodiversity  will help to tackle global poverty. This book explores the validity of that assumption. The book addresses  a number of critical questions: 

• Which aspects of biodiversity are of value to the poor?
• Does the relationship between biodiversity and poverty differ according to particular ecological conditions?
• How do different conservation interventions vary in their poverty impacts?
• How do distributional and institutional issues affect the poverty impacts of interventions?
• How do broader issues such as climate change and the global economic system affect the biodiversity - poverty relationship at different scales?

This volume will be of interest to policy-makers, practitioners and researchers concerned with understanding the potential - and limitations - of integrated approaches to biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation.