Income from ecosystems - which the World Resources Institute calls "environmental income" - can act as a fundamental stepping stone in the economic empowerment of the rural poor. However, that authors argue that for this to become a reality, the impoverished must be in a position to exercise control and stewardship over their resources, which is rarely the case. Governance failures, including a lack of legal ownership and political marginalisation, mean that there is little chance the rural poor can use their resource base effectively to enhance their livelihoods.
Ecosystem management, democratic governance, and poverty reduction are each essential elements of sustainable economic growth. Making governance more friendly to the poor means tackling issues of property rights, access to information and decision-making, adequate representation, institutional transparency, and fairness in sharing the costs and benefits of resource management. This fusion of ecosystem management and good governance is also vital to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The fundamental arguments of this paper are that:
- economic growth is the only realistic means to lift the poor out of extreme poverty in the developing world, but the capacity of the poor to participate in economic growth must be enhanced if they are to share in its benefits;
- the building blocks of a pro-poor growth strategy begin with natural resources. These provide the base upon which the vast majority of the poor now depend for their fragile existence but over which they exercise little control, and therefore can’t exercise full stewardship;
- the role of transparent and accountable governance is critical to fostering pro-poor growth and essential to ensuring that the engine of that growth, natural resource wealth, is managed wisely.
According to the report, better environmental income is further dependent on four requirements:
- managing ecosystems better for higher productivity, by improving the stewardship of ecosystems by adopting an ecosystem approach to management;
- getting the governance right to ensure access to environmental income, by conferring legally recognised resource rights. Where possible emphasise community-based natural resource management and empower the poor through access to information, participation, and justice;
- commercialising ecosystem goods and services to turn resource rights and good stewardship into income, by improving the marketing and transport of nature-based goods. Make credit available for ecosystem-based enterprises, and capture greater value from the commodity chain;
- tapping new sources of environmental income such as payments for environmental services, and looking upon ecosystem income as a portfolio of many different income sources. Diversify this portfolio to reduce risk and enhance the bottom line.
