All but the very young development and conservation practitioners and policy experts remember a time when poverty was fi rmly in the realm of "development issues" while "conservation" was dealt with by biological scientists, only occasionally interested in socio-cultural, economic or political questions. These times are gone. Poverty issues are now heatedly debated in conservation circles and the relevant concerns are serious, concrete and likely to stay. Some observers choose to emphasize the risk of a "back to the barriers" movement, a desire to return to fences, fi nes, exclusion and eviction because alternatives - such as diverse forms of community conservation - have been so hard to put into practice.2 Others note that the conservation rhetoric has actually masked the violent power of many such existing fences and barriers, the deprivation they engender and their ability to persist despite opposition.3 The collection of papers assembled in this issue of Policy Matters is a broad survey of the views, concerns and ideas of CEESP members on poverty, conservation and biodiversity. This special issue offers perspectives on the existing debate while advancing it in a number of ways.
