Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation

What is the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation programme?

This is a joint programme between the Natural Environment Research Council, the Economic & Social Research Council and the Department for International Development.

See story about ESPA on the LWEC website.

Download Project Newsletter below.

Background

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment showed that the loss of services from ecosystems is a significant barrier to reducing poverty, hunger and disease. Tackling this set of problems requires:

• environmental science to understand why ecosystems are becoming degraded, and how to reverse this
• ecological economics to better value the services
• political economy (a combination of economics, law and political science) to ascertain what institutional changes are needed in order to equally distribute the costs and benefits of improved ecosystem management to the poor.

What is the programme doing?

The Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation Programme will support innovative research designed to generate new evidence leading to a step change in global understanding about the way that ecosystem services can contribute to the reduction of poverty.

The programme goal is ‘sustainably managed ecosystems contributing to poverty reduction and inclusive growth in developing countries’.

The purpose is ‘to positively influence users and decision makers through the generation of cutting edge evidence on ecosystem services, their full value, and links to sustainable poverty reduction’.

Aims

The programme aims to improve understanding of the way ecosystems function, the services they provide and the relationship between the political economy and sustainable growth.

The work is addressing key knowledge gaps on:

• the drivers of ecosystem degradation: physical, political and socio-economic
• ecosystem functions and dynamics, particularly in relation to critical thresholds and irreversible change
• the full value (from a multi-stakeholder perspective) of ecosystem services
• drivers of sustainability, identifying positive incentives for sustainable management of ecosystem services and poverty reduction.

The research will provide the evidence and tools to enable decision makers and end users to manage ecosystems sustainably and in a way that contributes to poverty reduction.

The programme will work mainly in four regions that experience significant challenges in managing their ecosystem services with poverty reduction and sustainable growth:
•    South Asia (India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan)
•    China
•    Sub-Saharan Africa
•    Amazonia (Amazonian and Andean zones of Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia).

Who will benefit?

Governments: assist with developing the evidence, knowledge, tools and simulation models, needed to ensure that the poor benefit from new policies and incentives, such as markets for environmental services.

Regional organisations: work to develop the necessary evidence needed to more effectively govern trans-boundary ecosystem services without negative impacts on the poor.

Non Governmental Organisations: provide the information needed by NGOs to advocate for positive change in ecosystem management for the poor.

International Policy Makers: evidence on how to manage trade offs between ecosystem services, climate change impacts and poverty reduction might feed into a wide variety of policy processes, such as the UNCBD, UNFCCC, and those addressing food security, health and trade.

Private Sector: build on advances made by the private sector around ecosystem service markets and investigate how to create enabling frameworks that also benefit the poor.

PROGRAMME FACTS AND FIGURES

Start and end dates: 11/2009 to 03/2017

Website: www.espa.ac.uk

Contact: espa@nerc.ac.uk

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ESPA News december-2011.pdf	194.96 KB
ESPA Newsletter January 2012.pdf	127.67 KB