Thanks to both authors for the thoughtful article that provides many points of departure for discussion. That wetlands play a huge role in millions of especially rural people’s lives, especially in the developing world is not in question. But I’d like to follow on from Max's cautionary point on the kinds of claims we can make about wetland ecosystem services and poverty reduction. Evaluations of wetland management projects predominantly in Asia and Africa that we at IWMI carried out some years back for Wetlands International gave rise to some messages which seem relevant to this discussion. The overall message was that an ecosystem’s ability to lift people out of poverty depends on a range of factors, some which define the ecosystem itself and others that define characteristics of the human communities that rely on/use it. These of course interact to create a range of wise use options as well as boundaries specific to the system and communities.
The ecosystem factors identified include its biological and physical characteristics (size, hydrology and stability) that in turn influence the types and amounts of services it is able to provide. While smaller wetlands obviously could support smaller human populations, the different biophysical characteristics even within wetlands of comparable size meant quite different productive capacities as well as vulnerabilities. Scale could also mean a single wetland, or a broader landscape that may include several small wetlands or a wetland complex. A key factor on the people side was density, and when combined with relatively low wetland size/productivity, led to resource conflicts amongst the poor, especially where the management regime was either weak or absent altogether. Dense populations can also mean greater stresses on the wetlands other than resource extraction – e.g. pollution, sedimentation, land encroachment). So how many people can be supported to move out of poverty is likely to vary greatly from one wetland to another. It is also unlikely to result from a linear services-to-people relationship when the presence of people near to or afar (e.g. downstream consequences of actions upstream) creates pressures and limitation on a wetland’s optimal performance.
Another message of the study is that the idea of poverty reduction is quite a static perspective of what is in fact a dynamic relationship between ecosystems and people. While supporting poverty reduction will be reflected positively in human development indexes, would it necessarily have positive consequences for the wetland itself? What would happen for instance when people’s consumption quantities and patterns increase with greater disposable income? Aside from over-extraction, there may also be more pollution and a desire to expand land holdings at the cost of the very system that once supported one’s economic advancement. Thus from a wetland management perspective, poverty reduction, whilst being a goal that we all support, can lead to further cycles of challenges. This highlights an important temporal dimension to the way we analyse wetlands and poverty reduction, especially with respect to long term ecosystem well-being.
A third and final remark is that wetlands (as would be the case with other ecosystems) not only support people’s economic and nutritional well-being, but have also shaped their cultures and traditions which underwrite our own diversity as people and communities. Cultural diversity is an important theme within the discourse of ecosystem services and ‘poverty’ reduction, since this dimension, I would argue, is exposed to the same or similar monotonisation by poverty alleviation interventions as this blog article recognizes in relation to the alteration of the wetlands ecosystems themselves. This statement may however be somewhat presumption on my part as people experiencing poverty may be quite happy to change their practices if this means a better future for them and their families.
Specific examples of points raised are available at:
Senaratna Sellamuttu, Sonali ; de Silva, Sanjiv; Nguyen-Khoa, Sophie. 2011. Exploring relationships between conservation and poverty reduction in wetland ecosystems: lessons from 10 integrated wetland conservation and poverty reduction initiatives. International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology [ISI], 18(4):328-340.
Thanks to both authors for the thoughtful article that provides many points of departure for discussion. That wetlands play a huge role in millions of especially rural people’s lives, especially in the developing world is not in question. But I’d like to follow on from Max's cautionary point on the kinds of claims we can make about wetland ecosystem services and poverty reduction. Evaluations of wetland management projects predominantly in Asia and Africa that we at IWMI carried out some years back for Wetlands International gave rise to some messages which seem relevant to this discussion. The overall message was that an ecosystem’s ability to lift people out of poverty depends on a range of factors, some which define the ecosystem itself and others that define characteristics of the human communities that rely on/use it. These of course interact to create a range of wise use options as well as boundaries specific to the system and communities.
The ecosystem factors identified include its biological and physical characteristics (size, hydrology and stability) that in turn influence the types and amounts of services it is able to provide. While smaller wetlands obviously could support smaller human populations, the different biophysical characteristics even within wetlands of comparable size meant quite different productive capacities as well as vulnerabilities. Scale could also mean a single wetland, or a broader landscape that may include several small wetlands or a wetland complex. A key factor on the people side was density, and when combined with relatively low wetland size/productivity, led to resource conflicts amongst the poor, especially where the management regime was either weak or absent altogether. Dense populations can also mean greater stresses on the wetlands other than resource extraction – e.g. pollution, sedimentation, land encroachment). So how many people can be supported to move out of poverty is likely to vary greatly from one wetland to another. It is also unlikely to result from a linear services-to-people relationship when the presence of people near to or afar (e.g. downstream consequences of actions upstream) creates pressures and limitation on a wetland’s optimal performance.
Another message of the study is that the idea of poverty reduction is quite a static perspective of what is in fact a dynamic relationship between ecosystems and people. While supporting poverty reduction will be reflected positively in human development indexes, would it necessarily have positive consequences for the wetland itself? What would happen for instance when people’s consumption quantities and patterns increase with greater disposable income? Aside from over-extraction, there may also be more pollution and a desire to expand land holdings at the cost of the very system that once supported one’s economic advancement. Thus from a wetland management perspective, poverty reduction, whilst being a goal that we all support, can lead to further cycles of challenges. This highlights an important temporal dimension to the way we analyse wetlands and poverty reduction, especially with respect to long term ecosystem well-being.
A third and final remark is that wetlands (as would be the case with other ecosystems) not only support people’s economic and nutritional well-being, but have also shaped their cultures and traditions which underwrite our own diversity as people and communities. Cultural diversity is an important theme within the discourse of ecosystem services and ‘poverty’ reduction, since this dimension, I would argue, is exposed to the same or similar monotonisation by poverty alleviation interventions as this blog article recognizes in relation to the alteration of the wetlands ecosystems themselves. This statement may however be somewhat presumption on my part as people experiencing poverty may be quite happy to change their practices if this means a better future for them and their families.
Specific examples of points raised are available at:
Senaratna Sellamuttu, Sonali ; de Silva, Sanjiv; Nguyen-Khoa, Sophie. 2011. Exploring relationships between conservation and poverty reduction in wetland ecosystems: lessons from 10 integrated wetland conservation and poverty reduction initiatives. International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology [ISI], 18(4):328-340.
and https://www.ramsar.org/pdf/wn/w.n.iwmi_poverty_report.pdf