Incorporating basic needs to reconcile poverty and ecosystem services

Abstract

Conservation managers frequently face the challenge of protecting and sustaining biodiversity without producing detrimental outcomes for (often poor) human populations that depend on ecosystem services for their well-being. However, mutually beneficial solutions are often elusive and can mask trade-offs and negative outcomes for people. To deal with such trade-offs, ecological and social thresholds need to be identified to determine the acceptable solution space for conservation. Although human well-being as a concept has recently gained prominence, conservationists still lack tools to evaluate how their actions affect it in a given context. We applied the theory of human needs to conservation by building on an extensive historical application of need approaches in international development. In an innovative participatory method that included focus groups and household surveys, we evaluated how human needs are met based on locally relevant thresholds. We then established connections between human needs and ecosystem services through key-informant focus groups. We applied our method in coastal East Africa to identify households that would not be able to meet their basic needs and to uncover the role of ecosystem services in meeting these. This enabled us to identify how benefits derived from the environment were contributing to meeting basic needs and to consider potential repercussions that could arise through changes to ecosystem service provision. We suggest our approach can help conservationists and planners balance poverty alleviation and biodiversity protection and ensure conservation measures do not, at the very least, cause serious harm to individuals. We further argue it can be used as a basis for monitoring the impacts of conservation on multidimensional poverty.

Tourism-Based Alternative Livelihoods for Small Island Communities Transitioning towards a Blue Economy

“…The focus on MPA establishment, training, and awareness raising through past programs in TBKS may therefore have been insufficient for enabling residents to take up more sustainable livelihoods. This agrees with emerging research showing that conservation-development programming can be more successful if basic needs and capabilities are developed in addition to more conservation learning activities [43,44].…”

Multiple impact pathways of the 2015–2016 El Niño in coastal Kenya

“…There are also many smallholder farmers, who commonly grow rice and cassava on the fertile riverbanks of the Umba and/or engage in livestock husbandry. Overall, Kwale County and Vanga perform poorly on available wellbeing indicators compared to national averages (Table 2 ), and over 30% of households in Vanga do not meet their basic needs for water, sanitation, economic security or food security (SPACES 2017 ; Chaigneau et al 2019 ).…”

Multi-dimensional well-being associated with economic dependence on ecosystem services in deltaic social-ecological systems of Bangladesh

“…Ecosystem services affect subjective well-being through their importance to the many life dimensions that people consider when assessing their well-being. For example, ecosystem services contribute to meeting basic human needs such as food and water security (Chaigneau et al 2018), income and income security (Bhattamishra and Barrett 2010), the creation of safe and functional spaces in which to live (Summers et al 2012), identity processes and the creation of meaningful spaces and practices (Adams and Adger 2013;Fish et al 2016), as well as more directly through biophilia and the psychological benefits of proximity to nature (e.g. nature relatedness; Nisbet et al 2011).…”