Darwin Initiative Workshop February 2006

Seminar 1: Raising awareness of biodiversity contributing to

livelihoods(Neil Thin, University of Edinburgh, School

of Social and Political Studies)

Prior assumptions

• The CBD exists to make livelihoods better, fairer, more secure, and more sustainable.

• For most people diversity is of much less interest than the quality and quantity of resources.

• People will be attracted by the idea of better resource flows and ecosystems, and threatened by degradation of these more than by legal or moral sanctions

Livelihoods in the CBD and DI

• CBD and DI aims: conservation, sustainable use, and equitable benefit-sharing

• DI targets places that are ‘poor in resources’ and promotes use of NR for poverty elimination and development of sustainable livelihoods

• But: most DI project documents pay most of their attention to the ‘conservation’ goal

• DI logframes are expected to refer to livelihoods as activities and objectives, as assessment criteria, and as critical contextual factors

Livelihood Framework www.livelihoods.org

Synergies btw cons’n and livelihoods

• Reducing pressure on wild resources• Better livelihood security and safety-nets through reduced

environmental risk and better NR management

• Mutual gains from micro-macro links and links between local and external knowledge (agric and non-agric)

• Co-management of commons

• Awareness, info about NR --->motivation for sustainability

Trade-offs btw cons’n and livelihoods

• Lives and livelihoods can be threatened by wildlife conservation and by conservation-related conflict

• New livelihood opportunities can introduce new threats to biodiversity

• Even sustainable use and management of resources won’t necessarily promote biodiversity

Addressing livelihood issues by going beyond the obvious

• direct and indirect relevance of biodiversity

• positive and adverse impacts of conservation on livelihoods and vice versa

• diverse interests of various stakeholders (gender, wealth, ethnicity, occupation, local/non-local)

• Tangible and intangible aspects of livelihoods

Provisional workshop discussions

1.Planning: stakeholder analysis, participation, objectives, workplans, expertise and resources

2.Outcome assessments

3.Compensatory strategies for costs and risks imposed by conservation (esp: Protected Areas)

4.Subsistence versus commercialised extraction and use of wild/semi-wild resources

5.Local rights and capacity-building

‘Sustainable Livelihoods’ approaches

Analytical tools and approaches developed from holistic and interdisciplinary (largely rural) research

• people-centred [thinking about stakeholders, their capabilities, interests, and relationships]

• holistic [connections among assets and domains]

• dynamic [thinking about seasonality, responsiveness, and long-term change]

• building on strengths

• macro-micro links [linking local with wider processes, institutions, and perspectives]

• sustainability [durability and adaptability]