Incorporating basic needs to reconcile poverty and ecosystem services

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.     

基于DEA与ESDA的中国国家级贫困县发展效率的测度与时空演化研究

本研究从发展效率角度出发,以592个国家级贫困县为研究对象,构建了投入-产出指标体系,采用数据包络分析法,测度了2002和2012年中国国家级贫困县的发展效率,并基于GIS空间分析法对发展效率的空间差异格局进行了深入分析。研究发现:第一、国家级贫困县覆盖的面积在扩大,西南地区的贵州省和西北地区的甘肃省成为目前国家扶贫开发的重点和难点地区。第二、特色资源的利用和开发是国家级贫困县实现经济发展的关键。贫困地区往往具有得天独厚的矿产资源、自然景观资源等,利用好上述资源可以促使贫困地区真正实现经济的成长发展。2002年DEA有效的贫困县主要是自然资源、人力资源和旅游资源相对丰富的地区,这些地区通过相关资源的开发已经实现了自身经济的"内生式增长",而且这些地区基本都已经退出了国家级贫困县的范畴。贵州和甘肃等各类资源非常匮乏的地区成为DEA效率最低的国家级贫困县集中区。这两个省份地理位置闭塞,自然条件恶劣,资源禀赋贫乏,缺乏可以支撑经济内生发展的支撑。第三、DEA有效和DEA效率偏低的贫困县都表现出一定的空间相关性。根据贫困县的空间临接性,采取集中连片的扶贫开发政策符合贫困县的实际情况。第四、2002-2012年间,国家级贫困县县域经济的热、冷点格局发生了很大变化。国家级贫困县的经济发展态势出现了很大的改变。     

专业化、多样化与产业结构减贫效应的动态异质表现研究

新一轮扶贫攻坚阶段,贫困地区实现可持续减贫的关键不在于现有经济增长模式下如何提高转移支付的精度和效率,而在于真正改变贫困地区的经济发展理念,从盯住经济总量增长转向用减贫目标统领经济发展。产业结构与贫困减缓的关系影响着贫困地区产业发展的政策制定,但既往研究对何种产业结构更有助于贫困减缓没有形成共识。本文基于产业专业化和多样化视角,分析了专业化、多样化影响贫困减缓的理论机制,并利用2004—2014年中国省级面板数据,对专业化、相关多样化、不相关多样化与FGT贫困指数的关系进行了门限回归和稳健性检验。检验结果确认了产业结构减贫效应的动态异质表现:专业化的减贫效应在产品生命周期的初始和发展阶段趋于增强,并且经济密度更小、距离技术前沿更远的地区,专业化的减贫效果更显著;多样化的减贫绩效低于专业化,且相关多样化的减贫效应高于不相关多样化。细分产业来看,第三产业相关多样化比其他多样化结构更具减贫效果。贫困地区在减贫的产业结构选择上,首要目标是改善专业化程度,其次是在多样化的既定前提下,谋求相关多样化,尤其是第三产业的相关多样化。专业化和相关多样化对不同贫困群体的影响也存在差别,既往产业结构更有利于贫困线附近群体的贫困减缓,而对深度贫困群体的溢出不足。因此,在塑造合宜减贫产业结构,改善低技能劳动力需求的同时,还应辅以改善深度贫困人口劳动力供给的政策,改善其自我发展能力和经济机会,从而增强从益贫产业结构中获益的能力。     

When Agendas Collide: Human Welfare and Biological Conservation

Abstract:  Conservation should benefit ecosystems, nonhuman organisms, and current and future human beings. Nevertheless, tension among these goals engenders potential ethical conflicts: conservationists' true motivations may differ from the justifications they offer for their activities, and conservation projects have the potential to disempower and oppress people. We reviewed the promise and deficiencies of integrating social, economic, and biological concerns into conservation, focusing on research in ecosystem services and efforts in community-based conservation. Despite much progress, neither paradigm provides a silver bullet for conservation's most pressing problems, and both require additional thought and modification to become maximally effective. We conclude that the following strategies are needed to make conservation more effective in our human-dominated world. (1) Conservation research needs to integrate with social scholarship in a more sophisticated manner. (2) Conservation must be informed by a detailed understanding of the spatial, temporal, and social distributions of costs and benefits of conservation efforts. Strategies should reflect this understanding, particularly by equitably distributing conservation's costs. (3) We must better acknowledge the social concerns that accompany biodiversity conservation; accordingly, sometimes we must argue for conservation for biodiversity's sake, not for its direct human benefits.     

皖西地区贫困空间分异的影响机制

区域性贫困是当前中国社会经济和区域发展不平衡的核心表现。以大别山连片特困区的皖西地区为例,以乡镇贫困发生率为贫困空间分异指标,以地理环境、经济环境、社会环境的20个因素为自变量,综合运用相关分析、空间回归、地理加权回归等方法,探究各因素对贫困空间分异的影响。结果表明：平均坡度、人均规模以上工业总产值、二三产业收入占纯收入比例、医疗卫生机构床位数是导致皖西地区贫困空间分异的核心因素,且其影响具有较强的空间异质性;地理机制、经济机制、社会机制是皖西地区贫困空间分异的主要机制,其中,地理环境是基础影响,经济环境的影响较强,社会环境影响广且大多与地理环境相关。研究结果对贫困干预的地理瞄准具有较强的借鉴意义。     

Community energy initiatives to alleviate fuel poverty: the material politics of Energy Cafés

Community action has an increasingly prominent role in the debates surrounding transitions to sustainability. Initiatives such as community energy projects, community gardens, local food networks and car sharing clubs provide new spaces for sustainable consumption, and combinations of technological and social innovations. These initiatives, which are often driven by social good rather than by pure monetary motives, have been conceptualised as grassroots innovations. Previous research in grassroots innovations has largely focused on conceptualising such initiatives and analysing their potential for replication and diffusion; there has been less research in the politics involved in these initiatives. We examine grassroots innovations as forms of political engagement that is different from the 1970s’ alternative technology movements. Through an analysis of community-run Energy Cafés in the United Kingdom, we argue that while present-day grassroots innovations appear less explicitly political than their predecessors, they can still represent a form of political participation. Through the analytical lens of material politics, we investigate how Energy Cafés engage in diverse – explicit and implicit, more or less conscious – forms of political engagement. In particular, their work to “demystify” clients’ energy bills can unravel into various forms of advocacy and engagement with energy technologies and practices in the home. Some Energy Café practices also make space for a needs-driven approach that acknowledges the embeddedness of energy in the household and wider society.     

Neighbourhood characteristics and urban gardens in the Toledo metropolitan area: staffing and voluntarism,food production,infrastructure, and sustainability practices

Urban gardens are important sources of sustenance for communities with limited access to food. Hence, this study focuses on food production in gardens in the Toledo metropolitan area in Northwest Ohio. We administered surveys to 150 garden managers from November 2014 to February 2015 in our attempt to better understand how neighbourhood racial composition and poverty levels are related to staffing and voluntarism, food production and distribution, the development of infrastructure, and the adoption of sustainability practices in urban gardens. The results from 30 gardens are presented in this paper. We used Geographic Information Systems to map the gardens and overlay the map with 2010 census data so that we could conduct demographic analyses of the neighbourhoods in which the gardens were located. Though the gardens were small – two acres or less – up to 46 varieties of food were grown in a single garden. Gardens also operated on small budgets. Food from the gardens was gifted or shared with friends, family, and neighbourhood residents. Gardens in predominantly minority neighbourhoods tended to have fewer institutional partners, less garden infrastructure, and had adopted fewer sustainable practices than gardens in predominantly White neighbourhoods. Nonetheless, residents of predominantly minority and high-poverty neighbourhoods participated in garden activities and influenced garden operations. Volunteering and staffing were racialised and gendered.     

Reframing the concept of alternative livelihoods

Alternative livelihood project (ALP) is a widely used term for interventions that aim to reduce the prevalence of activities deemed to be environmentally damaging by substituting them with lower impact livelihood activities that provide at least equivalent benefits. ALPs are widely implemented in conservation, but in 2012, an International Union for Conservation of Nature resolution called for a critical review of such projects based on concern that their effectiveness was unproven. We focused on the conceptual design of ALPs by considering their underlying assumptions. We placed ALPs within a broad category of livelihood‐focused interventions to better understand their role in conservation and their intended impacts. We dissected 3 flawed assumptions about ALPs based on the notions of substitution, the homogenous community, and impact scalability. Interventions based on flawed assumptions about people's needs, aspirations, and the factors that influence livelihood choice are unlikely to achieve conservation objectives. We therefore recommend use of a sustainable livelihoods approach to understand the role and function of environmentally damaging behaviors within livelihood strategies; differentiate between households in a community that have the greatest environmental impact and those most vulnerable to resource access restrictions to improve intervention targeting; and learn more about the social–ecological system within which household livelihood strategies are embedded. Rather than using livelihood‐focused interventions as a direct behavior‐change tool, it may be more appropriate to focus on either enhancing the existing livelihood strategies of those most vulnerable to conservation‐imposed resource access restrictions or on use of livelihood‐focused interventions that establish a clear link to conservation as a means of building good community relations. However, we recommend that the term ALP be replaced by the broader term livelihood‐focused intervention. This avoids the implicit assumption that alternatives can fully substitute for natural resource‐based livelihood activities.     

Effects of Economic Downturns on Mortality of Wild African Elephants

Abstract: Declines in economic activity and associated changes in human livelihood strategies can increase threats of species overexploitation. This is exemplified by the effects of economic crises, which often drive intensification of subsistence poaching and greater reliance on natural resources. Whereas development theory links natural resource use to social‐economic conditions, few empirical studies of the effect of economic downturns on wild animal species have been conducted. I assessed the relations between African elephant (Loxodonta africana) mortality and human‐caused wounds in Samburu, Kenya and (1) livestock and maize prices (measures of local economic conditions), (2) change in national and regional gross domestic product (GDP) (measures of macroeconomic conditions), and (3) the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) (a correlate of primary productivity). In addition, I analyzed household survey data to determine the attitudes of local people toward protected areas and wild animals in the area. When cattle prices in the pastoralist study region were low, human‐caused wounds to and adult mortality of elephants increased. The NDVI was negatively correlated with juvenile mortality, but not correlated with adult mortality. Changes in Kenyan and East Asian (primary market for ivory) GDP did not explain significant variation in mortality. Increased human wounding of elephants and elephant mortality during periods of low livestock prices (local economic downturns) likely reflect an economically driven increase in ivory poaching. Local but not macroeconomic indices explained significant variation in mortality, likely due to the dominance of the subsistence economy in the study area and its political and economic isolation. My results suggest economic metrics can serve as effective indicators of changes in human use of and resulting effects on natural resources. Such information can help focus management approaches (e.g., antipoaching effort or proffering of alternative occupational opportunities) that address variation in local activities that threaten plant and animal populations.     

广西喀斯特山区贫困化综合评价及空间分布特征

根据贫困的基本内涵,参考国务院扶贫办确定贫豳村的方法,以及国家统计局农村社会经济调查总队、国务院扶贫办测度贫困方法,采用因子分析法,建立由资源、经济、人口、社会4个指标类、42项具体指标,综合评价广西喀斯特地区49个贫困县市贫困化程度和地域分异规律.结粜表明,广西喀斯特山区49个贫困县贫困程度差异较大,各县贫困化程度整体上呈现南北、东西差异;贫困度分布基本与岩溶地貌组合形态相一致,呈现出石山环境区→准石山环境区→全石山环境区递增的规律:贫困度分布与区位相关性大,城镇交通对贫困度辐射带动作用较强.