Exploring the links: human well-being, poverty and ecosystem services

This paper addresses three major themes. Firstly, it demonstrates how human well-being is dependent on ecosystems and ecosystem services. Secondly, barriers and drivers are identified that prevent the poor from using ecosystem services. Finally, policy response options are identified to remove those barriers and to assist the re-design and introduction of new intervention strategies.

The paper identifies ten key constituents and determinants as essential for reducing poverty, including:

• being able to be adequately nourished
• being able to be free from avoidable disease
• being able to live in an environmentally clean and safe shelter
• being able to have adequate and clean drinking water
• being able to have clean air
• being able to have energy to keep warm and to cook
• being able to use traditional medicine
• being able to continue using natural elements found in ecosystems for traditional cultural and spiritual practices
• being able to cope with extreme natural events including floods, tropical storms and landslides
• being able to make sustainable management decisions that respect natural resources and enable the achievement of a sustainable income stream.

The author identifies various types of barrier and drivers that play a significant role in poverty-ecosystem relationships - namely, economic, social, governance-related and ecological - and identifies two components that are necessary for a successful policy intervention strategy. The first component looks at the tools of intervention, and the second component focuses on the enabling conditions needed for the successful development and implementation of the tools.

The paper concludes with the author strongly advocating the adoption of an ecosystem approach, with equal treatment given to all three services that ecosystems provide.