Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation: Marine & Coastal Situational Analysis

This study focuses on assessing the scientific knowledge of the linkages between ecosystem services and poverty alleviation in coastal and marine ecosystems. It does not seek to undertake new analysis per se, but rather to assess existing data, to consider how they can be used to address these linkages, and to identify the key gaps in knowledge and capacities in research, knowledge generation and application to policy. At the outset there are a number of important definitional and ‘boundary issues’ which preface this study. First, what are the boundaries of coastal and marine systems? Second, what is the most appropriate measure of poverty? Third, how valid is it to separate individual ecosystem services? These issues influence how existing data can be used and their compatibility. For example, in examining the incidence of poverty among people who are dependent on coastal and marine ecosystem services, how can existing national or cross-national or global data be disaggregated or interpreted? How far inland should watersheds be analysed in order to understand coastal processes and ecosystem services? How can the important interactions between marine, coastal and other terrestrial systems be integrated to understand change in ecosystem services? In the report, the examples of Bangladesh, and the special case of small island developing states (SIDS) are used to illustrate these points. Key messages emerging from the assessment are:

1. The poor have had minimal impacts overall on changes in ecosystem services and have also received a disproportionately small share of the benefits of ecosystem services in coastal and marine systems. However, in particular locations, the unsustainable use by poor stakeholders who have limited options is a major driver of degradation of ecosystem services.

2. The poor prioritise provisioning services over all other ecosystem services, and identify the most important benefits from these services as being cash, food and employment, which are not explicitly and separately considered in the Millennium Assessment conceptual framework.

3. Many other ecosystem services are not of direct relevance to the poor and have no straightforward or simple role in alleviating poverty. Supporting services for the provisioning and regulating services are recognised by poor people. Very often their role in protecting livelihoods is extremely important, for example providing the basis to support provisioning services, in protecting homes, providing clean water and moderating environmental risks, but their role in active poverty alleviation is not direct and sometimes much less clear than provisioning services.

4. Most data are available on direct use of provisioning services but the information is patchy and very rarely relates specifically to poor, vulnerable or marginalised sections of society.

5. There are few examples of mechanisms to enhance ecosystem services and alleviate poverty; and very little precise information to show exactly how ecosystem services can contribute towards poverty alleviation. For example, this is not a topic usually addressed in country PRSPs. There are some, limited, suggestions of how payments for environmental services (PES), marine protected areas (MPAs) or community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) may provide benefits, but no systematic or comprehensive analysis exists to adequately guide policy. There are many assumptions about the co-benefits of conserving ecosystem services and the potential knock-on effects on poverty alleviation, but few concrete instances from which lessons can be learned or practices transferred. In many cases, there may be a conflict between income generation for poverty alleviation with the short term and long term sustainability of resources and maintenance of biodiversity.

6. There is evidence of shifting patterns of dependence on ecosystem services and shifting vulnerabilities to change in ecosystem services. This relates to where poor people live – for example increasing number of people concentrated in urban coastal areas in many countries and regions; how people construct their livelihoods – related to patterns of diversification and specialisation and movements in and out of fishing; processes of globalisation and changing access and exploitation, particularly penetration by global markets (e.g. aquaculture transforming coastline, and industrial fishing exploiting sea), each of which potentially puts poor people at risk.

7. The rate and scale of many changes to ecological and social and economic systems are accelerating and are often non-linear and not easily predicted. Current examples include the causes and impacts of fuel and food crises. Other important drivers may be slowing in some regions, for example population growth.

8. There are many and significant knowledge gaps, including about how the flows of ecosystem services are linked to the stocks of ecosystems, processes and rates of change, complex causality, behavioural responses, economic responses and social impacts of change.

9. How knowledge is managed is equally important. There is an overwhelming lack of integration of knowledge on ecosystem services and poverty; rarely is information on ecosystem services and poverty generated, analysed, stored or utilised jointly by same institutions in developing countries. Secondly, knowledge is not shared between and within countries, and there are widespread difficulties with lack of access to existing information. This is not only about data rich countries versus data poor countries, or major international donors or developed country institutions restricting access; often key individuals within countries restrict access to data, becoming gatekeepers of knowledge.

10. The scale of analysis is important and there are scale mis-matches and inconsistencies in interrogating the linkages between ecosystem services and poverty alleviation, meaning there is potential for contradictory results depending on the scale lens employed. The analysis of vulnerability to changes in ecosystem services is an example. It is important to consider multiple and cross-scale analysis as each scale has inherent biases and different processes operate at each scale.

11. Governance of ecosystems and of the socioeconomic context of ecosystem services use by the poor is fundamental to the benefits from, and sustainability of, ecosystem services. In many developing countries, policies on environmental protection are weak or poorly integrated. Decisions on ecosystem use are often not accountable to poor and corruption and vested interests lead to the needs and desires of marginalised people being ignored at various scales from national-scale policy decisions to village level elite capture of benefits. Governance of ecosystem services is influenced by global markets, donor policies, internal country politics and powerful commercial interests.