Growing the Wealth of the Poor - World Resources Institute

S C A L I N G U P E C O S Y S T E M E N T E R P R I S EOur ThesisUnder the right conditions, programs that give communities theskills and rights to manage their ecosystem assets sustainablyhave shown they can achieve results on a significant scale, raisingenvironmental income at the village level or district level and, insome instances, even larger scales. In Namibia, for example,community conservancies have grown to cover 14 percent of theland area in less than a decade. Using the authority the stategrants them to manage local wildlife, community conservancieshave become the foundation of a new rural economy, generatingsubstantial income from tourism and trophy hunting whileactually increasing wildlife populations. (See Update: Scaling UpNamibia’s Community Conservancies on page 30.)But what are the conditions under which such approachescan go to scale? And how can national governments and internationaldevelopment agencies foster these conditions?In this volume we explore the essential factors behindscaling up environmental income and resilience for the poor. (SeeBox 1.2 on page 10 for a discussion of what we mean by“scaling up.”) Because so many of the forests, fisheries, grasslands,and watersheds that poor families rely on are commonpool resources, we concentrate on the governance conditionsand local capacities that allow communities to jointly managethese ecosystems in equitable, sustainable, productive, andcommercially successful ways. That means we are often speakingof community-based natural resource management (CBNRM).Our consideration of environmental income also includes smallholderagriculture—the most prevalent nature-based livelihoodof the poor. This kind of agriculture also benefits from jointapproaches to irrigation, soil conservation, pest management,adoption of new technology, and marketing. The capacity forjoint action—the result of building “social capital”—is animportant feature of successful scaling.Our thesis is that successfully scaling up environmentalincome for the poor requires three elements: it begins withownership—a groundwork of good governance that bothtransfers to the poor real authority over local resources and elicitslocal demand for better management of these resources. Makinggood on this demand requires unlocking and enabling localcapacity for development—in this case, the capacity of localcommunities to manage ecosystems competently, carry outecosystem-based enterprises, and distribute the income fromthese enterprises fairly. The third element is connection: establishingadaptive networks that connect and nurture nature-basedenterprises, giving them the ability to adapt, learn, link tomarkets, and mature into businesses that can sustain themselvesand enter the economic mainstream.When these three elements are present, communities canbegin to unlock the wealth potential of ecosystems in ways thatactually reach the poor. In so doing they build a base of competenciesthat extends beyond nature-based enterprises andsupports rural economic growth in general, including the gradualtransition beyond reliance on natural resource income alone.They also acquire greater resilience. It is the new capacitiesthat community members gain—how to build functional andinclusive institutions, how to undertake community-basedprojects, and how to conduct a successful business—that give riseto greater social and economic resilience. It is the insight thatecosystems are valuable assets that can be owned and managedfor sustained benefits that builds the foundation of ecologicalresilience. Together, these three dimensions of resilience supportthe kind of rural development whose benefits persist in the faceof challenge.Even while stressing these elements, we realize there arenumerous other factors that are crucial to creating an environmentwhere poor families have both the authority and the supportto engage in ecosystem enterprises. These include state policieson how and to whom natural resource access is granted, as wellas how the markets for nature-based products are regulated. Basicdemocratic rights such as the ability of the poor to have theirinterests championed within government by representatives thatthey can sanction and the ability to seek legal recourse when theirrights have been violated also form a backdrop of good governancethat is essential to real economic empowerment.On the following pages, Table 1.1 summarizes our view ofthe key ingredients for successfully scaling up ecosystem-basedenterprises to reduce poverty and build resilience, and Figure 1.1depicts how these ingredients interact to generate ecosystementerprises and drive them to scale up. At the same time, werealize that enterprise scaling does not proceed by a linear checklist or formula. For example, incremental progress can be madewithout attaining the perfect enabling environment. However,the better the enabling environment, the more effective thescaling-up process and the resulting reduction in poverty.5