HUMAN WELFARE AT CI

Human Welfare Discussion

• Definition: What is Human Welfare?• Relevance: How is it related to biodiversity

conservation?• Priority setting: What should CI do about

this?– Communication, discourse, dialogue– Partnerships, – Research priorities

HUMAN WELFARE AT CI

Definitions are lists

• Lists of good things to have (and bad things to avoid): – sufficient material goods – health – security– freedom of choice/action

• Categories of things like– Social capital– Natural CapitalThat underpin functioning economies.

HUMAN WELFARE AT CI

What is human welfare?

• The possibility of living a long and fulfilling life, which depends on:– Economic security– Environmental sustainability– Political stability– Cultural integrity– Freedom and justice

HUMAN WELFARE AT CI

How are Biodiversity Conservation and HW related?

• CI’s core mission is biodiversity conservation but improving human welfare is an essential and inescapable part of all we do, to make our outcomes sustainable over time– Policies to improve HW impact biodiversity– Biodiversity policies impact HW

• Sometimes in our action this is a joint product of conservation itself, and in other cases it is a necessary intermediate step for sustaining conservation outcomes

HUMAN WELFARE AT CI

YESDo Investments in Conservation Contribute to Poverty Reduction?

BENEFITS

Investment of $94 million for conservation pays for itself plus an additional $54 - $119 million

• ecotourism to parks

• maintaining soils & agricultural productivity

• halts deforestation, benefits biodiversity

•AND 875,000 rural households benefit

HUMAN WELFARE AT CI

HW and Conservation are joint when conservation …

• preserves ecosystem services• builds civil society and transparency• improves natural resource management• enhances livelihood options• generates human capital – health, learning,

education etc.• Examples include doing context analysis,

contributing to health….

HUMAN WELFARE AT CI

Sometimes not a joint product

• Biodiversity and immediate needs compete .. (no ‘win-win’)

• We should accept this and … prevent a decline of human welfare due to conservation – Set a constrain: no decline in human welfare– Example: creating opportunities for fisherman

to leave the Galapagos

HUMAN WELFARE AT CI

Human Welfare includes both use value and intrinsic value

• Intrinsic (existence) values: e.g. global benefits from the survival of Galapagos biodiversity probably exceeds the costs of compensating the poverty of fisherman excluded from the area.

• Use values (local): Nonetheless, CI must care for local, regional net welfare outcomes, and not just global welfare.

HUMAN WELFARE AT CI

What kind of action on this issue should be prioritized?

• Identify the obvious win-win situations:– biodiversity and carbon– Biodiversity and eco-tourism– Biodiversity and water supply (sometimes!!)

• Bring this to the attention of development institutions (e.g., multilateral banks, donors, aid agencies)

HUMAN WELFARE AT CI

How should we do scientific advocacy on HW?

• Take advantage of partners with established knowledge exceeding ours

• Work with definitions as well as development approaches used by these partners

• Acknowledge potential trade-off between definitions and approaches – Work with established methodologies

– Look for innovative ideas

HUMAN WELFARE AT CI

Coming up with indicators

• Katrina Brandon has developed a draft of a questionnaire for CEPF that was instrumental in Japan’s recent contribution to CEPF

• Measures are not to direct conservation projects to measure their performance on HW, but to catalog, and spatially relate the different ways they produce “joint products”