The relationship between poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation has been the subject of intense debate amongst academics and development practitioners for several decades, yet consensus on how to reconcile these two disparate goals is far from being reached.
The debate is often characterized by polemics
between different camps, particularly on which strategy
works best. Without trivializing the quality of scholarship
within this debate, we argue that it is delineated by
two major factors. Firstly, residents of rich countries and
residents of poor countries are often assumed to be
in opposition on this matter. On the one hand, some
analysts tend to blame the loss of biodiversity on alleged
excessive use of natural resources by residents of poor
countries, while on the other hand there are those who
blame residents of rich countries for alleged unsustainable
livelihood strategies. Secondly, the debate on the
contested relationship between biodiversity conservation
and poverty alleviation is often characterized by a
tussle between proponents of biodiversity conservation
and human rights/anti-poverty activists.