Ecosystem Services as a Missing Dimension of Poverty

This project will examine the role of ecosystem services in the conceptual understanding of poverty, by analysing the extent to which ecosystem services can be seen as a missing dimension of the way in which multidimensional poverty is defined. In order to do so, it will undertake a review of the ways in which wellbeing and poverty are understood, and the extent to which elements of the natural environment contribute to improving wellbeing and reducing poverty. It will focus on the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which defines poverty as a person's inability to meet the minimum internationally comparable standards in the core elements that are necessary for human flourishing, and will examine the extent to which access to ecosystem services can be conceptually included as one of the core elements that define wellbeing.

The project's conceptual and theoretical contributions will focus primarily on identifying the philosophical and scientific arguments that suggest that lack of access to nature and ecosystem services reduces the capability of people to achieve their potential. In doing so, the project will engage with recent literature which has been assessing the subjective elements that make up the definitions of poverty and wellbeing, and the extent to which these are influenced by the ways in which humans interact with nature.

Having established the broader conceptual framework for incorporating ecosystem services into multi-dimensional poverty, the project will operationalise this understanding by examining the extent to which existing methods for collecting poverty and environment data can be made more compatible. These include data collected at national level, spatially explicit data on the incidence of poverty and the occurence of ecosystem services, as well as detailed household-level survey instruments which seek to understand multidimensional wellbeing as well the use of, and dependence on, flows from natural ecosystems.

The project will test these ideas in a small selection of case study locations, building on the existing work that is being undertaken by the project partners at global, national and sub-national scales. The partners bring a unique set of resources and skills into productive conversation with each other, connecting knowledge communities that tend not to be well integrated with each other. UNEP WCMC is the leading repository of global environmental data, but has tended not to have an explicit mandate to understand the poverty implications of these data; OPHI is at the cutting-edge of work that seeks to define and measure poverty, but has tended to pay relatively limited attention to the role of the environment in its definition of multidimensional poverty. The University of Cambridge provides a unique bridge across these communities, as well as to the wider portfolio of existing ESPA research. By making these connections, the project hopes to have an impact on the ways in which poverty and human wellbeing are understood and defined, especially in relation to ongoing discussions about the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals.

Overall, therefore, the project will make contributions at three distinct, inter-connected levels: (i) conceptual, in shifting the ways in which the relationship between ecosystem services and wellbeing and poverty is defined and understood; (ii) methodological, in developing techniques and protocols that allow the unification of hitherto distinct approaches to measuring and understanding poverty and environmental sustainability; and (iii) at the policy level, by contributing to the definition of international goals for human society in the twenty-first century, and associated targets to guide decision makers operating across a variety of spatial and temporal scales.

Multidimensional poverty measures are having an important impact on poverty reduction efforts by providing policymakers with enriched information about who is poor (e.g., according to gender, ethnicity and other social groupings), in which regions they live (e.g., in rural or urban areas, or specific states or municipalities) and how or in which dimensions they are poor (e.g., health, education, employment, physical safety or living conditions). Such policy-relevant information can feed into ecosystem services policy design, programme targeting efforts and monitoring and evaluation activities, ensuring that the multiple deprivations - including environmental ones - that better poor peoples' lives are the focus of poverty reduction activities.

To ensure that the influence of this proposed research upon policy making is maximised, the project team at UNEP-WCMC, OPHI and the University of Cambridge will continue to invest in conceptual, instrumental and capacity building impact activities. Key user groups will be involved in the research programme design and will be systematically engaged in the findings throughout the five year grant window . These plans build on the partners' substantial engagement with research users to date, and their recognised track-record in reaching non-academic audiences with their research, which then has impact beyond academia. (OPHI has, for example, been shortlisted for an ESRC Impact Award 2014, the results of which are embargoed until June 5th 2014).

The key target groups for maximising the environmental, social and economic impact of this research are:
- Academic stakeholders across social science fields such as development economics, economics, development studies, environmental studies, ecosystems management, sociology, statistics, demography, and social policy;
- Decision-makers in national governments, specifically Ministers and Vice Ministers of Planning, Statistics, Environment, Social Development and Finance;
- Statisticians, civil servants and technical officials such as those in National Statistics Bureaus, the UN Statistical Commission, and government special advisors on poverty and environmental issues;
- Senior officials and thought leaders in donor agencies and development institutions such as UNDP, UNEP, UNDESA, UNICEF, World Bank, African Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, OECD, ECLAC, SADC, GIZ, DFID, USAID, Europeaid and others;
- Agencies advancing the Sustainable Development Goals and the post-2015 development agenda (which include many already mentioned, plus any special organisations to be constituted)
- Development and environmental practitioners and early adopters in NGOs and civil society groups including people's movements;
- Journalists, commentators and bloggers.

Academic stakeholders will benefit from the easily-available theoretical and methodological advances made under this grant, which will provide new ways of using multidimensional poverty and ecosystems analysis together, and fresh opportunities for applying theory to evidence. The substantial empirical analysis and methodological illustrations carried out during this grant will provide a rich source of evidence to researchers, which will be made readily available online. The trail-blazing work of this grant can lead eventually into the regularization of multidimensional poverty-ecosystem statistics and provide an official legitimacy for governments that are as yet uncertain regarding these new methods.