BANGKOK -- The world's poor may soon find a new ally stepping into their communities with a sympathetic ear to help lift them out of poverty - the global conservation movement.

Such a prospect has emerged at a major environmental conference, here, in the wake of intense interest displayed by conservationists to link poverty alleviation with the drive to save the planet.

The clearest hint of this shift away from traditional conservationist issues is conveyed by four proposals over poverty that have been placed before the members of the World Conservation Union, or IUCN, as it is also known.

''This is the first time that poverty alleviation has been given such a high profile at an IUCN congress,'' William Jackson, director of global programmes for Switzerland-based conservation body, told IPS. ''We have never had proposals quite as detailed on poverty and never so many at once.''

Till now, conservationists had a ''simplistic'' view about poverty, as being about money or subsistent agricultural activity, Jackson admitted. ''But they have realised it is not the case, since there are different levels of poverty, such as how vulnerable people are to natural disasters or the impact of climate change.''

One of the proposals urges the participants at the 3rd World Conservation Congress to initiate programmes aimed at ''combating poverty through nature conservation'' and to help develop and conserve ''natural resources, in particular water, land and agricultural biodiversity'' to help the poor achieve food security.

Another wants the IUCN members at the Bangkok conference to embrace the idea that conservationists should consider the ''human rights aspects of poverty and environmental conservation'' in their overall mission.

The congress in the Thai capital has brought together 81 states, 114 government agencies, 800 plus non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and some 10,000 scientists and experts from 181 countries.

This event, billed as the one of biggest environmental meetings in history, started last week and ends on Nov. 25. The proposals on poverty are being debated in the assembly for IUCN members, which includes representatives from governmental and non- governmental bodies.

The thinking behind this need to link poverty and conservation is also echoed in a book by IUCN due to be published in March 2005. A synopsis of the book, 'Poverty and Conservation - Landscapes, People and Power,' states that conservation can help the poor out of poverty ''without compromising its fundamental objective of maintaining the earth's biological diversity.''

Yet at the same time, the book does not shy away from placing some blame on conservationists for driving the poor into deeper poverty in the rural areas of the developing world.

''Conservation can lead to increased costs being imposed on the poor, as in the cases where the poor are excluded from access to resources in protected areas,'' points out the book.

To make amends, the IUCN publication argues that there is ''an ethical imperative for conservation approaches to be socially just in the sense that they avoid or mitigate the 'actual and opportunity costs' of conservation for the poor and reward the poor for their contribution to national and global conservation.''

Other reports made available at the Bangkok meeting helped buttress this argument, given that the majority of the world's poorest people live in or within close proximity of the very areas on the planet that conservationists are determined to protect.

Currently, over 1.3 billion people of the world's six billion population live in extreme poverty, earning less than one U.S. dollar a day. ''The most poverty-stricken countries are in tropical and subtropical regions, which are also rich in natural resources,'' states a background note distributed by the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development.

According to the Washington D.C.-based Population Reference Bureau, poor rural families turn to slash-and-burn agriculture to support themselves and often use ''forest products as fuel, fodder, and building materials; and live in ecologically fragile zones.''

One of the proposals at the IUCN meeting adds further that nearly 80 percent of the extreme poor depend on wild plants and animals for food security and nearly 80 percent of the population of developing countries ''rely upon plants for health care purposes''.

''In many parts of the world hugely impoverished villagers live around national parks,'' Steve Bass, chief environment adviser at the British government's Department for International Development, told IPS.

''They can no longer gain access to grazing land and they can no longer move around as the rains come,'' he said. ''Lot of villagers in Africa need to move where the grass is green for their cattle.''

What is more, he says that most of the poor living in ecologically rich areas have a ''very good knowledge of their environment and how to use it, but they are denied the right to get to the land or water where they can apply their skills.''

Bass backs the current drive to get conservationists to aid the world's poor, since it will also help to redefine what poverty is.

''We need to redefine the way poverty is measured,'' he stressed. ''We still use the dollar a day as a basis, but we need to realise poverty has many dimensions, such as lack of access to land, water, firewood.''

Copyright © 2004 IPS-Inter Press Service

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