1. MORE INCOME THROUGH BETTER ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT

Healthy ecosystems work at peak productivity; degraded ecosystems produce less, particularly of the forest products, forage, clean water, crops, and bushmeat on which the poor tend to rely. In fact, degradation of ecosystem functions—in the form of nutrient-depleted soils, overgrazed pastureland, logged-over and fragmented forests, and overfished lakes and coastal waters—has become a serious impediment to the livelihoods of the poor.

As the findings of the recently concluded Millennium Ecosystem Assessment show, ecosystem decline is widespread. The global drop in ecosystem health not only undermines the natural resource base that anchors a substantial fraction of the global economy but erodes the planet’s life-support systems more generally (MA 2005a:1-24). The most immediate victims of this decline are the poor, whose household economies, as shown in Chapter 2, depend heavily on ecosystem goods and services. The pressures on ecosystems are particularly intense on many common property lands and fisheries—the most important source of environmental income for the rural poor. Examples are many and distributed on every continent and sea: denuded hills in western India; exhausted forests in Madagascar and Haiti; and depleted catches off Indonesia, Jamaica, or Fiji are just a few of the many instances where overuse and abuse of ecosystems directly impacts the poor.