what is the Poverty and Conservation Learning Group?
The Poverty and Conservation Learning Group is an initiative coordinated by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). The Learning Group is intended to address a number of perceived problems:
- An ongoing divide between conservation and development practitioners and policy makers on how - and whether - to link biodiversity conservation with poverty reduction so that poverty reduction policy better reflects biodiversity concerns and conservation policy pays greater attention to issues of poverty and social justice;
- The potential duplication of effort by a number of different organisations that are trying to strengthen this linkage but are currently grappling independently with the issues and not learning from each other;
- The lack of an established forum through which participants from a range of backgrounds can participate on an equal footing to share and analyse emerging experience in conservation-poverty linkages and identify knowledge gaps and research needs.
The Mission of the Learning Group is therefore to promote better understanding on the links between conservation and poverty linkages in order to improve conservation and poverty policy and practice. We seek to achieve this mission through four main strategies:
- Maintaining an overview of relevant poverty-conservation activities and outcomes
- Informing international and regional policy processes
- Promoting dialogue between and within different communities of interest
- Collecting and disseminating information