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Research theme: Institutions, Governance and Power

Poverty and Conservation Learning Group

The Poverty and Conservation Learning Group is intended to address a number of problems:

•  The apparently growing divide between conservation and development practitioners and policy makers on how -and whether - to link biodiversity conservation with poverty reduction;

•  The potential duplication of effort by a number of different organisations that are grappling independently with the problem of linking conservation and poverty reduction;

•  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 goal of the Learning Group is thus to facilitate learning on conservation-poverty linkages between and within different communities of interest. In order to achieve this goal the Learning Group will fulfil two major - but different - functions:

•  promote good practice amongst policy makers and practitioners through information provision and dissemination via an open access website

•  facilitate dialogue and mutual learning amongst different types of organisations actively working on conservation-poverty linkages (including those who are often under-represented in international debates) through provision of a programme of "learning activities"

An ultimate objective of the Learning Group is to influence policy change so that conservation policy takes better account of poverty concerns; development policy takes better account of biodiversity concerns; and both pay attention to human rights. Learning activities are therefore targeted at organizations that develop - or have the capacity to influence - policy. At the same time we area engaging practitioners in sharing experience and promoting good practice though our website: http://povertyandconservation.info

This initiative is supported by the Ford Foundation.

Project documents:

•  Learning Group Update – May 2005 [56KB]

•  Learning Group Structure and Function – September 2005 [64KB]

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