Poverty reduction strategies: Phase 1 report

This report presents an overview of poverty-Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) interactions and an analysis of the IWT Challenge Fund poverty interventions. It explains how the projects define poverty, characterises the links between poverty and IWT, and outlines the ways that projects seek to tackle poverty. It brings together project documentation and wider peer reviewed literature as an evidence base. In order to be eligible to apply to the fund, projects are required to include a clear statement on how their strategies for tackling IWT do so in a way that contributes to poverty reduction. The projects funded under the IWT Challenge Fund offer a range of direct and indirect ways of reducing poverty as a means of tackling IWT. Generally projects define poverty as more than an economic issue, and instead recognise it is about wider sustainable livelihoods and wellbeing. However, very few offer a more expansive approach in which poverty also means a lack of power, prestige, and voice, and an inability to define one’s future. Instead, poverty reduction is more commonly interpreted as increasing material wealth and/or as developing alternative livelihoods via beekeeping, tourism development, handicrafts production, poultry farming or Village Savings and Loans. Furthermore, very few projects engage with the question of how interventions to tackle IWT can themselves deepen poverty and inequality, especially those related to enforcement. It is also clear that it is more challenging for projects on law enforcement, legal frameworks and demand reduction to claim and evidence poverty reduction, compared with those linked to sustainable livelihoods. However, projects that are focused on demand reduction, law enforcement and legal frameworks are vital parts of the wider jigsaw puzzle of tackling poverty as a means of reducing IWT. The report concludes with a series of recommendations:

a) Fund guidance should encourage applicants to identify how tackling IWT could itself exacerbate poverty

b) Encourage partnering with the development sector

c) Require information on pre-application engagement with local communities and key stakeholders

d) Consider ‘Demand Management’ strategies to diversify the pool of successful applicants

e) Change or reduce the requirements to provide Theory of Change and logframes

f) Consider funding rounds focused only on Sustainable Livelihoods and Demand Reduction

g) Additional training for Applicants and Reviewers

h) Provide a Masterclass on Good Practice

Central to these recommendations is that the Fund, and projects, should draw on more the most up to date understandings of development, and best practice in the development sector. More generally, projects designed by the conservation sector often lag behind in terms of understandings of development, including decolonial approaches, that emphasise moving away from top-down design and implementation. Projects should define poverty more expansively, operate in a decolonial way and work more closely with communities and stakeholders prior to application to develop poverty reduction strategies that are locally relevant and effective; this will mitigate top-down approaches that are likely to be less effective. This report concludes by also identifying three key knowledge gaps, including the relationships between economic deprivation and poaching, poverty, health and IWT and the need to ‘ground truth’ the claims made by IWT Challenge Fund funded projects via research with people involved.