Illegal Wildlife Trade and Poverty: Information Note

This information note provides guidance for both project and applicants to the Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) Challenge Fund. IWT is driven by a range of factors, one of the key drivers is poverty. At a basic level, poorer communities can be drawn in to poaching and trafficking because of economic deprivation and a lack of alternative livelihoods. However, the relationships between poverty and IWT are complex and multifaceted. Poverty goes much deeper than just economic deprivation; it can also mean a lack of power, prestige, and voice, and an inability to define one’s future. Effective strategies to tackle IWT require recognition of the complexities of motivations of people engaged across the whole chain of supply, transit and demand in IWT, as well as how specific political-economic-social contexts shape the trade. IWT is also gendered both in terms of patterns of involvement and in its impact on communities. These factors will shape the range and nature of successful approaches to tackling the trade. This Information Note covers the different ways projects can approach the question of defining poverty, its relationships to IWT and how projects can address both poverty and IWT. It also identifies best practices in addressing poverty across the four themes of the fund.