Poverty Reduction Strategies: Phase 2 Report

This report is for Phase 2 of the Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) Challenge Fund Poverty Reduction Strategies Deep Dive. It should be read in tandem with the Phase 1 report. It is based on close reading of the IWT Challenge Fund documentation provided for applicants, the IWT Advisory Group (IWTAG) and reviewers; a full list of the documents reviewed is provided in Annex 2. First the report sets out the key issues for the IWT Challenge Fund. The central over-arching issue for the fund to decide upon is whether it operates primarily as a development or a conservation fund. The current Fund approach is that it supports projects on IWT, with a poverty reduction element. On the surface, switching this around, so that it supports poverty reduction projects that also tackle IWT, may appear a very minor adjustment, but it fundamentally changes how applicants design and implement projects. The ways that the documentation is set out, terminology used and the volume of material to read, understand and align with can exclude lots of really good applicants and projects. The terminology (developing countries) is outdated. The phrase ‘What Works’ can also be problematic because it obscures a complex range of issues around what evidence is used and how benefits/disadvantages can be unevenly distributed. There is a need to engage more fully with participatory approaches in design and implementation of projects. Poverty tends to be articulated in a very narrow economic sense in the project documentation. Very few projects offer innovative or creative approaches to tackling poverty and IWT, and instead rely on a narrow range of ideas. Applicants tend to interpret GESI as about gender balance on the project team, even though the fund guidance defines it in much broader terms. Across the documentation there is little mention of how applicants or project teams should reflect on the possible negative impacts of interventions to tackle IWT for poverty reduction. Applicants often state they are applying under multiple themes, which makes it difficult for the IWT Challenge Fund to track patterns of support for different themes. The Fund guidance emphasises behaviour change as the central approach, especially for demand reduction, thereby obscuring the wider range of options such as Conservation Basic Income. The Fund guidance focuses on what can be delivered to beneficiaries and one way knowledge transmission rather than two-way knowledge exchange and co-design. The Round 10 guidance privileges scientific theory as a means of underpinning projects, but tackling poverty-IWT interactions also require understandings from social sciences, arts and humanities. Second, the report offers a series of recommendations about revising the text of the Theory of Change and Standard Indicators. The report also provides new guidance for the IWTAG on how to assess the poverty reduction elements of applications, including additional guidance for demand reduction projects that aim to change consumer behaviour in wealthier communities. Third, the report provides a series of 15 key recommendations.