Consequences of Responses on Human Well-being and Poverty Reduction

摘要: Societies have developed and used a wide range of innovative legal, economic, behavioral, and technological responses to manage their interactions with ecosystems. These responses in turn have had impacts on ecosystems, some good and some bad. However, the impacts of these responses have not been confined to just ecosystems but have also had positive and negative impacts on human well-being, defined to include health, security, social relations, material wealth, and freedom of choice and actions (MA 2003).It is also increasingly becoming clear that development and poverty-reduction focused responses can have positive and negative impacts on ecosystems and human well-being. Experience shows that some responses—either ecosystem focused or development and poverty reduction—have worked well in conserving ecosystem services, improving well-being, and reducing poverty, while others have actually caused deterioration in ecosystem services, a reduction in human well-being, and increased poverty. But the situation is much more complex in reality and it is difficult to make simplistic linear causality relationships between responses and the consequences on ecosystems and human wellbeing. To begin, the consequences of responses are usually not shared equally among different stakeholders. For example, some groups may have benefited from a response while others suffered a drop in one or more of their constituents and determinants of well-being. Identifying who loses and who gains is a critical component in evaluating responses. Responses directed at some ecosystem services can cause unintended impacts …