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Alternatives for Habitat Protection and Rural Income Generation

By Douglas Southgate (03/97, ENV-107, En, Es)

The Eighth General Increase in the Financial Resources of the IDB contains a call to take advantage of "opportunities to aid in the conservation of biological diversity," but also cautions that forest-dwellers must share in the "benefits of sustainable forest management" (IDB Document AB-1704, 18 July 1994, page 34). One way to reconcile habitat protection and local economic well-being is to promote economic activities that are both remunerative and environmentally benign. It has been suggested that nature-based tourism, the extraction of non- timber forest products, environmentally sound timber production, and genetic prospecting might fit these two criteria. Douglas Southgate of Ohio State University, in the sobering paper Alternatives for Habitat Protection and Rural Income Generation, addresses the question of whether those four activities truly represent a viable economic alternative in Latin America's environmentally fragile hinterlands. Several cases in each line of activity are analyzed to determine the level and distribution of the net financial returns they generate. Special attention was devoted to examining the degree to which net returns flow to local populations, as opposed to other economic agents.

Last updated: 04/19/06

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