Ecosystem Services as a Missing Dimension of Poverty

该项目将通过分析生态系统服务在何种程度上可以被视为定义多层面贫困的方式的缺失维度，来审查生态系统服务在概念上理解贫困方面的作用。为此，它将审查对福祉和贫困的理解方式，以及自然环境要素对改善福祉和减少贫困的贡献程度。它将重点放在多维贫困指数(MPI)上，该指数将贫困定义为一个人无法在人类繁荣所必需的核心要素中达到最低国际可比标准，并将审查在多大程度上可以在概念上将获得生态系统服务纳入定义福祉的核心要素之一。该项目的概念和理论贡献将主要集中于确定哲学和科学论点，这些论点表明，缺乏利用自然和生态系统服务的机会会降低人们实现其潜力的能力。在这样做的过程中，该项目将使用最近的文献，这些文献一直在评估构成贫困和福祉定义的主观要素，以及这些要素在多大程度上受到人类与自然互动方式的影响。在建立了将生态系统服务纳入多层面贫困的更广泛的概念框架后，该项目将通过审查现有收集贫困和环境数据的方法可以在多大程度上更加兼容的方式，将这一理解付诸实施。其中包括在国家一级收集的数据、关于贫困发生率和生态系统服务发生情况的空间上明确的数据，以及详细的家庭一级调查工具，这些工具试图了解多维福祉以及自然生态系统流量的使用和依赖。该项目将在全球、国家和国家以下各级项目伙伴正在开展的现有工作的基础上，在选定的少数案例研究地点检验这些想法。合作伙伴将一套独特的资源和技能带到彼此之间富有成效的对话中，将往往相互不能很好地整合的知识社区联系在一起。环境署全球环境数据中心是全球环境数据的主要储存库，但往往没有明确的任务去了解这些数据对贫穷的影响；环境政策研究所处于寻求定义和衡量贫穷的工作的前沿，但往往对环境在其多层面贫穷定义中的作用给予相对有限的关注。剑桥大学为这些社区以及更广泛的现有ESPA研究组合提供了一座独特的桥梁。通过建立这些联系，该项目希望对理解和定义贫困和人类福祉的方式产生影响，特别是与正在进行的关于2015年后可持续发展目标的讨论有关。因此，总的来说，该项目将在三个不同、相互关联的层面作出贡献：(1)在概念上，改变界定和理解生态系统服务、福祉和贫困之间关系的方式；(2)在方法上，在制定技术和协议方面，使迄今衡量和理解贫困和环境可持续性的不同方法得以统一；以及(3)在政策一级，协助确定21世纪人类社会的国际目标和相关目标，以指导决策者在各种空间和时间尺度上开展工作。

This project will examine the role of ecosystem services in the conceptual understanding of poverty, by analysing the extent to which ecosystem services can be seen as a missing dimension of the way in which multidimensional poverty is defined. In order to do so, it will undertake a review of the ways in which wellbeing and poverty are understood, and the extent to which elements of the natural environment contribute to improving wellbeing and reducing poverty. It will focus on the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which defines poverty as a person's inability to meet the minimum internationally comparable standards in the core elements that are necessary for human flourishing, and will examine the extent to which access to ecosystem services can be conceptually included as one of the core elements that define wellbeing. The project's conceptual and theoretical contributions will focus primarily on identifying the philosophical and scientific arguments that suggest that lack of access to nature and ecosystem services reduces the capability of people to achieve their potential. In doing so, the project will engage with recent literature which has been assessing the subjective elements that make up the definitions of poverty and wellbeing, and the extent to which these are influenced by the ways in which humans interact with nature. Having established the broader conceptual framework for incorporating ecosystem services into multi-dimensional poverty, the project will operationalise this understanding by examining the extent to which existing methods for collecting poverty and environment data can be made more compatible. These include data collected at national level, spatially explicit data on the incidence of poverty and the occurence of ecosystem services, as well as detailed household-level survey instruments which seek to understand multidimensional wellbeing as well the use of, and dependence on, flows from natural ecosystems.The project will test these ideas in a small selection of case study locations, building on the existing work that is being undertaken by the project partners at global, national and sub-national scales. The partners bring a unique set of resources and skills into productive conversation with each other, connecting knowledge communities that tend not to be well integrated with each other. UNEP WCMC is the leading repository of global environmental data, but has tended not to have an explicit mandate to understand the poverty implications of these data; OPHI is at the cutting-edge of work that seeks to define and measure poverty, but has tended to pay relatively limited attention to the role of the environment in its definition of multidimensional poverty. The University of Cambridge provides a unique bridge across these communities, as well as to the wider portfolio of existing ESPA research. By making these connections, the project hopes to have an impact on the ways in which poverty and human wellbeing are understood and defined, especially in relation to ongoing discussions about the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals.Overall, therefore, the project will make contributions at three distinct, inter-connected levels: (i) conceptual, in shifting the ways in which the relationship between ecosystem services and wellbeing and poverty is defined and understood; (ii) methodological, in developing techniques and protocols that allow the unification of hitherto distinct approaches to measuring and understanding poverty and environmental sustainability; and (iii) at the policy level, by contributing to the definition of international goals for human society in the twenty-first century, and associated targets to guide decision makers operating across a variety of spatial and temporal scales.