Achievements and Highlights

IISD's Economic Policy team continued to provide expertise and guidance to the United Nations Environment Programme on addressing the links between poverty and ecosystem services. Over two years, IISD developed a conceptual framework that pulls together and integrates within a single framework the fundamental concepts from Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen's Capability Approach and the Ecosystem Approach. The underlying foundations of the conceptual framework are democratic participation and the facilitation of a number of key instrumental freedoms to reduce poverty through the sustainable management of ecosystem services. The conceptual framework offers a methodology that would be of interest to development practitioners who are looking for ways and means to incorporate the Capability Approach to practical policy development. The conceptual framework has been published under the title "Exploring the Links: Human Well-being, Poverty and Ecosystem Services." The Economic Policy group will be playing a key role in the implementation of the conceptual framework. A four-year, seven-country work program has been developed and will be overseen by an international advisory committee of prominent intellectuals and policy-makers. Potential co-chairs of this group are Professor Amartya Sen and Kenya's Deputy Minister of Environment, Wangari Muta Maathai. It is expected that this program will build the capacity of governments to develop integrated policies that promote human development through the enhancement of capabilities, through the sustainable management of ecosystem services. The proposed developmental framework is expected to contribute to the achievement of a number of the Millennium Development Goals without an overt assumption of the need for high economic growth rates. Although the framework emphasizes the role of economic growth, it also stresses the need for social justice, fairness and basic capabilities for all individuals.

"The underlying foundations of the conceptual framework are democratic participation and the facilitation of a number of key instrumental freedoms to reduce poverty through the sustainable managment of ecosystem services."

IISD Economic Policy published two papers in 2003–2004. The first paper, "Increasing Capabilities through an Ecosystem Approach for the Drylands," was selected by the Global Drylands Initiative of the United Nations Development Programme, as a challenge paper for the Global Biodiversity Forum at the Convention to Combat Desertification's Sixth Conference of the Parties (COP-6). The second paper, "Poverty Reduction and Ecosystem Services: Choices, Agency and Technology," was prepared for the Fourth Trondheim Conference on Biodiversity. The paper was published as the conference proceedings and presented as an input to the ninth meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD) Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSSTA). IISD also made a presentation called, "Poverty Reduction and Ecosystems: A Capability-Ecosystem Approach Valuing Biodiversity Using Portfolio Theory," at a side event at CBD COP-7.

IISD and UNEP's Division of Policy Development and Law (DPDL) signed a Memorandum of Understanding which provides a direct conduit for IISD to offer regular policy advice in the field of ecosystem management and human development. The MOU commits IISD to producing two position papers highlighting emerging priority issues for UNEP. The agreement also requires the Institute to provide guidance on the increasingly important issue of policy coherence and synergy among the various Multilateral Environmental Agreements, as well as with the Millennium Development Goals and the World Summit on Sustainable Development's Plan of Action. Another potentially significant contribution is the request to provide inputs to the development of an organization-wide strategy for the povertyenvironment nexus.

In many countries, health interventions have been addressed separately from environmental policies. However, many health issues stem from deteriorating environmental conditions. IISD has been invited by the Health-Environment Links Initiative (HELI), a joint program of the World Health Organization, UNEP and the Canadian International Development Agency, to co-ordinate the establishment of guidelines for developing countries in addressing health and environment issues through economic interventions. The guidelines will be tested in three countries.

"The first paper 'Increasing Capabilities Through an Ecosystem Approach for the Drylands,' was selected by the Global Drylands Initiative of the United Nations Development Programme, as a challeng paper for the Global Biodiversity Forum..."

IISD's role in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) has primarily been through the participation of Board member, Angela Cropper, who is one of the cochairs of the MA Assessment Panel, and through Dr. Anantha Kumar Duraiappah, Director of Economic Policy, as a Co-ordinating Lead Author and co-chair of the Biodiversity Synthesis Working Group. The MA is an innovative process which will provide the much-needed scientific foundations for integrated assessments. Unlike previous assessment initiatives, the MA conceptual framework makes an explicit link between ecosystem services and human well-being using the state-of-the-art knowledge and methodologies, which are drawn from a range of disciplines including ecology, economics, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, law and political science. The first product, "Ecosystems and Human Wellbeing," is now available and can be purchased through Island Press. IISD's role, through the Economic Policy team, was to integrate many of the core principles underlying the Capability-Ecosystem conceptual framework into the MA's approach.

IISD established the "Sen" listserv (electronic mailing list) in 2001 at the end of the first Capability conference in Cambridge. The listserv has been referred to as an important source of information on issues related to democratic participation and social justice in Gustave Speth's latest book, Red Sky at Morning. The listserv has grown steadily and the name was officially changed in early 2004 to the "capability approach" listserv. This was done to align the listserv as a tool for the upcoming launch of the Human Development and Capability Association. A small inner core of researchers in the Capability field, including IISD's Anantha Duraiappah, has been working over the last year to establish a formal association to bring together researchers and policy-makers working in the field of development and poverty and who were using the Capability approach. IISD has been perceived as holding the environmental or, more specifically, the ecosystem thrust within the Capability approach. Other members include Harvard University, The University of Cambridge, University of Pavia and the University of Versailles. The association will be launched formally this September and Professor Amartya Sen has agreed to be the first president. The association has forged a close working relationship with the Journal of Human Development. The establishment of this association presents a milestone in taking the principles of development based on justice, fairness, autonomy and respect to the forefront in the development community.