Biorights' of commons as an economic opportunity for negating negative link between poverty and nature degradation (original) (raw)
Bio-rights are financial mechanism to compensate opportunity costs of local stakeholders and assist commons of global south in reconciling poverty alleviation and sustainable use of natural resources. Bio-rights allow public value of key biodiversity areas to be transferred over time to local stakeholders as a direct economic benefit and turns natural resource management and conservation into development opportunity. Observations suggest monetary value of nature has not been recognized by world community with existing economic system and its value is marginally present in market. One suggested solutions for poverty is to compensate commons for managing their natural resources. Biorights could contribute to this as direct payments to compensate for poverty related costs and distribution of payments to communities on the basis of nature conservation. 'Community-ecosystem' approach of this study on transformation of nature services to economic opportunities in various peri-urban wetlands of East Kolkata enables all stakeholders to concentrate on one problem at a time and allow rectification through adaptive management practices over time and space. It depicts a mixed financial model of community partnership for sustainability with low investment and high return assurances, affirming women empowerment and social cohesion, catalyzing social changes too. Adaptive management is the key factor for sustainability of this project and it is decentralized to the lowest appropriate level. Need for a juridical basis and a good monitoring system was stated several times during the study, especially from stakeholders. Perusals of results show local people in developing countries that are dependent on the nature areas actively support the biorights system, which is a precondition for the success of biorights. In order for biorights to be globally successful it should be considered at first to aim at those nature areas which have the highest priority to conserve, in terms of estimated benefits and costs of conservation.
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