Many of the world’s poor are dependent on land and natural resources for their livelihoods. Poverty is often a direct result of peoples’ limited opportunities to generate wealth from local natural resources and other assets; of the small share of profits they ultimately capture; and of limited access to public goods and services, including state investments in social welfare programs. Access and benefit sharing are determined partly by public policies and government practices that sometimes allow for the concentration and capture of environmental benefits by small groups of political and economic elite. In Senegal , for example, forestry laws and regulations have enabled charcoal merchants to control labor opportunities and market access, leverage prices, and essentially establish a strong cartel that permits them to capture most of the sector’s profits.

The Equity, Poverty, and Environment initiative works with local policy analysts and public interest organizations to conduct research on, disseminate recommendations for, and promote pro-poor, pro-environment distribution policies.

Context

Public policies that affect the distribution of natural resource benefits shape individual and institutional behavior, and are strategically utilized by some governments to promote national objectives and public interests such as poverty reduction, conflict resolution, and environmental management. For example, in Cameroon , 40 percent of the area tax of commercial timber concessions is returned to the affected local governments and 10 percent to adjacent communities to support local socio-economic development, thus contributing to poverty reduction.

In countries with high rates of poverty and inequity, pro-poor distributions of benefits from natural resources can be more effective than economic growth alone in reducing poverty. Yet most poverty reduction initiatives emphasize growth and do not adequately address the distribution of environmental benefits and the resulting winners and losers.

Strategy

The EPE initiative researches and provides policy recommendations on the distribution of two categories of natural resource benefits:

• Market shares and profit margins of commercially exploited natural resource commodities
• Public revenues from the use of ecosystems and natural resources by public and private entities

EPE examines benefits derived from both renewable and non-renewable natural resources, including energy (oil, gas), minerals, timber, and various non-timber forest products.

EPE is engaged in several countries in Africa, Latin America, and Asia . In conjunction with local partners, WRI has launched commodity chain analyses (evaluating the market path along which natural resources are commercialized) on various nature-based commodities, including timber in Cameroon , Uganda , Nicaragua , Vietnam , and China . WRI has also initiated research on the use and effects of public revenues from various natural resources, such as wildlife-based public revenues in Kenya , oil revenues in Nigeria , and natural gas revenues in Peru and the Philippines . Our work on the distribution of market shares and public revenues continues to expand to other natural resources and countries.

Intended Impacts

• National policy and legislation provide all citizens with equitable access to natural resources and opportunities to generate nature-based wealth
• Governments repeal policies that promote urban biases in the appropriation of public revenues and elite capture of the benefits of nature-based commercial products
• National poverty reduction initiatives and investments promote fair distributions of natural resource and ecosystem benefits
• Poor people and regions capture fair shares of environmental benefits, promoting poverty reduction and social equity, and encouraging people to better manage local environments