Reducing poverty while conserving biodiversity is possible on a local scale

Decision makers are faced with certain challenges when they explore ways of simultaneously achieving the Millennium Development Goals and the CBD 2010 targets for biodiversity conservation. Decreasing poverty usually coincides with decreasing biodiversity, creating a 'win-lose' situation. Reducing poverty while conserving biodiversity - a 'win-win' - can be achieved on a local scale. However, such a positive outcome is hard to realise when all trade-off effects elsewhere and in the future are considered.