Brussels Workshop, May 21st, 2003

In response to calls from donor agencies to monitor how effectively poverty maps are able to assist decision makers, UNEP/GRID-Arendal in its communications and outreach role in the joint project, organised a workshop in conjunction with the fourth meeting of the Poverty Environment Partnership (PEP), in May 2003. The PEP is an informal association of donors and development agencies that meet regularly to discuss ways of streamlining activities relating to poverty and environment. This meeting was chosen as an opportunity to meet with a wide range of current and potential users of poverty maps, and to find opportunities for integrating poverty mapping into a variety of applications.

Agenda

This workshop is designed to take stock of previous experiences in poverty mapping and the ways in which policymaking and programme development have been influenced; and to propose ways of enhancing the effectiveness of poverty maps, as well as extending their application to new areas such as planning for food security and environmental management. (See the full agenda)

Workshop Report

View the report from each of the sessions from the workshop and the overall conclusions. 1. The participants agreed that poverty mapping had proved to be useful in several applications, including targeting of development assistance, analysing linkages, coordinating development, and communicating information. (See report)

Presentations

• Maarten Immink, FIVIMS: The FIVIMS Initiative And The Various Uses Of Food Security And Vulnerability Information (PowerPoint 0.3 MB).
• Ergin Ataman, FAO: The Joint FAO/CGIAR/UNEP Poverty And Food Security Mapping Project (PowerPoint 3.7 MB).
• Tim Robinson, FAO: Application of Poverty Mapping to Livestock Policies (View abstract, PowerPoint 2.2 MB).
• Arnaud Comolet, UNDP: Poverty & Environment Mapping in Rwanda (View abstract, PowerPoint 1.9 MB).
• David Healy, Stone Environmental: Niger Poverty Atlas & Poverty Information Needs Assessment in Mali (View abstract, PowerPoint 3.7 MB).
• Daniel Sui, Texas University: Maps of Poverty and Poverty of Maps (View abstract, PowerPoint 4.4 MB).
• Norbert Henninger, WRI: Where Are the Poor? Experiences with Development & Use of Poverty Maps in 14 Case Studies (PowerPoint 3.7 MB).
• Kunio Hatanaka, JBIC: Poverty Investigation Survey in Northern Vietnam (PowerPoint 0.1 MB).
• Kirstin Dow, SEI: Vulnerability Assessments (PowerPoint 0.7 MB).
• Marc Levy, CIESIN: Global Poverty Mapping and the Millennium Development Goals (PowerPoint 3.3 MB).
• Ibrahim Dia, Finance Ministry, Senegal: Poverty Mapping in Senegal to support Implementation of the PRSP.
• Anna Ballance, UNEP/GRID-Arendal: Overview and Conclusions (PowerPoint 0.2 MB).

Background

summary review of past and current applications of poverty maps to, amongst other activities, the targeting of poverty reduction strategies, planning of health services, assessment of food security programmes, development of early warning systems, and agricultural and livestock development plans. Many of the examples are take from a recent joint publication by the World Resources institute and UNEP/GRID-Arendal (Henninger & Snel 2002); others are more recent or ongoing examples. Although poverty map use in spatial and comparative analyses is still limited, this review indicates that there is an increasing number of recent applications, and presents the recommendations from each of the examples as to how the application and usefulness of poverty maps can be increased. (See all the background material)

Participants list

See the complete list of people and organizations that attended the meeting (pdf 0.3 MB).

Abstracts

Poverty/Vulnerability Mapping in Niger Developing Multiple-factor Poverty Mapping Indicators for Poverty Reduction Programs

This presentation will focus the results of a World Bank-funded multi-phase project in Niger to assist with the development of the foundation for an on-going national poverty mapping program. The program is to assist with the targeting of investments and monitoring/evaluation of impacts. The project resulted in the development of an initial set of preliminary living condition indicators that included bringing together economic, education, environment and health factors in village context. These village and canton conditions were then compared to locations of recent donor investment. A summary of lessons learned, impediments encountered and future directions will be presented. The later will include results from recent experience in a US AID funded poverty mapping needs analysis for the Government of Mali.

Maps of Poverty and the Poverty of Maps: Recent academic discourses on maps and their implications for policy makers

This paper reviews recent academic discourses on the new nature of maps and discusses their implications for mapping poverty in the context of making policies. Intellectual discourses motivated by social theories and semiotics mark an epistemic break with the assumption that maps are unproblematic communication devices. Social theoretic research investigates maps as practices of power-knowledge whereas semiotics focuses on maps as geographic visualization (GVis) to explore, analyze, synthesize and present spatial datasets to understand patterns better. These developments are key components of a ‘maps as social constructions’ approach, emphasizing the genealogy of power in mapping practices, and enabling multiple, contingent and exploratory perspectives of data. The understanding of the new nature of maps poses both challenges and opportunities for mapping poverty. Policy implications will be discussed in detail.

Abstract on the Poverty Environment Mapping pilot project in Rwanda

The purpose of the presentation is to summarize the main objectives and perspectives of pilot project on Poverty Environment Mapping currently funded by UNDP in Rwanda. As highlighted by the PRSP (September 2001), sound and equitable environmental management is key to sustained poverty reduction and achievement of the MDGs in Rwanda, and, addressing the Poverty-Environment linkages must be at the core of national efforts to eradicate poverty.
Poverty-Environment mapping is now becoming an important tool in implementing poverty reduction programmes. Poverty-Environment maps and related tools can help address the poverty-ecosystems relationships and improve targeting of public expenditures by identifying where the neediest populations are located as well as emergency response and food aid programmes.
During the preparation of a Programme Support Document on Sustainable Livelihoods and Environment Office for the Rwanda UNDP Country Office, the Central and Eastern African Sub-Regional Resource Facility (CEA-SURF) initiated a Poverty-Environment mapping test, which proved very useful in clustering Environment-Poverty linkages. The test map was used to support the options proposed in the PSD.

As a follow up activity, UNDP (CEA-SURF) has recently engaged in a Poverty-Environment Mapping Pilot Project in Rwanda to develop and extend this approach to make it more systematic and comprehensive.

2. The pilot project on Poverty Environment Mapping The Pilot Study is intended to provide support and tools to Policy Makers in Rwanda, at both the national and regional levels, in the framework of the PRSP implementation, to better understand the linkages between Poverty and Environment and provide policy appropriate policy responses to the Poverty-Environment nexus.

The main objective of the ongoing Pilot Project is to improve poverty-environment monitoring and evaluation by strengthening government and civil society capacity to monitor environmental changes and how it affects the poor by integrating poverty-environment indicators into national poverty monitoring systems, and by building capacity to apply monitoring and assessment results to poverty-environment policy formulation and implementation.

The two key expected output of the Pilot Project are:

• The Analysis of Environment-Poverty linkages in Rwanda
• The completion of a Pilot Poverty-Environment Mapping.

This pilot should be completed by mid June 2003.

The pilot is undertaken by the University of Rwanda/GIS Centre (Butare) under the supervision of UNDP (CEA-SURF). The aim of the pilot project is to be later on systematized, so as to be an integral part of the PRSP process, and replicated in other countries.

3. The next phases of the pilot project. It is now expected that the project will receive additional funds from the Poverty-Environment Initiative (PEI) to complete the pilot phase of the programme (Phase II).

The second phase of the programme would encompass two categories of objectives and activities:

1. The improvement and finalisation of the Poverty-Environment Mapping-Pilot;
2. Capacity strengthening of the Government of Rwanda and interfacing the Poverty-Environment Mapping-Pilot with policy making process.

4. Target. The final target group for project and its outputs and outcomes will be the Government, local authorities, representatives of civil society organisations - and their respective constituencies (NGOs, CBOs), as well as UNDP Country Office, donors.

Poverty Reduction Through Livestock Policy Adjustment

The livestock sector plays a critical role in sustaining the livelihoods of a large number of the world’s poor. At the same time, the demand and supply patterns for animal products, and the market and institutional environments within which production and consumption take place, are changing rapidly in many developing countries. These changes may provide opportunities to enhance the sector’s contribution to poverty reduction.

The nature of livestock farming in developing countries is determined by policy and institutional frameworks that suffer from a number of weaknesses: 1) they tend to be based on sparse and inaccurate information; 2) they rarely favour the poor; and 3) they are drawn up with only limited stakeholder consultation.

Combining and coordinating currently fragmented efforts to develop information systems in support of pro-poor livestock (and related) policy making provide a rich opportunity to address some of these limitations. Knowledge systems that provide policy makers and other stakeholders with relevant information would support ex-ante policy analyses that explore the probable impacts of existing policy, and of policy changes; the development of decision support tools will facilitate the formulation of appropriate policies; and appropriate dissemination of information will heighten public awareness and increase the accountability of policy-makers.

In this paper we present and discuss a model that will enable poverty information to be combined with livestock and other relevant data in order to explore the likely outcomes of changes in policies related to the livestock sector on economic growth and poverty reduction.