RUPES = Rewarding Upland Poor for Environmental Services

Among the vast multitude of the poor in Asia, the populations that are most marginalizedare those living in the hilly and mountainous areas. The benefits of national and localinvestments in economic development often bypass these upland communities and in manycases they are bearing a large share of the negative aspects of development.It is increasingly evident that the real plight of mountain and upland poor communities hasbeen overlooked. There is an urgent need to support a process of self-empowerment sothat poor upland people can take the necessary decisions to build a sustainable futurebased on their resources, on improved technology and centuries of accumulated wisdom.We now know that many upland and mountain communities in Asia manage landscapesthat provide environmental services to outside beneficiaries. The services they provideinclude clean and abundant water supplies from watersheds, biodiversity protection, stocksof carbon that may alleviate global warming and landscape beauty for recreation andtourism. However upland communities are not sharing in the benefits that these servicesprovide. Rewarding the poor upland communities for

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