The importance of environmental income to the poor can be judged at different scales. At the global scale, estimates of nature’s contribution to livelihoods are impressive. For example, the World Bank estimates that 90 percent of the world’s 1.1 billion poor—those living on $1 per day or less— depend on forests for at least some of their income (World Bank 2002:1). Agriculture is likewise essential to poor families. Small-scale agriculture—the kind the poor practice—accounts for more than 90 percent of Africa’s agricultural production (Spencer 2001:1). In addition, over 600 million of the world’s poor keep livestock, a critical cash asset for many (IFAD et al. 2004:1).

The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that over 90 percent of the 15 million people working the world’s coastal waters are small-scale fishers, most of them poor. That does not count the tens of millions of the poor who fish inland rivers, lakes,ponds, and even rice paddies (FAO 2002 in Kura et al. 2004:35). (See Table 2.1 Number of People Dependent On Ecosystems.)

At the national level, environmental income is also important, not only to the poor, but to national economies. Small-scale fisheries, for example, are not only common sources of income for the impoverished but are major contributors to the economies of many nations. In Asia small-scale fisheries contributed 25 percent of the total fisheries production of Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Taiwan for the decade ending in 1997 (Kura et al. 2004:38). In West Africa the importance of small-scale fishing is greater still, constituting three-fourths of the region’s total fish catch (Kura et al. 2004:39). In Indonesia, small-scale fishers are responsible for almost 95 percent of the total marine catch (FAO 2000a:2). (See Figure 2.1 Artisanal and Total Catch For Selected West African Countries, 1996.)

At the same time, export revenues from small-scale agriculture are vital to many poor nations. In Mali, cotton grown by small-holder farmers generates 8 percent of the nation’s GDP and 15 percent of all government revenues. Some 30 percent of all Malian households grow cotton on small plots, and it is secondonly to gold as the nation’s most important export (Tefft 2004:1).

Assessing environmental income at the household level is the most difficult, but also the most valuable in judging how much of a factor nature-based income is in the lives of the poor and whether it can be increased or at least made more secure. Household surveys have been used for decades to measure income and consumption patterns, but they have not traditionally assessed what portion of this income was from natural resources (Cavendish 2000:1980). As a result, the kind of comprehensive data needed to quantify the dependence of the poor on environmental income has been scarce, increasing the tendency of policymakers to minimize the environment in their poverty prescriptions.

In recent years, researchers have begun to fill this breach with quantitative studies of environmental income at the village and household level. While the amount and dependence on environmental income differs depending on the ecosystem, the community, and other social and economic factors, these studies have confirmed that environmental income is near-universally important to poor households.