Biodiversity, ecosystem services and poverty alleviation: What constitutes good evidence?

PCLG Discussion Paper number 10 is intended to stimulate debate about what consitutes good evidence in biodiversity, ecosystem services and poverty alleviation research. The paper has been produced as a component of the project “Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation: Assessing the Current State of the Evidence”, funded by an Evidence and Impact Research Grant, under the DFID-NERC-ESRC Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) research programme. This paper provides a brief overview of the literature on evidence, with a particular emphasis on the question of what constitutes good evidence. In doing so it seeks to identify a series of key take-home messages, rather than to provide a detailed review of what is a highly theorised and technical academic literature. This publication is an output of the Poverty and Conservation Learning Group (PCLG) - Discussion Paper, number 10