Value chains for sustainable conservation, integrated development, and livelihoods promotion: An application to butterfly farming in India

The sustainable management of ecological resources requires conservation efforts that not only protect against habitat loss but also link stakeholder incentives to the process itself. In India, while the government has taken proactive steps to protect its natural resources, these programs have often been at odds with local indigenous populations in such areas, with the displacement of populations and limits placed on economic activities. A crucial need is to identify sustainable conservation programs that can be led from the bottom-up, taking into account the needs, constraints, and context of local stakeholders in the process. In this project, we seek to assess the feasibility of butterfly farming as a means of promoting sustainable conservation and liv elihoods development in India. Butterfly farming (or ranching) has been promoted in a number of developing country contexts, particularly Costa Rica, Kenya, Tanzania, and Papua New Guinea as a means of sustaining forest resources and biodiversity by mone tizing butterflies as a valuable resource, thus providing greater incentives for conservation. The appeal of butterfly farming is combining relatively low levels of inputs for farmers (thus more easily engaging the poor and disadvantaged) with an activit y that manages butterflies as resources, while conserving forest habitats. It will do this using value chain analysis, highlighting the linkages and interactions between different actors engaged in the supply chain from production to consumption. These l essons will be distilled to assess the feasibility of butterfly farm complexes in the Western Ghats region of India, an area with significant biodiversity, but in which forest cover has been declining at a rapid rate. It will work closely with local NGOs engaged in improving the livelihood of small and marginal farmers through sustainable coffee-based farm activities, including those (such as butterfly farming) that help protect the environment.