Cool Earth’s rainforest partners from Peru to Papua New Guinea, have consistently shown that families who live in the forest know it best. Yet, despite their fluency in the language of the forest, the voices within indigenous communities are rarely heard. That’s why Cool Earth’s simple and lightweight approach uses the Basic Necessities Survey (BNS) as a poverty rank to measure change in our partnerships. Everything is from the perspective of the community.
The BNS method relies on local communities deciding a list of assets and services considered to be “basic necessities”. In the initial stages, Cool Earth’s program team use workshops to establish a list of items and services – so we don’t dictate what we think they will need. It’s always the community’s choice, they can decide how and what will improve their lives.
Using this locally determined measure of poverty shows that any family failing to own or hold all items within this basket of basic necessities is considered, from a local perspective, to be below the poverty line.

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