Poverty and Environment: Turning the Poor into Agents of Environmental Regeneration

The poor adapt and learn to live with poverty in a variety of ways. They also try to cope with shocks from events such as droughts, floods and loss of employment. Environmental resources play a vital role in their survival strategies. As the poor depend on environmental resources, one can expect them to have a stake in their preservation. Much of the damage done to natural resources is by others. Thus deforestation is much more an outcome of commercial logging for timber than fuelwood gathering by the poor. Well-meaning development projects, planned without a proper understanding of their ecological consequence have sometimes adversely affected natural resources on which the poor depend. Many development activities also adversely affect natural resources. Degradation of natural resources from whatever causes can have a high human cost for the poor. It can put a severe burden on their ability to meet their needs, can destroy their means of livelihood and can reduce their options to take defensive actions when faced with adversity such as crop failures. Thus, preservation and even regeneration of natural resources are needed for protecting and helping the poor. Environmental preservation may be a luxury for the rich; it is a bare necessity for the poor. It should therefore, be possible to make the poor agents of environmental regeneration in ways that also alleviate poverty. What institutional arrangements and innovations are needed to do this? In what ways should the approach to development change? How has UNDP's efforts in sustainable human development helped the poor and improved the environmental and natural resources? What are the lessons to be learnt from UNDP's experience? To explore these questions the paper first examines poverty and environmental interactions and how important they are. Thus it is observed that environmental income is critical for the poor. The poor obtain a substantial part of their consumption from natural and community resources. For example, in India and Bangladesh the poor obtain around 20 per cent of their income from ecological resources. And of course some 300 million indigenous people in the world obtain almost all of their consumption from ecological resources. The poor who depend on the environmental resources do not willfully destroy them. And yet common property resources (CPRs) have degraded in most countries. There are many forces that lead to extraction from CPRs beyond their natural regeneration rates. Often communities do rise to the challenge and evolve rules to protect the CPRs. But of course such evolution may not be feasible if appropriate institutions, clear property rights and technological availability are not there. Even when the natural resources upon which the poor depend are maintained and they are able to get ample fuel, fodder, fish, etc. from them, the poor can be victims of air and water pollution. It is estimated that in 1996 globally 2.2 million persons died prematurely due to indoor air pollution and 0.51 million due to outdoor air pollution. Improving urban air quality can relieve the poor of this burden of diseases and deaths. The impact of water pollution on the poor is equally, if not more severe. 1.4 billion persons in developing countries lack access to safe water and 2.9 billion have no access to adequate sanitation. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates 17 million deaths a year from infectious diseases. What is important to note is that with feasible environmental action significant reduction in the deaths and diseases is possible. These suggest that important actions that can reduce poverty and improve the environment include improving the extent and productivity of CPRs, promoting sustainable management of natural resources, establishing institutional structures that create incentives for appropriate behavior to use CPRs in sustainable ways, increasing productivity of public and private land, reducing air pollution, providing cleaner domestic fuels, providing clear water and adequate sanitation, improving solid waste management and reducing chemical pollution. UNDP projects have promoted many such actions. Many UNDP projects have sought to improve the environment and help the poor by improving the productivity of their own assets such as land, by enlarging and improving natural environmental resources including by improving the quality of air and water, and by providing sanitation and solid waste disposal facilities. All of these can increase the entitlements they can derive from the environment as well as the income they can generate from activities in the market. UNDP has also recognized the importance of stakeholder participation, of many small beginnings and of capacity building. The paper reviews some of these projects and their impacts. These projects seem to be, in general, reasonably successful in attaining their goals. They also create widespread awareness of problems of sustainable development. And they create a feeling of self-reliance.Yet it is not possible to answer some very important questions. By how much have the consumption (including that of public goods and environmental services) of the poor really improved? Was the improvement commensurate with the expenditure incurred? Unfortunately some difficulties prevent us from answering these questions [author]