Strategies for poverty reduction & environmental protection

["Ralph Chipman"<chipman@un.org>]

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     Ralph Chipman
     Division for Sustainable Development 
     United Nations
     
     
     I agree with the comments from Naresh Singh and the Environmental 
     Resources Consultancy.  We should not focus on the old views and 
     rhetoric of poverty and environment, as expressed for example by the 
     Brundtland Commission, but take a more forward-looking approach.  
     Picking up on some of the general comments from those two submissions, 
     and from Section 7 of the Overview Study, I might suggest the 
     following issues for further discussion and research.
     
     1.  Sociological research is needed into community social structures 
     and culture in areas with extensive poverty and environmental 
     degradation in order to better understand the relationships between 
     those local structures, the broader political-economic structures 
     around them, and the environment.  We should not assume that all 
     community structures are part of the solution; in many cases they are 
     a key part of the problem, serving to maintain gender and class 
     inequality, ethnic discrimination and political exclusion and 
     inhibiting sustainable development.  As mentioned in the Overview 
     Study, a focus for research might be: how can international 
     cooperation and national policies increase the negotiating power of 
     marginal groups?
     
     2.  Current poverty reduction strategies include improving access to 
     quality education and health care, improving drinking water, 
     sanitation and energy supplies, microcredit, and improving access to 
     transportation and communication.  Do these strategies generally 
     reduce environmental degradation, as the poverty-environment linkage 
     theories claim, or increase it, as the "environmental Kuznets curve" 
     theory suggests should result from higher incomes?
     
     3.  A few strategies address poverty and the environment 
     simultaneously.  Public works conservation programmes in India offer 
     minimum or sub-minimum wages for work such as water conservation and 
     afforestation.  These programmes, like microcredit programmes, attract 
     mostly women,thus addressing gender inequality as well as poverty and 
     the environment.  Providing access to electricity and clean fuel, 
     particularly using renewable energy sources, also addresses poverty 
     and the environment, especially the indoor environment. Are there 
     other such examples?  Effective programmes of this sort should be 
     publicized and efforts made to duplicate them elsewhere.
     
     4.  Empirically, the greatest strides in poverty reduction have 
     generally been made through rapid broad-based economic growth, 
     accompanied by expansions of education and health services, transport, 
     communications and market access, e.g. in Singapore (1972-82), 
     Malaysia (1973-87), Indonesia (1970-87), Brazil (1960-80).  Such rapid 
     growth, at least in its initial stages, has been accompanied by 
     environmental degradation, particularly in urban areas.  Clean up 
     occurs later, as illustrated by the "environmental Kuznets curve" (and 
     Singapore as a recent example).  How can the environmental degradation 
     best be reduced without reducing the economic growth and poverty 
     reduction?  Through ODA?  Direct foreign investment?  Support for 
     local NGOs concerned with the environment?
     
     5.  Are participatory, environmentally sustainable, community 
     development projects really an alternative to the economic growth 
     scenario, ideally with accompanying environmental protection policies, 
     for addressing extensive poverty on the national and international 
     scale?  What is the cost-effectiveness of internationally assisted 
     community development projects?
     
     These are a few questions stimulated by the Overview Study and the 
     discussion, and perhaps suggestions for an ongoing research programme 
     on poverty and the environment in developing countries.  I would like 
     to see other inputs or comments on these issues.
     



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