Poverty & environment discussion group

[camilla.toulmin@iied.org]

     COMMENTS ON POVERTY & ENVIRONMENT.
     
     Camilla Toulmin, IIED Drylands (sorry! an ecoregion....)
     
     Thank you for including me in this email discussion.  I am responding 
     from an agricultural/ rural land use viewpoint. I have forwarded the 
     paper to my urban colleagues to respond on those issues.
     I particularly enjoyed Chipman's comments many of which I agreed with.
     I have a number of comments, many of which are supportive of the 
     arguments being made in this paper and some which would query some of 
     the language and methods.
     
     1. It worries me greatly to hear that the dominant view in the 
     environment & development community is one which continues to link 
     poverty and the environment in a downward spiral.  I had thought we 
     had moved on from here.  
     But perhaps this paper polarises views for the purposes of creating a 
     clearer argument, which is fine if you are conducting an academic 
     debate.  It becomes more problematic if you are trying also to move 
     the debate into a different world, where setting the terms of the 
     argument in such a polar fashion may actively put people off.  
     There is no single `orthodox' view, so far as I can see.
     Surely the important question to ask is: under what conditions does 
     this kind of process linking poverty and degradation occur, and under 
     what circumstances does a very different set of responses develop?  To 
     what extent are people are seen as passive victims, unable to adapt 
     and respond in positive fashion to the circumstances in which they 
     find themselves? This debate has much in common with `gap analysis' 
     regarding resources such as fuelwood, which usually extrapolates a set 
     of trends into the future with no account taken of the fact that 
     people usually adapt and change their behaviour when scarcity sets in, 
     prices change, new opportunities develop, etc.
     On page 15: the paper notes `it is necessary to ask under what 
     circumstances may the orthodox link between poverty and environment be 
     found to operate'.  This is the question that needs further 
     amplification and attention.
     
     2. The livelihoods approach is important in setting questions of 
     natural resource/ land/ environmental management within the broader 
     set of choices faced by rural people. I feel less convinced of the 
     `entitlements approach' as a means to provide insight about what is 
     happening.  I think it is mainly the term itself which I find 
     confusing, rather than helping clarify the issues.  It would be better 
     to unpack the term `environmental entitlements' into everyday language 
     if greater engagement with policy makers and practitioners is to be 
     achieved.  Entitlements suggests for me something which you have a 
     right to (in a normative sense), which is not quite the same as what 
     is being described here which is the bundle of arrangements and 
     institutions by which people gain access to different kinds of 
     resource.
     
     3. Are poor people able to adopt protective mechanisms and safeguard 
     the resources on which some part of their livelihoods are based? - 
     well it all depends, doesn't it?  There is no guarantee that local 
     determination of environmental problems and local negotiation will 
     guarantee favourable outcomes for poor people.
     
     4. The view that poverty eradication must come first and then 
     environmental protection is not one which I encounter in the field of 
     drylands management since the issue of how to support more sustainable 
     livelihoods for people in these environments tends to be inextricably 
     entwined with management of the basic environment - viz. soils, 
     biomass, water.
     
     5. The paper rightly notes that terms like `community' are used 
     indiscriminately to mean a wide variety of things, just like 
     `participation'.  I think that people are gradually moving towards an 
     understanding of differentiation and how different people and 
     interests exist and interact within a `community'.  
     
     6.  I found the section on poverty a useful summary, with its emphasis 
     on vulnerability and processes of impoverishment and improvement.  
     
     7. I don't quite understand the aversion to `ecoregions'.  Maybe I am 
     missing something.  Surely this is useful shorthand for encapsulating 
     certain characteristics of the agro-ecosystem?  All generalisations 
     have their drawbacks but also certain advantages in terms of enabling 
     us to work with broad concepts.  I am not sure how we gain anything 
     from talking of `people in places'.
     
     I would recommend trying to summarise certain elements of the argument 
     in simple form. I made a start with the following:
     
     * `communities' are made up of a wide range of people, rich/poor, 
     old/young, female/male.......
     * people can improve as well as degrade the environment, if the 
     broader conditions are right
     * there is a lot of local wisdom regarding management of the 
     environment in rural societies, without which they would have gone out 
     of business generations ago. It makes sense to build on this
     * it is not only the overall availability of land and other NRs which 
     count, but also the rules and rights through which people gain access 
     to these resources.
     * support to local institutions is a good place to start, rather than 
     assuming that new institutions must be created. However, local 
     institutional arrangements do not guarantee access for all to 
     resources of value and may discriminate systematically against certain 
     weaker groups
     
     Minor items:
     
     · Nice new article on mapping movement of the desert edge by Nicholson 
     et al (1998) for those of you interested in the desertification 
     debate. Bull American Meterological Society 79(5):815-829.
     · p34-5 cf. forestry legislation for Guinea. New forestry legislation 
     for Mali should be providing farmers with rights to plant and harvest 
     trees on their own land.
      
     IIED-Drylands Programme  
     4 Hanover Street, Edinburgh EH2 2EN, UK. 
     Tel: +44 131 624 7040/ Fax:+44 131 624 7050
     E.mail: drylands@iied.org
     
** Please note that attachments sent to IIED should be
   in either Microsoft Word 6 or plain text format **


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this message are solely those of the author; they do not necessary reflect the views of the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) or the European Commission (EC).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------