Poverty-Environment debate

The labouring poor, to use a vulgar expression, seem always to live from hand to mouth. Their present wants employ their whole attention, and they seldom think of the future. (Thomas Malthus 1798)

The notion that there is a relationship between poverty and environmental degradation is long standing yet constantly being rediscovered and reinvented. Malthus indirectly suggested that the poor are more likely to engage in environmentally deteriorate behaviour because they are incapable of thinking beyond the next meal. This idea was further embraced by the colonial powers in Africa and Asia who frequently identified poor local peasants as key causes of soil degradation, wasteful burning practices and deforestation (Baker 1983, Fairhead and Leach 1996).

The poverty environmental degradation idea has taken on renewed vigour since the rise of the sustainable development concept in the late 1980, (Lele 1991; Bryant 1997). Within the context of this discourse poverty and environmental degradation has been described as a two way interactive process. According to the Brundtland report, a document that popularized the sustainable development concept, many parts of the world are caught in a vicious downward spiral. Poor people are forced to over use environmental resources to survive from day to day, and their impoverishment of their environment further impoverishes them , making their survival ever more uncertain and difficult (WCED 1987, 27). Those who praise the Brundtland report say that it defiantly integrated concerns for conservation and development, permanently changing the course of 60s and 70s environmental thinking that viewed industrialization and development as antithetical to conservation (Mellor 88; Beckerman 1992). This integration helped to appease southern nations that were primarily concerned about development, as well as northern environmentalists who increasingly sought to address environmental issues in the global south.

Critics suggest that Brundtland, and subsequent UN meetings, have only allowed the neo-liberal economic agenda to increasingly co-opt environment and development thinking, not to mention the discourse regarding poverty - environment interactions (Bryant 97; Sueddon 2000; Logan 2004).

Indeed, the perspective of poverty environmental interactions as a downward spiral or vicious circle has been reiterated by a multitude of disciplines with different perspectives.

In west Africa, development practitioners have employed the notion of poverty-induced environmental degradation to argue that the continued expansion of export-oriented cotton production is the best way to reduce poverty and encourage conservation in the region because of the wealth it would generate for potential environmental efforts (Moseley 2004).

Geographers elaborate on an increasingly accepted and inter disciplinary approach known as political ecology. Political ecology, or the political economy of human environment interactions seems a particularly well suited approach for examining the poverty-environment interface given its attention to power, scale and discourse. With its emphasis on political economy, much new work on poverty-environment interactions moves away from a stylized view of the relationship, but brings to bear new views of agency, contingency as well as globalized processes.

The way in which we define and conceptualize poverty influences Poverty-Environment analyses. The conception of poverty, defined in terms of monetary wealth and income (GDP/GNP per capita) are fairly limited in many developing country contexts where a high proportion of production and transfers often take place outside the formal economy and where there are significant regional and inter-societal differences. In many rural contexts, for example, rather than cash savings and earnings, wealth is often reflected in cattle holdings, the quality of agricultural implements housing materials, labour resources, access to land, and the ability of the household to produce food. Although, the poor are those less influenced by an external economy and often more apt to manage resources based on local, rather than external demands.

Paradoxically, this is often a recipe for a more sustainable system as traditional subsistence farmers have shown a significant in-situ capacity for sound environmental management and successful adaptation in the face of environmental change. Because poor people are not a homogeneous group, the location and level of poverty is an important determinant of a household’s ability to respond to environment stresses and shocks (UNDP, 1999). Two different types of poverty, structural poverty and conjunctural poverty have different implications for how a household deals with shocks. Structural poverty is long term in nature, and can be apparent as lack of land or labour, while conjunctural poverty represents poverty into which ordinary people can be temporarily thrown in times of crisis and is caused by specific shocks such as climate or political insecurity. In many instances the poor are the most vulnerable and are more deeply affected by climatic shocks or natural disasters.