Poverty, Development and the Environment

by Lyndi Lawson

I’m a bit of a bunny-hugger (and a tree-hugger, come to think of it) and while I’m baring my soul, I’m something of a people–hugger too.
So the relationship that exists between these three is one that bothers me. Not in a keep-me-awake-at-night kind of way (not much keeps me awake at night) but I keep it in the corner of my brain with all the other things that I don’t understand, and in philanthropic moments, I try to make sense of it all. There’s an interesting paradox, you see, that exists between poverty, development and the conservation of the natural environment. And it’s often overlooked.

There are two schools of thought. In the first, poor countries (and indeed poor communities within wealthy countries) are seen as the saviours of the environment, while rich countries are seen as the proponents of Mother Nature’s natural enemies; global warming and the disappearance of biodiversity. 
However inadvertent, this is true to a degree. Those existing at lower levels of the  development scale have a limited capacity for destruction. The damage they cause is a result of subsistence activities, and is thus limited in its quantity and intensity. Wealthy countries on the other hand, degrade the environment on a far greater scale. Great tracts of land are cleared for human settlement and the development of industry; manufacturers emit great quantities of smelly unpleasant gases into the atmosphere, polluting our lungs and hastening the galloping pace of climate change; non-renewables are guzzled by greedy consumers and ecosystems wither under the sheer pressure of it all. Sound logical to you?

Although it cannot be wholly denied, there are some inherent flaws in this theory. Well, maybe not flaws exactly, but there are certainly other factors that need to be taken into account. There is a need then to look at the converse (and incidentally more widely regarded) theory that poses the conservation of the natural environment as the domain of the wealthy. In economics this is known as the Environmental Kuznets Curve.

The proponents of this theory argue that poorer countries and poorer communities within developed countries contribute their fair share of degradation to the natural environment. This is largely because communities with no resources of their own have only the natural environment on which to rely. Wealthy countries are not perceived as damaging within themselves. Rather, it is the process of development that is seen as the problem, with a levelling out after income increases beyond a certain level. Beyond that, some indicators of environmental quality actually improve, fuelling the view that the road to conservation lies in development - also true to some degree. Wealthy societies can fund initiatives that combat degradation and according to Maslow only those who have met their basic needs are likely to feel concern for abstract concepts like environmental conservation. Whether this is true or not, is a debate in and of itself.

So in short, there is no simple answer. Poor living conditions do degrade the environment. The process of bettering them also does significant damage. While developed countries do less damage than poor ones in some regards, they do far more in others. Without a method to quantify the degree of damage, it is almost impossible to identify the greater of the two evils. Indeed

. Poorer nations have to find ways to develop sustainably, while developed countries need to seek some sort of absolution for their global sins, in environmental ‘redevelopment’.

That’s my opinion anyway.

2007/10/15 | permalink | comments (1) | trackbacks (0)

  Bookmark this on ... BlinkBits BlinkList Blogmarks Buddymarks CiteUlike Connotea del.icio.us Digg it FeedMarker feedmelinks Furl Give a Link Gravee igooi Lilisto Linkagogo Linkroll ma.gnolia Maple.nu Netvouz Onlywire RawSugar reddit Scuttle Shadows Simpy Sphinn Spurl tagtooga TalkDigger Wink Yahoo MyWeb