37. Essay Writing Format, structure and Examples. ‘POVERTY, POPULATION AND ENVIRONMENT’

POVERTY, POPULATION AND ENVIRONMENT

INTRODUCTION: The state of the economy, poverty and environment are Inextricably linked In developing countries where the entire economy is based on natural resources. Economic deprivation and environmental degradation reinforce one another in a vicious cycle. Population growth also has an adverse impact on the mosaic and environmental resources.

DEVELOPMENT OF THOUGHT: The ‘Earth Summit’ held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 came up with a comprehensive programme of action to promote environmentally sound and sustainable development in the world. But it failed to address a key issue in environment-poverty. It is estimated that 800 million people in the Asian and Pacific region are struggling to survive on less than a dollar a day and of these a total number of 690 million or 21.5% of the population of developing Asia live in Asia. More than 90% of these 690 million live in India. In Indonesia where 7.5% of the population live on less than $1 a day but 52% survive on less than $ 2 a day. The poor not only suffer from environmental damage but they have become a major cause of ecological decline themselves as a result of population growth and inequitable development patterns. We must address poverty as a key issue in the environment and development and give top priority to stop the vicious cycle. The relationship between environment and population is no less important. The population has a direct impact both on poverty levels and the environment. Hence there is an urgent need to integrate policies on population, poverty and environment.

CONCLUSION: Not much has been done to preserve the environment, which is the mainstay of our development activities. In the race for growth, our environment has been subjected to constant damage. The basic approach to follow is sustainable development and an integrated approach to the problems of poverty, population and environment.

 In 1992 at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit five major agreements were signed by the participating governments. These were: (a) The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development in the form of 27 principles on environment and development; (b) Agenda 21, a blueprint for sustainable development into the 21st century; (c) the declaration on forest principles, a statement that calls for multiple use of the world forests; (d) the climate change convention, signed by 163 governments: and (e) the Convention on Biological Diversity signed by 160 governments.

Agenda 21 outlines a comprehensive programme of action to promote environmentally sound and sustainable development in the world. The Agenda seeks to promote international cooperation (especially between North and South) in order to accelerate sustainable development in developing countries. Though much was said about poverty in Agenda 21, the eradication of poverty, hunger, greater equity in income distribution and development of human resources remain major challenges everywhere. The two conventions on Climate and Biological Diversity hardly addressed the key issue for two-thirds of the world’s populations: Poverty. The debate on desertification has for too long been focused on the physical environment to understand the process of desertification and its interaction with climate change, soil erosion, deforestation and drought. This issue must be broadened to include the eradication of poverty and to link humans and the cause of desertification. In order to survive, the poor are forced to engage in economic activities that are unsustainable. The interaction of poverty and environmental destruction sets off a downward spiral of ecological deterioration that threatens the physical security, economic well-being and health of millions of people. The problem of poverty is so enormous that developing countries cannot solve it with domestic resources alone. World Environment Day 1993 takes as its theme the relationship between poverty and the environment.

Poverty is a complex multidimensional problem, with both national and international origins. It is far more than an economic condition. Though traditionally measured in terms of income, poverty embraces a whole range of circumstances, including lack of access to information and to basic services such as minimum nutritionally adequate diet, primary health care and education;- lack of control over resources; subordination to higher social and economic classes; loss of cultural identity; destruction of traditional ways and knowledge; and utter insecurity in the face of changing circumstances. Poor people become marginalised and suffer from exploitation and the loss of human dignity. No one solution will apply globally; country-specific programmes are crucial.

The issues of poverty and marginality are fundamental to environment and development. Some people remain poor for most of, or all their lives (chronic poverty), while for others poverty is only experienced during some stages of the individual life-cycle (cyclical poverty) or during certain months of the year (seasonal poverty). Poverty is not confined to the Third World and has increased in the industrialized countries.

The first World Rural Poverty Report (1992) on 144 developing countries, issued by UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) shows that the number of rural poor has increased to nearly one billion people today, despite more than 40 years of international development assistance. The report describes three major trends that could make the situation even worse in the coming years: (i) world population is expected to grow to 8.5 billion by the year 2025, of whom 7.1 billion will be in the developing countries, a 74 per cent increase in those nations; (ii) landlessness is spreading at a rate of 3.5 per cent yearly, especially in Asia and parts of Africa and Latin America; and (iii) the rapid increase in the incidence of rural households headed by women, which now number over 75 million. Bolivia ranks as the nation with the highest percentage of rural poor, with 97 per cent of its rural population classified as living below the poverty line. Malawi has the second highest percentage, at 90 per cent, followed by Bangladesh (86 per cent), Zambia (80 per cent), Peru (75 per cent), Brazil (73 per cent) and the Philippines (64 per cent.)

The World Development Report 2005 estimates that 1.2 billion people South and East Asia contain the largest no. of people in income poverty, though 10th regions have recently made impressive gains. One in every five on Earth-survive on less than $ 1 day. Another 2.7 billion struggle to survive on less than two dollars per day. .1.9 billion or 60% of developing Asia live in $ 2 a day. During the 1990s the share of people suffering from extreme poverty fell from 30% to 23%.-But with the growing world population, the number fell by just 123 million a small fraction of progress needed to eliminate poverty. More than 800 million people go to bed hungry every day 300 million are children. Every 3.6 seconds another person dies of starvation.

While urban poverty is growing, the rural poor still account for over 80 per cent of the total number of poor people, in the surveyed countries. The most important groups of rural poor are made up of smallholder farmers (those who have less than three hectares of cropland) and the landless, fishermen, pastoral nomads and indigenous ethnic groups. The five nations with the worst-off rural populations, based on IFAD’s analysis, are Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Mauritania and Sudan. Some nations have experienced share jumps in the percentage of their rural poor in the past 20 years. In Sri Lanka, this jumped from 13 to 46 per cent between 1965 and 1988; in Zambia, from 52 to 80 per cent; Mali, from 48 to 60 per cent; Brazil, from 66 to 73 per cent; and Kenya, from 40 to 55 per cent. This shows that the development programmes over the past 40 years failed in large part because they were based on a number of flawed assumptions.

An important aspect of the distribution of world’s poor is that there are large concentrations in areas which are ecologically fragile These are lands which naturally have a low agricultural potential and they are also lacking in infrastructure and technology. Here, additional demographic pressure and inappropriate agricultural practices result in greater environmental degradation and increased poverty.

The link between the state of the economy, poverty and the environment is evident in developing countries where the entire economy is based on natural resources and the export of raw materials and minerals. Many developing countries have been forced to adopt the World Bank and IMF designed Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) in order to liberalize their economies. These programmes have been fuelling poverty by encouraging agricultural exports at the expense of food for local consumption.

 Biomass combustion in Asia and Africa is currently estimated to contribute, on average, 35 per cent of energy annually, but in some countries, it makes up much more, e.g. Nepal (94 per cent), Malawi (93 per cent), Tanzania (92 per cent), Burkino Faso (96 per cent). Nigeria (82 per cent) and Kenya (71 per cent). The current rate of deforestation means that by the year 2000. about 2.7 billion people will be short of firewood to cook their daily meal. As much as 20 million hectares of tropical forest lost each year, and between 30 and 40 per cent of the world’s 5 billion people are dependent on wood for cooking and heating.

Rural poverty is growing faster than the world population, and women are especially hard to hit. Of the billion people living below the poverty line in the developing world, nearly 60 per cent are women. Over the past two decades, their numbers have increased by 50 per cent, as compared to a 30 per cent increase for men. In Asia alone, the number of poor rural women has reached 374 million, more than the total population of Western Europe.

Even though access to food has been recognised as a basic human right, hunger and malnutrition continue to be serious problems for many people in many countries. In 1974, the World Food Conference declared the inalienable right of every man woman and child to be free from hunger and malnutrition. Yet in 1992, more than 20 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa face exceptional food emergencies and more than 40 million Africans confront the threat of famine. All estimates concur that South Asia, particularly India and Bangladesh, holds a large proportion of the developing world’s food-deficient, or food-insecure people followed by East Asia and Sub Saharan Africa.

The battle against poverty has simply made little headway. Nearly one out of every three people in the developing world-some 1.2 billion people in all—still do not have access to a safe and reliable water supply for their daily needs. More than 2.6 billion people over 40% of the world population do not have basic sanitation and more than one billion people still use unsafe sources of drinking water. The poor not only suffer from environmental damage but they have become a major cause of ecological decline themselves as they have been pushed on to marginal land by population growth and inequitable development patterns. Economic deprivation and environmental degradation have thus come to reinforce one another in a vicious cycle that perpetuates destitution in many developing countries.

The Global Forum on Environment and Poverty (GFEP), based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, has emerged as the leading network to address poverty as the main cause of environmental degradation. The forum has demanded that (a) a global convention on poverty be started immediately; (b) the peace dividend in a post-cold war era must be assessed and redirected/towards global poverty eradication; (c) the rich must pay the full ecological costs of their consumption; and (d)all people, including the poor, must have equal rights to global commons including the atmosphere and the oceans.

The IFAD recommends a new development model based on three fundamental propositions; (i) sustainable rural development starts with, rather than ends with, poverty alleviation; (ii) poverty is essentially a production problem and poverty alleviation is an investment; and (iii) the poor themselves are the primary force that can produce change. The new model explains that the rural poor, with the proper resources and with political power, can act as a powerful engine for the enrichment of society as a whole. The crucial point is that if societies adopt the IFAD model, they will not need massive infusions of foreign aid, but instead, rural communities will generate their own savings that will then be invested in local production.

The theme of 1993 to break away from the poverty trap is of pivotal importance in the challenges ahead. We must address poverty as a key issue in environment and development, and give top priority to stop the vicious cycle.

The issue of population is no less important to poverty and the environment. Fertility in the developing world today averages around 2.9 children per woman. The world population will reach 6.5 billion by July 2005 and despite lower expected fertility rates is likely to reach 9.1 billion by 2050, according to UNDP. There is an urgent need to integrate environmental and population policies because poverty, population, natural resources and environment are closely related. But unfortunately, the concept has still not been accepted by political leaders, officials and planners.

The relationship between environment and population is reciprocal. Unchecked population growth affects environmental quality and resources. On the other hand, changes in resource availability and environmental quality affect the lives of people in many ways—their health, income, living standards etc.

 Linkages between population pressures and deforestation, biological diversity, water supply, soil erosion and urban pollution are extremely relevant to national policymakers and development planners. Here too, there is a need to examine the requirement for policy-relevant, country-specific new research. Both environmental and population policies would benefit from a closer interaction, as the problems of poverty, population, natural resources and environment are so closely intertwined. Although there are practical difficulties involved, there are important benefits to be gained from breaking through the vertical sector approaches and designing programmes which are mutually reinforcing.

The consequences of ignoring population, environmental and natural resources factors will be disastrous and it is imperative that the political leadership realise the urgency of the problem. The problem is short-sightedness and the tendency to focus on immediate crisis and policies that yield visible and fast short-run results. UN agencies and non-governmental organisations have a responsibility to bring the long term perspective to the attention of political leaders.

The importance of an enlightened public opinion as a stimulus to government action need not be over-emphasised. The government should encourage the work of non-governmental organisations, universities and research institutes to promote awareness of these subjects. Environment and population agencies, though different in their expertise, could take up complementary activities capitalising on their particular specialisation.

For instance, the World Wildlife Fund, concerned primarily with the preservation of wildlife, is developing innovative joint projects with family planning groups in Nepal and Thailand tinder its new wildlands and human needs programme. Indeed those concerned with environment and population issues have a lot in common and also a potential for working together to conserve this bountiful planet.

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