When people living in poverty are asked to identify their priorities, care for the environment or the need for sustainable development are rarely at the top of their lists. Housing, feeding and clothing the family, education for their children and care in their old age are much more significant concerns. Both production (or employment) and consumption patterns are determined more by these basic needs than by any consideration of their longer term impact. The poorest people are sometimes seen as complicit with those forms of economic activity in which the environmental costs of production are displaced onto the public purse...

Poorer people are attracted to more environmentally sustainable activities when they see that adopting them will enable them to improve their standards of living through the use of their own, self-directed, labour and through improved co-operation with other members of their community. For many, who have to make efficient use of whatever resources come to hand on a daily basis and who understand only too well the damage caused by money lenders, the idea of not mortgaging the future for today’s consumption seems no more than common sense.

But there are real barriers to making this common sense a reality....

It is a commonplace of much of the debate about sustainable development that these vested interests are now ‘globalised’ in a way that transcends the authority of individuals, local communities, national government’s or international treaties. The concentration of global trading powers in the hands of a relatively small group of around 500 companies is associated with increasing poverty and inequalities in both the developed and developing worlds as well as with major environmental degradations and the threatened exhaustion of irreplaceable natural resources. For some, the acquisition of power by ever smaller numbers of these companies has replaced the conventional history...

The vicious spiral of poverty and degradation, referred to as the poverty-environment nexus, is rooted in the absence of sustainable human development (SHD). Simply, SHD means development which is efficient, equitable and sustainable in terms of resource use, resource access and resource resilience. ‘Resources’, used in the generic sense refer to capital, human and environmental resources. In Pakistan, for example, low financial allocations for conservation and non-consultative and extractive management practices have led to increasing environmental degradation and pollution.

A cyclical, downward spiral defines the relationship between poverty and environmental degradation. In the first place, poverty increases the vulnerability of...

The primary forests in the Northern Areas and the North West Frontier Province (NFWP) have many important economic uses and are a source of livelihoods for communities. In addition, many ecological and environmental benefits and imperatives are associated with them. The data shows a rapid decline in both coverage and the quality of forest stands. Such deforestation has led to a spate of onsite and downstream ravages, such as biodiversity loss, erosion, flooding and dam sedimentation.

The root cause of deforestation and degradation lies in forest management practices, which have focused more on economic than on environmental utility. Such practices...

One country or one generation can impose environmental injustices upon another by taking more environmental resources than they are proportionately entitled to and leaving other countries to get by on very little. Developing countries also suffer from the appropriation of environmental resources by richer countries. The UK is one of the richest 20% of countries that use 80% of global environmental resources.

These injustices are also evident within the UK. Even in rich countries, there are major environmental problems which have profound impacts on people. These impacts are borne disproportionately — the available evidence strongly suggests that poor people suffer...

The World Summit on Social Development to be held in Johannesburg in 2002 aims to promote an integrated approach to the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. What is the relevance of this event to people suffering poverty and environmental degradation across the world? Since the Rio Summit in 1992 there has been a plethora of debate about how the values and principles expressed at this and subsequent summits should be realised but the extent of environmental degradation and the gap between the poorest and the wealthiest have continued to increase. Is there a political will to confront...