Title: Poverty, public policies and the environment
Abstract: This paper looks at the relationship / causality between human and environmental degradation. It suggests that the cause of environmental degradation may lie elsewhere, such as: (a) specific acts of public policy; (b) through the expansion of consumption demand for natural resources by growing populations; and (c) by the spread of urbanization. The links between poverty and renewable natural resource degradation, the paper argues, require evaluating the role of economic and institutional policies in altering labor and capital flows between and within regions. Three case studies from West Java (Indonesia), Ekiti-Akoko (S. Nigeria), and Gombe (N. Nigeria) are used to illustrate the linkages between poverty, public policies and renewable natural resource use. In all three, a diagnosis of the causal factors has been undertaken and the paper demonstrates that the linkages between poverty and the environment have been largely influenced by economic and institutional policies. The poor, like the non-poor, have utilized opportunities brought about by the spatial integration of economic activities, sometimes to the detriment, and at other times to the benefit of long-term renewable natural resource usage.
Publication Year: 1989
Publication Date: 1989-01-01
Language: en
Type: book
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Cited By Count: 26
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