Environmental Degradation and Poverty

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Environmental degradation has been on increase, thus raising the concern all over the world on how to compact it. It is defined as the declination of the environmental value in its quality. It is however important to understand the causes of the environmental degradation and the ways to reduce them, which will promote the improvement of the environmental quality.

Human activities are the major cause of this degradation, which are highly associated with poverty and dependence. Poverty is the state of deficiency in affording the basic material needs with ease thus leading to over dependence on the available resources for a short term intervention. This paper therefore is a discussion which illustrates the relationship between poverty and dependence to the environmental degradation (Ali-Akpajiak & Pyke, 2003).

To begin with, as a result of poverty, people exert pressure on the available natural resources as an outcome of population increase, inadequate access to the natural resources, or access to the poor value and fragile lands for the investments. For instance there are many cases where people have carried mining activities near the water sources.

They do this to look for the means of survival but on the other hard they are polluting the water sources thus degrading their quality as the dust particles gets into the water. Therefore, poverty and dependence leads to environmental degradation and when the environment is degraded then the effects of this degradation is much felt by the poor “some quality inherent in the condition of poverty results in environmental degradation in the broad majority of social, environmental and policy contexts” (Prakash, 1997 pp 3).

In search of the means to survive, the poor cuts down trees in the forest for timber and charcoal for sale or individual direct use. They lack the knowledge on how they can use natural resources such as solar and wind energy for fuel and equipments which can help them to utilize these resources as fuels.

Trees are also harvested for art crafts as an economic way to promote the survival by the poor. Forest is known as important watershed in that it is the source of streams and rivers for the continual replenishment. Trees are also important in carbon sinkers thus cutting down of trees by whichever reason promotes increase of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere thus increasing the greenhouse effect and global warming.

Global warming cause drought thus the land cannot produce as expected as its quality is already degraded (Killick, Steve & White, 2001). The poor have insufficient access to the proper medical services. They end up using trees in the forest as medicines thus cutting them down. As the poor look for settlements they engage themselves to the acts of clearing of forest. Erosion increases as a result of clearing of these trees thus degrading the soil.

There has been increased turn of wetland areas into agricultural land by clearing the bush that is found in the wetlands or turning them into settlement. They clear the vegetation in most cases by burning which does not only kill the organisms in the soil but also pollutes the air thus degrading the soil and the air quality.

When people have limited land access as a result of poverty they end up degrading the watersheds near them. This is through the agricultural activities where most of them farm in the river banks and destroying the buffer zones which lead to an increased soil erosion thus degrading the quality of the environment on buffer zones.

Poor people lack environmental education where they do their washing in the rivers thus polluting the water and sometimes and dumping of waste in the rivers (Scherr, 1999). They build their pit latrines near water resources which do not only pollute the underground water but also pollutes the surface water through infiltration and decreasing its quality.

Overgrazing is very high in the poor communities where the grazing lands are destructed. They end up keeping many animals as they may not have any other source of income. The land becomes bare consequently, increase of soil erosion either by wind or by rain water. Also when the land becomes bare and unproductive, the grazing communities move in to more productive land in search of pasture where they also overgraze and leave it bear thus causing continuous degradation from one place to another.

It is considered hard for the poor countries to attain proper managerial practices thus increase of environment degradation. Natural resources are highly threatened by the increase in population especially in the poor families. Since the land resource is limited they end up subdividing the land into smaller pieces and they over cultivate the same thus degrading the soil quality (McNicoll, 2010).

Natural resource over exploitation is the only last resort by the poor societies. Even though they are not deliberately determined to degrade the environment which they live in but they lack resources to evade degrading it. When the poor find it hand to attain adequate fuel they end up using the biomass fuel such as the animal dung and crop residues. These materials improve the soil fertility and so non-replenishment leads to exhaustion of the soil and continual degradation of land.

There is an immediate trade-off promoted by poverty forces between cooking fuel demands and the manure which replenish the nutrients used up from the soil during cultivation. They are however said to be ignorant on promoting environmental sustainability as their present lives matters a lot. The exploitation of land extremely to exhaustion in just for one simple reason: no intended interest in safeguarding an asset which is not they possession.

Scherr’s (1999) study found that:

The poor are implicated in only a part of this degradation and its consequences. Wealthier farmers, agricultural investors, and multinational corporations typically control much more total land area than the poor, and have played a prominent role in large-scale clearing of natural vegetation, over-use of agro-chemicals, large-scale degradation of grazing lands, over-exploitation of soils for export production. (par 6).

In conclusion, it is believed that as human beings become poorer they exert excessive pressure to the natural resources. This results into decreased quality of air, water, and soil. They always lack any means of surviving thus depending only on available natural resources. The consequential result of their activities is the environmental degradation which increases more poverty.

Even though there are other causes of environment degradation such as population increase, urbanization and institutional factors, poverty is behind them as the constraining factor. For instance, when the poor communities strive to develop in their economy through urbanization they end up using poor technologies as they are limited to the right technology on inadequacy of funds. Poverty therefore, cannot be separated from environmental degradation a major environmental problem.

They are intertwined in their state where one worsens the other. For the promotion of environmental sustainability to be achieved then, poverty must be alleviated first as it is one of the leading factor that leads to environmental degradation, “substantive integration directly addresses the real world problems to which sustainable development was intended to respond- continuing environmental degradation and growing global poverty (Institute& John, 2002 pp 52).

References

Ali-Akpajiak, S., & Pyke, T. (2003). Measuring poverty in Nigeria. New York: Oxfam.

Institute, E., & John C. (2002). Stumbling toward sustainability. Mexico: Environmental Law Institute.

Killick, T., Steve, K., & White, H., (2001). African poverty at the millennium: causes, complexities, and challenges. New York: World Bank Publications.

McNicoll, G. (2010). Population and Poverty: the Policy Issues, Part 1. Web.

Prakash, S. (1997). Poverty and Environment: Linkages in Mountains and Uplands: Reflection on the ‘Poverty Trap’ Thesis – 8131iied. New York: IIED.

Scherr, S. (1999). Poverty-Environment Interactions in Agriculture: Key Factors and Policy Implications. Web.

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Environmental Degradation and Poverty

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