Sustainable development: A state in which the demands placed on the environment can be met
without reducing its capacity to allow all people to live well, now and in the
future. Sometimes 'environmental', 'social' and 'economic' are termed to be the
three pillars of sustainability. But
this is problematic as it suggests they are equivalent and can be traded.
Environmental sustainability is the context within which social and economic
life happen.
Poverty: A state or
condition in which a person or community lacks the financial resources and
essentials to enjoy a minimum standard of life and well-being that's considered
acceptable in society. Poverty status in the United States is assigned to
people that do not meet a certain threshold level set by the Department of
Health and Human Services.
What is development?
Development is often
assumedly socio-economic, political, science and technology biased. Arguably,
the concept of development is a complex one. Its difficulty is not only in
terms of definition/description but also in terms of measurement. Is
development to be measured by Gross National Product per capital (GNP), by the
GDP, or the Physical Quality of Life Index .If GDP were to be the measurement
as a mean average, it does not say anything about the distribution of total
income of its country. Thus some countries with very unequal income
distribution may have the higher GNPs per head in the world. And neither does
it capture the totality of the development situation of the country.
Development and poverty:
Literally it may be affirmed
that poverty and development are two sides to a coin; one presupposes and
challenges the other. Generally, in the West, it is the manifestation of
poverty, constraints, disease or accidents that propels it for progress. This
is the story behind inventions and technology. In Africa though, poverty is a
hindrance to progress. Lack of infrastructure, deep seated corruption
practices, and various forms of conflict, bad governance and poor health
facilities cannot promote a healthy population committed to work for progress
and development. Crudely, every person is unto himself/herself.
Both environmental
degradation and poverty alleviation are urgent global issues that have a lot in
common, but are often treated separately.
The Impact of Poverty on the Environment
Poverty and third
world debt has been shown to result in resource stripping just to survive or
pay off debts.
For example,
Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh have suffered from various environmental
problems such as increasingly devastating floods, often believed to be
resulting from large-scale deforestation.
Forests around the
world face increased pressures from timber companies, agricultural businesses,
and local populations that use forest resources.
Some
environmentalists, from rich nations especially, also raise concerns about
increasing populations placing excessive burdens on the world’s resources as
the current major source of environmental problems.
This makes for a
worrying situation for third world development and poverty alleviation. However,
an environment-only approach risks “blaming the victims.” While humans are
largely responsible for many problems of the planet today, not all humans have
the same impact on the environment. It is important to consider, for example,
that the consumption of just the world’s wealthiest fifth of humanity is so
much more than the rest of the world, as highlighted at the beginning.
Thus, putting emphasis
on population growth in this way is
perhaps over-simplistic. However, this does not mean we can be complacent about
future population burdens. Sustainability is critical for the world’s majority
to develop without following the environmentally damaging processes of the
world’s currently industrialized nations.
Also adding to the
complexity is that resource usage is not necessarily fixed. That is, while
there may be a finite amount of say oil in the ground, we may have not
discovered it all, and further, overtime the use of those resources may
increase in efficiency (or inefficiency). This means a planet could sustain a
high population (probably within some limits) but it is a combination of things
like how we use resources, for what purpose, how many, how the use of those
resources change over time, etc, that defines whether they are used
inefficiently or not and whether we will run out of them or not. In many parts
of the world the degradation of land and water resources is worsening while the
social and economic conditions of people are not being improved. In some parts
of the world, both poverty and environmental
degradation are increasing. One reason for this is the perception held by
some that the sustainable management of the environment and economic
development are competing priorities. While there are specific cases where
measures to end environmentally unsustainable actions will restrict human use
of environmental resources in the short term, over the long term
environmentally unsustainable land and water use will reduce the social and economic benefits to humans
provided by the environment. Thus, the environment should not be treated as a
competitor but as a core component of the natural resource base of human social
and economic development.. It also outlines aspects relevant to regional
security and provides elements for environmentally and economically sustainable
land management.
Consequence of
environmental degradation leads to intra-personal, interpersonal and communal
conflicts. These conflicts arise as a result of undue pressure on the physical environment, degradation, pollution,
resource depletion, unfair resource sharing based on conflicting values,
differing cultures and national interest, which make people and often neighbors’
to fight to take position of the leftover of the degradation and inadequate
resources. Environmental conflict situations in the Nigerian context include
conflicts arising from deforestation leading to erosion, flood, washing away of
surface soil of agricultural farmland and by so doing leaving the soil
infertile. Other areas are gas flaring and oil spillage with their attendant
consequences. Furthermore, desertification,
pollution and reckless waste dumping can also be mentioned.
When the environment
is unhealthy due to poverty and resources inadequacy the implication of
derivative difficulties arising there from, may be devastating, making
development almost impossible. In a poor environment, diseases such as
tuberculosis, influenza and meningitis are easily transmitted from one person
to another. Their spread is often helped by low resistance among inhabitants
due to malnutrition. Also, the concentration of smoke necessitated by a
combination of open fires, stove and coal or biomass fuels used for cooking and
heating contribute to serious respiratory problems especially among women and
children. In a poor environment, mosquitoes and tsetse flies are in abundance
in many places and they cause diseases. Drinking and using untreated water lead
to the spread of diarrhea and other diseases. Malaria and schistosomaiasis are
water related. Stagnant waters in gutters and open spaces in residential areas
are the usual habitat of mosquitoes whose bites cause malaria. Even a naturally
clean water supply in cities and towns may contain an element such as fluoride
which can be harmful. Water supply can be contaminated from lead and rusted
water pipes that are usually never changed in decades.
The Impact of Richer Nations on the Environment:
The relationship
between the rich and poor, and the impacts on the environment go deep.
Economics is meant to be about efficient allocation of resources to meet
everyone’s needs. However, international power politics and ideologies have
continued to influence policies in such a way that decision-making remains
concentrated in the hands of a few narrow interests. The result is that the
world’s resources are allocated to meet a few people’s wants, not everyone’s
needs. Excessive third world debt burden has meant that it has been harder to prioritize
on sustainable development. Unfair debt, imposed on the third world for decades
by the global institutions, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank
through their harsh Structural Adjustment programmes have opened up of
economies rapidly, in socially, politically, environmentally and economically
destructive ways, while requiring a prioritization on debt repayment and cut
backs on health, education and other critical services. They have encouraged
concentration on producing just a few cash crops and other commodities
primarily for export, using very environmentally damaging “industrial
agriculture”, which reduces biodiversity, requiring costly inputs such as
environmentally damaging pesticides and fertilizers to make up for the loss of
free services a diverse farm ecosystem
Conclusion:
In the industrialized
world any form of deficiency is considered a challenged for progress but in the
developing countries there is a symbiotic relation between development and
poverty. Poverty does not seem to adequately challenge the developing to embark
on the road to industrialization and progress. Poverty is in developing
countries; citizens may not be able to compete with others because of lack of
necessary capital, the technical-know-how and expertise. Symbiotically, without
development poverty may not be eradicated. The solution to the dilemmatic
situation in the continent is to confront the reality of poverty and challenges
of development simultaneously, nationally and internationally.
Also when there is
poverty and shortage of food, if there is no measures of hygienic food the
country or a society never developed. So for sustainable development it is
necessary that we first finished the poverty from world and our society.
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