Poverty is among the greatest environmental threats in the world?

Answer 1

At 1972 UN Conference on Human Environment in Stockholm, Indira Gandhi called poverty the "world's greatest environmental threat". He is referring to the lack of access to resources and capital (financial, social, human, physical and natural) that prevents the impoverished from making rational decisions about their use and maintenance of scarce resources, including grazing lands, forests and water. Poverty and the inability to access resources can lead to irrational decisions, such as overgrazing, deforestation, and the pollution of water sources, all in the name of sustainable livelihood.

Consider Garrett Hardin's theory of the "Tragedy of the Commons" (1968). He argues that common pool resources (such as public grazing grounds) will be used advantageously by each herder in order to maximize the benefit of their own herd (he used the example of adding more animals to the herd, until the land reached "maximum carrying capacity" and was destroyed through overgrazing).

His theory has never proven accurate, however. As Elinor Ostrom (Nobel Prize winner) and many others have proven, agriculturalists and those that make a living from the forest, when they have access to resources and capital, also put in place traditional means by which they govern use of the land, in the understanding that they need the land to sustain themselves.

It has only been in cases of poverty, such as the herders in Mongolia following the democratic transition, in which they find the destruction of the environment. For instance, following privatization in Mongolia, livestock distribution was unequal, with only a few receiving enough livestock to sustain their family, migrate to watering holes and proper foliage, and the finances/materials with which to build seasonal shelters for their herds. The poor herders mass migrated to major cities, usually the capital, in order to find second jobs or access markets. Their cattle have overgrazed the lands around and in the city, making the cattle unhealthy. They have also further polluted the river Tuul, which runs through the capital.