Ecology drive to stop poverty urged

17 September 2009 07:11pm

Efforts to reduce poverty across the world will fail without measures to halt destruction of the environment and loss of wildlife, leading scientists have warned.

The experts said targets to halt biodiversity loss by 2010 are set to be missed and the failure could undermine goals to end hunger and poverty and boost education and health by the middle of the next decade.

The experts, led by economist Professor Jeffrey Sachs and including chief government scientist Professor John Beddington and researchers from British universities and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), said the links between development and the environment were complex.

But efforts to tackle the root causes of both poverty and wildlife loss could produce "win-win" outcomes, they wrote in the journal Science.

For example, reducing the pressures of a growing population by promoting contraception in poor areas could alleviate poverty and support conservation efforts. And with growing global problems such as climate change, population growth and over-consumption of natural resources, conservation and development agendas need to be more closely integrated, they said.

Schemes which use existing land more efficiently for agriculture, secure better access to seeds and technology or provide finance to help poor countries cope with climate change and prevent deforestation will all have positive benefits for both the environment and people's wellbeing.

Dr Kate Jones, senior research fellow at ZSL, said while conservationists and anti-poverty experts might not, in the past, have been able to see what "save the child has to do with save the panda", many of the root causes of poverty and environmental damage were the same.

"One of the big factors is overpopulation and consumption is really high, which is causing deforestation, fisheries to be over-exploited and too much pollution going into oceans," she said.

She said the poorest people were those dependent on the land, for example subsistence farmers, and once the environment was degraded they were the ones hardest hit by the absence of natural resources such as fish.

Professor Jonathan Baillie, director of conservation at ZSL, said: "Many of the fundamental causes of poverty and environmental degradation are the same - such as pressures caused by unsustainable human population growth. The conservation and development communities need to focus on solutions that will provide win-win outcomes for all life on this planet."

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