Poverty, Population and the Environment

In one line

Poverty causes environmental damage and environmental damage causes poverty, and neither statement is the whole truth on its own.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the relationship between poverty and environment is circular. Poverty compels the use of a resource beyond what it can bear, because a household with no alternative cuts wood, cultivates a slope and uses a contaminated source. Degradation of that resource makes the household poorer, because the poor depend most directly on the natural resource base. The Stockholm Declaration records the first half in its proclamation paragraph 4 and in Principle 9, and the Rio Declaration records the response in Principle 5, that eradicating poverty is an indispensable requirement for sustainable development.

The sentence

Indira Gandhi's address to the plenary of the Stockholm Conference in June 1972 is the source usually cited for the proposition that poverty is the greatest polluter. She put the developing world's case directly: that the environment cannot be improved in conditions of poverty, and that the poor countries could not be asked to remain poor in order that the rich might have a clean environment.

Attribute it correctly and state its substance rather than reproducing a form of words, because the sentence circulates in several versions and an examiner who knows the material will notice a misquotation. The substance is what matters and it is unmistakable.

What the instruments say

Stockholm proclamation paragraph 4. In the developing countries most of the environmental problems are caused by under-development. Millions continue to live far below the minimum levels required for a decent human existence, deprived of adequate food and clothing, shelter and education, health and sanitation. The developing countries must therefore direct their efforts to development, bearing in mind their priorities and the need to safeguard and improve the environment.

Stockholm Principle 9. Environmental deficiencies generated by the conditions of under-development and natural disasters pose grave problems, and can best be remedied by accelerated development through the transfer of substantial quantities of financial and technological assistance.

Rio Principle 5. All States and all people shall cooperate in the essential task of eradicating poverty as an indispensable requirement for sustainable development, in order to decrease the disparities in standards of living and better meet the needs of the majority of the people of the world.

And the Brundtland definition itself gives overriding priority to the essential needs of the world's poor.

Four instruments saying the same thing is a strong foundation for an answer, and quoting two of them is better than describing all four.

Is it true

An answer that repeats the proposition without examining it is incomplete, and MU's questions on this module reward the examination.