IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature

Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) are at the heart of a new anti-poverty framework announced by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1999. They are intended to ensure that debt relief provided under the enhanced Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, and concessional loans from the international financial institutions, help to reduce poverty in the poorest, most indebted developing countries.

Wide-spread absolute poverty is a fundamental obstacle to sustainable development and hence the poverty-conservation focus that PRSPs have brought to national economic planning is very welcome, as is the opening up of policy-making to civil society (although the representation of poor people in the process remains sub-optimal). The UN Secretary General’s report In Larger Freedom states that as part of their national strategies countries “should adopt time-bound environmental targets, particularly for such priorities as forest replanting, integrated water resources management, ecosystem preservation and curbing pollution. To achieve targets, increased investments in environmental management need to be accompanied by broad policy reforms. Progress also depends on sector strategies, including strategies for agriculture, infrastructure, forestry, fisheries, energy and transport, which all require environmental safeguards. Further, improving access to modern energy services is critical for both reducing poverty and protecting the environment. There is also a need to ensure that enhancing access to safe drinking water and sanitation forms a part of development strategies”.

However, to date this has only been observed in a very few countries and implementation remains slow, as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) concludes, poverty reduction strategies … “strongly shape national development priorities, but in general these have not taken into account the importance of ecosystems to improving the basic human capabilities of the poorest.” 

This is despite the fact that the poorest countries are largely biomass-based subsistence economies, in which the rural poor form a high percentage of the population. Depleting environmental resources, ill defined property rights and erosion of local commons put a tremendous pressure on poor rural households, who depend on natural resources for subsistence, income generation, cost saving, and risk mitigation. Additionally, natural resources provide valuable environmental services to sectors like agriculture, livestock, fishery, forestry, energy, tourism, potable water, and so on. In fact, natural resource degradation adversely affects the health and growth of these sectors. Therefore it is vital that the vision encapsulated in the Secretary General’s report is implemented in practise.