Introduction

This book is based on the experience of a range of national and international non-government organisations (NGOs) that have spent several years exploring the interdependency between environmental change and poverty alleviation. It draws on a number of case-histories from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and also on theoretical work by academics with strong links to development practice. It is a book for development professionals – for those engaged in helping to improve the plight of poor, deprived, excluded, or oppressed people. It aims to enhance their learning in the field of environment and development, or sustainable development in practice.

This first chapter explains briefly what the book is about. It defines environment and livelihoods, and highlights some of the main reasons why it was written.

People and environments

Environments are contested. Different people see them differently, have different interests in them, and have different relationships with them. In September 1992 a meeting in Managua of representatives of NGOs and grassroots groups from Central America discussed the meaning of environment, and produced the following:

Environment is both Nature and Society, which relate to each other and coexist. In the environment we find forests, human beings, land, mountains, water, air, animals, etc., which are mutually inter-relating. This relationship can be good or bad. It is good when human beings can make adequate use of other environmental components, like water, forest, and air. It is bad when humankind has destroyed them (for example with deforestation), or when a few people appropriate resources and thus endanger our survival and reproduction. That is ivhy we need conservation, equity between human beings, and harmony between human beings and Nature.

People depend on environmental resources – and deprived, excluded, or poor communities, both rural and urban, particularly so. The statement quoted above does not stress the exploitation of resources or (economic) growth: it emphasises equality instead. It talks of harmony between people and nature, and, significantly, of a whole entity and of connections between the parts that make up that whole: the definition incorporates connections between social development and natural-resource conservation.

It is striking that the participants at the meeting separated 'nature' from 'society': in other words, they saw people as different from their natural environments. That is not a universal view, for some belief systems hold that people are as 'natural' as plants or rocks. In fact, in some religious traditions the concept of 'nature' is similar to the notion of God in others. However, the participants stressed the interrelationship between nature and society and expressed a high level of concern for environmental resources, which suggests that they regarded environments as more than merely useful resources that might be controlled and exploited. They suggested that humanity has responsibilities for the relationship between society and nature, and (implicitly) responsibilities for the future of the natural environment and for future generations of people.

This definition of 'environment' includes people and their relationships and the natural world within one whole entity, called environment. For some, this concept is unhelpful or unnecessarily complicated. Dictionaries usually define environment as 'surroundings of human beings', and thus exclude people from environment. Indeed, many people who use the word 'environment' exclude themselves and others from that notion, consciously or subconsciously. The use of the word in development circles has, however, broadened its meaning, and it has now come very close to the definition agreed by the participants in the meeting in Managua.

This book argues that it is useful to think of environment broadly, and to include people and social relationships. 'Environment' thus becomes a vehicle for analysing and describing relationships between people and their surroundings, now and in the future. Nevertheless, the word is used in several places in its narrower meaning of 'surroundings', in particular when I speak of environment? in the plural – and the context will make that clear. Nature can be seen as both broader and narrower than mere natural resources: it encompasses life (including human life) and thus could involve relationships between human beings too. In this text, 'nature' will be used to denote something separate from society and social relations, unless otherwise stated. Nature is something both rural and urban, contrary to popular perception: few people who 'seek communion with nature' expect to find it on the street corner of an inner city. However, air, water, and (for example) earthquakes are obviously important to the survival of human settlements, and none of those is created by people.

Poor, excluded, or deprived people often depend on their environments for survival, and sometimes they fall victim to environmental disasters. Some argue that poverty is an important cause of the global environmental crisis, and others argue that it is exactly the other way around: that environmental degradation, combined with a lack of environmental rights, is the main cause of poverty. True or untrue, much has been written on the relationships between poverty and environmental change, by development professionals, activists, and academics.

The livelihood opportunities of poor, excluded, or deprived people are closely linked to questions of environmental sustainability, and looking at one without looking at the other does not make any sense. Different people have different interests, powers, and capabilities to improve their chances of survival and their livelihoods. Indeed, the concept of 'sustainable livelihoods' is central to this book, and is defined and explained in detail in chapter 3. 'Livelihoods' are also interpreted broadly, but are still primarily an expression of the material relationship between environments, people, and their social institutions.

A book about environments and livelihoods

Several lessons from NGO practice prompted the production of this book.

An unresolved question: why environment?

In the mandates of most development NGOs and national, bilateral, and multilateral development agencies, the eradication of poverty is central. Many also declare their support for 'sustainable development', and express their sympathy for environmental conservation of some sort. The debate about two-way links between poverty creation and environmental degradation has raged for some years now; it remains unresolved, even though academic work is progressing on theoretical frameworks, such as political ecology, that might help to settle it. The conviction that environmental change is...