Economists and policy-types have long tried to understand the relationship between development, natural resource use and environmental degradation. A popular (economic) argument goes like this: a poor country can develop by use natural resources and investing in pollution intensive industry. So at least initially increasing income causes natural resource use and environmental degradation. As countries continue to develop, they are able to substitute to cleaner and less polluting technologies so development eventually causes natural resource use and environmental degradation to decrease.
A story in the Washington Post today seems to argue something slightly different (G8 Leaders Told It Pays to Protect Forests):
...scientific data show that destruction of the environment is a direct cause of many problems faced in the world today _ including poverty, declining health, hunger, undrinkable water, disease, migration from rural to urban areas, and conflict.
So is the relationship much more complicated than we make it out to be? Does the quest to develop cause natural resource use which causes environmental degradation which causes poverty which causes the quest to develop? If so, do we protect the environment and cause poverty, or do invest in development and cause environmental degradation (and possibly cause more poverty)? Or does protecting the environment reduce poverty:
...a recent study compiled by 1,360 scientists from 95 nations who pored over 16,000 satellite photos from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration and analyzed statistics and scientific journals _ underscored that the environment is critically important for development.
Now I'm just confused. Protecting the environment might reduce or increase poverty. Reducing poverty might help or hurt the environment. Is it possible that economists have been wrong all along and we should be focusing on whether environmental degradation causes poverty, and not whether getting out of poverty causes environmental degradation? I don't know the answer, but at least it's something to think about.
