Poverty reduction, or poverty alleviation, is a set of measures, both economic and humanitarian, that are intended to permanently lift people out of deprivation whereas environmental sustainability can be defined as the ability to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Trade off occurs when prioritization of one sector negatively impacts the other sector. Thus trade-off between poverty reduction and environmental sustainability means ‘conflict’ between developmental measures taken to eliminate poverty and sustainability.
Conventional wisdom on development strategy suggests that poverty alleviation will unintentionally lead to negative externalities on the environment. Since poverty is a manifestation of inegalitarian distribution of limited resources, its eradication requires creation and extraction of more economic and natural resources respectively which impact the natural environment. For example, increasing food production, building hospitals, roads, schools, and setting up of industries require changes in the natural environment through deforestation, mining and extraction of other natural resources.
In the past, countries have adopted this strategy of natural resource exploitation for reducing poverty. This created a perception that forests, rivers and land will bear the burden of poverty reduction measures but, in contemporary times the world is witnessing an irreversible climate change and anthropocentric interventions in the natural environment, which obligates developed and developing countries to rethink their development approach. International treaties like Paris Agreement also put additional burden of cutting carbon emissions. Such a scenario creates a dilemma for developing countries like India, which can not use the poverty reduction strategy of the developed world.
However, an alternative lies in ‘Sustainable Development’ strategy which overcomes this trade-off between poverty reduction and environmental sustainability. Sustainable Development offers an escape route from this trade-off through the use of technology and adopting global best practices. In this way issue of poverty could be addressed without harming the environment. In India for example, the government came up with Ujjwala scheme for subsidized gas cylinders for poor families.
Earlier these families used wood for cooking which impacted the health of women and generated carbon emissions. Thanks to advancement in the field of science and innovation we have techniques for reducing carbon footprint while eradicating poverty and deprivation. Concepts like Green economy and circular economy are gaining the attention of the policy makers which could be incredibly helpful in this regard.
A solution to the problem of poverty and environmental degradation lies with the sustainable practices, people''s participation and decentralized resource management. Since the lives of poor people and the environmental conditions are interlinked to each other, there cannot be a solution to poverty without environmental sustainability. In the same spirit, United Nation Sustainable Development Goal 1 targets for complete eradication of global poverty by 2030.
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