This working paper explores some of the key issues emerging around the effective financing of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) demonstration projects in developing countries. It presents a series of options and recommendations to international policymakers and agencies working to support CCS development in a non-OECD context.

This study investigates the relationship between rural poverty, property rights, and environmental resource management in a semi-arid region of Kenya using survey data. It asserts that reduced environmental degradation will increase agricultural productivity, which translates into lower levels of poverty as incomes and consumption expenditures rise; and that the quality of the environment and thus productivity and poverty are unaffected by property right regimes.

(Paper Prepared for the Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics Research Workshop, Durban, South Africa, May 28-30 2002.)

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In 1986, a waste-to-energy plant opened in Delhi, India, financed by the Danish International Development Agency at a cost of over $10 million. The plant was expected to generate 3.8 megawatts of electricity from garbage, and its success was to be copied in other Indian cities. However, the plant was a failure. Two years later, the government was spending about $100,000 a year to burn garbage without producing energy. Surprisingly, the principal reason was the fact that there wasn't enough urban waste in Delhi.

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PERC

Extreme climate events could influence poverty by affecting agricultural productivity and raising prices of staple foods that are important to poor households in developing countries. With the frequency and intensity of extreme climate events predicted to change in the future, informed policy design and analysis requires an understanding of which countries and groups are going to be most vulnerable to increasing poverty. Using a novel economic-climate analysis framework, we assess the poverty impacts of climate volatility for seven socio-economic groups in 16 developing countries. We find that extremes under present climate volatility increase poverty across our developing country sample—particularly in Bangladesh, Mexico, Indonesia, and Africa—with urban wage earners the most vulnerable group. We also find that global warming exacerbates poverty vulnerability in many nations.

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Rural households rely heavily on goods and services freely provided by environmental resources. However, there have been very few adequate quantitative analyses due to a lack of appropriate household data sets encompassing economic and environmental data. Standard household budget surveys(HBSs)inevitably lack data on environmental income. We use a 213 household data set from rural Zimbabwe to undertake a quantitative analysis of the impact of environmental income on household welfare.
Environmental income, in this case largely from woodland-based resources, is strongly and significantly equalising, bringing about roughly a 30 percent reduction in inequality (as measured in standard HBSs).
However, including the value of environmental income leaves analysis of the causes of poverty and rural differentiation unchanged from those done with the standard data. While environmental income is important in mitigating poverty, it is unlikely to be important in lifting people out of poverty.

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CIFOR

This study aimed at identifying the poverty/environment nexus in Katonga basin. Our analysis
focused on spatial relations between poverty levels and environmental problems at the district level. Our study identified a poverty/environment nexus for cases where poverty levels exhibited strong spatial correlation with two of the four principal environmental problems. Deforestation and wetland degradation were shown to be positively linked with poverty in a spiral web compared to access to clean water, access to toilets, and access to electricity and use of charcoal and firewood that exhibited no significant linkage. We conclude that the welfare of the poor in Katonga basin would be significantly enhanced by close integration of poverty-alleviation and environmental strategies aimed at reducing deforestation and wetlands conversion. A geographic focus on the poorest districts in Katonga basin would appear to be most beneficial.

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This paper examines the linkages of poverty and environment at the household level in
Philippine slums. Rapid urbanization and the inadequate infrastructure and basic services in large
towns and cities have led to the proliferation of slums and informal settlements in the country.
While poverty incidence of population in key metropolitan centers is on average 17% compared to
the national average of 32%, slum population has been exponentially rising at an average rate of
3.4%. In Metro Manila, which is the prime city, an estimated 37% of population or over 4.0 million Filipinos live in slums in 2010 and slum population growth rate is at 8% annually. These slum dwellers and informal settlers confront on a daily basis another dimension of poverty which is
environmental poverty. The underserviced and bad living conditions in slums impact on health,
livelihood and the social fiber. The effects of urban environmental problems and threats of climate change are also most pronounced in slums due to their hazardous location, poor air pollution and solid waste management, weak disaster risk management and limited coping strategies of households. It has also been argued in several studies that possible trade-offs exist between bad housing and medical care and between bad housing and education. Bad living environment thus
deepens poverty, increases the vulnerability of both the poor and non-poor living in slums and
excludes the slum poor from growth.

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PIDS

A review of agency reports shows that there are several institutional barriers to mainstreaming climate change adaptation into poverty reduction efforts. Current attention to climate change in development agencies, development policies, projects and programmes is low. A link to poverty reduction is also missing: where mentioned, climate change is mainly framed as a question of mitigation and largely as an environmental issue, not as a development concern.

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Norad

This brief examines the links between poverty and environment, using the example of biofuels and agriculture in Africa to demonstrate practical aspects of promoting environmental sustainability and reducing poverty.

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APCC Virtual Center

Is there some truth to the common assumption that upland farmers are insulated from and not directly affected by most economic policies? The authors of the study note otherwise as they uncover the link between trade policies, poverty and environmental damage in Philippine agriculture. The findings stress the important implications on "understanding the environmental effects of trade and agricultural policies, real wage growth and internal migration, and macroeconomic policies affecting the prices of tradable farm outputs and inputs." And when government interventions seem to address a few problems only, the authors recommend that perhaps it is time that the government steps up its efforts to experiment on a new mix of policies that would benefit upland farmers and promote environmental concerns as well.

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PIDS