All economic activity is based ultimately on resources from nature, and the environment does not exist as a separate sphere from human actions. Pollution, increasing size of population, diminishing natural resources, destruction of wildlife, the growth of deserts, land erosion, and many other anthropogenic environmental disasters cry out for the revision of our economic activities, and the necessity of environmental protection. This section investigates the causal link between the economy (human activity) and the environment.
Although environmental degradation is evident, agreement on the origin and the dimension of the problem is less than universal. In this section we will trace the influence of poverty and unfavourable economic conditions on the environment.
Poverty contributes greatly to environmental stress, which itself leads to increasing the levels of penury (the so-called poverty trap). Poor people are forced to overuse environmental resources to survive, and this impoverishing of the environment again threatens their survival. For example, forests cover 22% of the world's total land, but the rate of deforestation is increasing rapidly, and particularly in poorer countries.1 In poorer countries, agriculture, forestry, and energy production, generate half of the GNP; the export of natural resources constitutes a substantial component of their exports. Therefore, the economic activities which prevail in poor countries contribute directly to resource depletion and environmental degradation in most LDCs.
The reliance of poor people on natural resources for survival, leads to depletion of resources and further environmental stresses. For example, deforestation is causing more destructive floods in Asia, and desertification in large parts of Africa and Latin America. In the African Sahel, deforestation followed by soil erosion changed vast areas of land into deserts. Furthermore, in poor communities the increasing demand for firewood leads to deforestation, or to the use of dry cow dung for fuel, as in Africa, which deprives the soil nutrients and humus. Thus, soil fertility declines, and the poverty circle closes tightly.1
The World Commission of Environment and Development (1987: 28) pinpoints other mechanisms that lead poor people to degrade their local environment. The commission argue that "those who are poor and hungry will often destroy their immediate environment to survive; they will cut down forests; their livestock will overgraze grass land; they will overuse marginal lands; and in growing numbers they will crowd into congested cities". Moreover, this rural-urban migration puts more pressure on the environment in cities as well as on the countryside.1
Figure 1
Some development economists trace a certain pattern of property rights to environmental degradation. Many theories appeared on this issue, such as Hardin's "Tragedy of Commons", Olson's "Logic of Collective Action", and the "Prisoners Dilemma". These theories discourage common property rights, and see them as a cause in environmental stress. Other theories such as Runge's "Assurance Problem", however, support this configuration of property rights.1
The property right theories, however, are misleading in many situations because the same property rights might have different effects in different settings. What concerns us here, is whether or not poverty is associated with a certain configuration of rights that leads to environmental decay? This is a loaded question to say the least. We can, however, notice that in poor communities in LDCs, common property rights over natural resources are dominant. Relative poverty, which reduces the opportunity set of many villagers to act alone, necessitates the joint use of rights, beside the high level of uncertainty with respect to income streams. This communal use of resources has caused some environmental degradation in many LDCs. In the Sahel and Southern Africa, for example, traditional common property rights were responsible for the misuse of resources. But empirical studies in other poor communities did not support the previous claims.1 Therefore, we can argue that different configurations of property rights have different impacts on both allocation and distribution, and this illustrates the need for understanding the impact of specific configuration of rights.
Overuse of water resources, of land, and the overgrazing of pastures became a common phenomenon in most poor communities. Some degraded systems may recover, but a loss of one inch of top soil may take nature centuries to replace. Poor societies are unable to overcome the negative externalities they produce, unlike rich communities which have access to funds and technical know-how to absorb the wastes they produce.
An important factor in this poverty trap is the rapid population growth in poor societies. Rapid population growth put more pressure on the environment and especially the non-renewable resources, and reduces the environment's ability to dilute the wastes and simply accumulate residuals from production and consumption. Brown (1981: 131) emphasized that "rapid population growth in the Third World countries often has a double-edged negative effect, simultaneously increasing the number of job seekers, while destroying the resources needed to create jobs". The environment cannot be sustained with these increasing rates of population growth especially in the LDCs.
Market failure in LDCs is another reason for environmental degradation, and there would appear to be a systematic downward tendency in the valuation of such resources, and on many occasions they are considered as free goods. Some economists also argue that falling real incomes of poor farmers lead them to recourse the natural resources.
The above illustration shows some of the mechanisms by which poverty contributes to environmental degradation, particularly the exhaustion of natural resources. This, however, does not deny the role of industrialization, and industrialized nations, in environmental degradation, and particularly the global environmental threats.
The effect of the environment on economic growth and development is another important link in the economy-environment-militarization nexus. It is, however, one of the most apparent relations and does not require extended clarification. Bartelmus (1986; 7) argued "A close connection between environment and development is implicit in the definitions of the environment (as the conditions and influences that interact with man) and of development (as a process to improve human-welfare) just arrived at".
During the 1960s and early 1970s, many developed and developing countries postulated that zero growth of the economy and the population is necessary to avoid the disastrous transgression of the physical "outer limits" of the planet. This view was also held by many international organizations.1 The emergence of the concept of sustainable development in the 1970s, however, changed their postulates.1
Nevertheless, it is evident that the flow of natural resources (such as water, forests and energy) to production and consumption activities, are very crucial for most productive activities in LDCs and therefore their availability determines the potentials for growth. This constraint on growth is particularly binding for those developing countries that rely on the export of primary products.1
Many investment projects cause greater environmental damage, particularly in fields of infrastructure, industry and even agriculture. They are likely to involve the deployment of new technologies, equipment and management techniques that are more rather than less costly than the earlier ones.
Moreover, the industries most heavily reliant on environmental resources and most heavily polluting are growing most rapidly in LDCs, where there is both more urgency for growth and less capability to minimize damaging side effects. The environment imperative may also point to more expensive sectoral choices and development options as countries approach the ecological and physical limits to the use of land and mineral resources.1 Energy generation in LDCs usually involves environmental degradation or resource depletion.1 The opposition to the depletion of resources, the absence of other viable energy options usually delays energy projects which are very crucial for growth and development (see Figure 2).
