Evaluating Environment in International Development

Juha Uitto

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415742894, 9780415742887
• eBook ISBN: 9781317803249
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Economics

More than twenty years after the Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, both national and international actors in governmental and nongovernmental fields are still searching for insights into how sustainable development can be advanced and environmental concerns incorporated into the development agenda more effectively. Moreover, climate change has emerged as a preeminent challenge to both the environment and to development. Evaluating Environment in International Development provides international perspectives and in-depth knowledge of evaluating development and the environment and applies evaluation knowledge to climate change mitigation and adaptation.

The book focuses on the approaches and experiences of leading international organizations, not-for-profits, and multilateral and bilateral aid agencies to illustrate how systematic evaluation is an essential tool for providing evidence for decision-makers. It provides novel and in-depth perspectives on evaluating environment and sustainability issues in developing countries. Moving beyond projects and programmes, it considers aspects such as evaluating normative work on the environment and evaluating environmental consequences of economic and social development efforts.

This original collection should be of interest to scholars of environment studies, development studies, international relations, sustainable development and evaluation, as well as practitioners in international organizations and development and environmental NGOs.

Section III
Lessons from International Cooperation

9
Evaluating the Poverty–Environment Nexus in Africa

Michael Stocking

Background

The idea that poverty and environmental degradation are linked has been discussed, debated, rediscovered and reinvented numerous times. An early published manifestation came from Thomas Malthus who saw the main threat to “the intention of the Creator that the earth should be replenished” being “an unhealthy, vicious and miserable population” (Malthus 1826: XXIV). Colonial powers in Africa and Asia ensured continuity of the thesis. The entire discourse of increasing populations of poor and desperate people undermining the integrity of the natural environment is imbued with hidden messages, not least of which is that rural peasantry equates with poverty, poverty with ignorance, and ignorance with environmental stupidity.

Since the 1992 Earth Summit, the concept of sustainable development has renewed interest in the poverty-environment debate (Gray and Moseley 2005). Popularizing the concept, the Brundtland Report described how ‘poor people are forced to overuse environmental resources to survive from day to day, and their impoverishment of their environment further impoverishes them’ (World Commission on Environment and Development [WCED] 1987). Influential organizations have perpetuated the link between the condition of the environment and the state of poverty, especially via issues such as food security and health. For example, the International Food Policy Research Institute has stated unequivocally “the condition of the world’s natural resource base in the year 2020 largely depends on whether poverty has been eradicated” (Pinstrup-Andersen and Pandya-Lorch 1995). The basis for such assertions is the presumed coexistence of areas of poor people with areas of severe environmental degradation, leading to the assumption that poverty drives people to use their resources unsustainably; the evidence, however, is weak.

Indeed, such has been the pervasive nature of the sustainability concept that poverty (along with population) and the environment have become so inextricably associated that they have earned the epithet ‘nexus’ – that is, a set of mutually reinforcing links between poverty and environmental damage (Ekbom and Bojö 1999; Dasgupta et al. 2005). Nexus is particularly used in the context of it being one of the main challenges to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs; United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific [UNESCAP] 2003). There is a compelling body of evidence, both biophysical and socio-economic that the environment is one of the core building blocks for pro-poor economic growth (UNDP-UNEP Poverty-Environment Facility 2008). The predominant school of thought argues that poverty is a major cause of environmental degradation. If policy makers want to tackle environmental issues, then the nexus discourse states they must first address the poverty problem (Duraiappah 1998). Poverty, it is argued, undermines environmental sustainability through a number of complex drivers, not least of which is that the poorest in their desperation to sustain their lives have to undermine their environment (Lufumpa 2005). Deforestation, land degradation, low agricultural productivity, water scarcity, threats to biodiversity and the impact of civil conflicts are all frequently cited as negative impacts resulting from the close linkages between poverty and environment (Lufumpa 2005).

This chapter describes the challenge of evaluating such a broad and complex concept as the poverty-environment nexus. It reports on the ‘Evaluation of UNDP Contribution to Environmental Management for Poverty Reduction: The Poverty-Environment Nexus. Final Report’ (hereinafter the Poverty-Environment Nexus), an evaluation commissioned by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to examine how the organization handles on the one side its core mandate (addressing poverty in the developing world) and environmental sustainability on the other side (an issue that is more often seen as the concern of other agencies and, by many developing countries, not a high priority (EO of UNDP 2010). The evaluation had to accommodate a number of theoretical and practical questions, the first of which was why should poverty and the environment be linked; is it just received – and assumed – wisdom that UNDP should be addressing environmental issues as a way of achieving poverty reduction targets? Or would the ready availability of finance for the environment through the Global Environment Facility (GEF) dictate a focus on poverty–environment linkages without embedding the intellectual underpinnings of the nexus in the organization? These and other issues are addressed in the following sections that describe the methods and principal findings of the evaluation, with a special focus on Africa.

Why might poverty and environment be linked in Africa?

Poor people live more intimately with their biophysical environment, depending much more directly on the natural resource base for their food, energy, water and shelter. They till the soil, collect wood for the fire, fetch water in buckets and construct their houses from local materials. Their livelihood is spatially and temporally tied to the condition of their natural resources. Therefore, if the resources are degraded, poverty ensues; if poverty is endemic, resources are degraded. The media reinforces this two-way link. Images of starving people in the Ethiopian famine of 1984 were always seen against a backdrop of treeless desert or bare fields. When their survival is at stake and alternatives are impossible, it is argued that people will overuse their resources. Desperate hunger leads to desperate strategies for survival. Future welfare has to take a back seat when sheer survival is in question.

Nevertheless, a direct link between poverty and environment is contested. One study of two adjacent farming blocks in central Zambia found that the more prosperous commercial farming block was far more subject to environmental degradation than the adjacent block of small subsistence farms (Stocking 1983). Indeed, affluence may enable greater investment in land use technologies that intensify farming practices and more readily degrade the soil of its organic and nutrient content. In contrast, the more elaborate and complex practices of smallholders are less damaging to the environment and may even mimic nature.

Linkages are, however, complex and involve secondary influencing factors. In Kenya, the now (in)famous Machakos study, More People, Less Erosion (Tiffen, Mortimore and Gichuki 1994), showed how – under certain conditions – increasing population can provide opportunities for better control of soil erosion and the development of sustainable smallholder production systems. It helped by providing empirical evidence that the closely related population-environment nexus is not necessarily true (Tiffen, Mortimore and Gichuki 1994). The influence of nearby urban markets stimulated intensive but integrated land use practices, while at the same time supporting three times the population. The status of the environment improved almost beyond recognition with the innovation spurred by secondary factors. Access to credit and technologies to practice environmentally sustainable agriculture, plus the gaining of land entitlements, all combined to heal what had been an extremely degraded part of Kenya that supported only a low density of very poor people.

Property rights can be a major influence on the status of the environment. Not only does security of tenure lead to increased investment in the land, but it also encourages longer-term environmentally beneficial investments such as tree planting and soil conservation structures.¹ In Africa, communal tenure and common-property resources are often the norm, where, it is argued, there is little incentive for the individual to conserve for the good of the community. Africa is, therefore, the continent in which the poverty–environment nexus is most widely discussed; it is also the location for the largest global programme that addresses the nexus, the UNDP-UNEP Poverty-Environment Initiative (PEI; 2012).² The case of Malawi is instructive, where a 2011 PEI study calculated that unsustainable – and therefore, degrading – practices costs the country 5.3 per cent of its gross domestic product annually, substantially more than its total funding of education and health (UNEP 2013). If this loss of gross domestic product translates to increasing rural poverty in agriculture, fisheries, forestry and wildlife (as PEI claims the government of Malawi now believes), then there is a powerful argument for a development strategy that targets sustainable practices as a way out of poverty.

Why evaluate the poverty–environment nexus?

A prevailing view among some development professionals is that investments in UNDP’s core mandate may have to allow for some environmental damage. Even more common is the view that investments in environmental conservation, such as national parks and forest reserves, need not worry unduly about their impact on local people. Land alienation and restricted access are issues that have been hotly debated in Africa since colonial times.³ An evaluation should not only identify whether these views were entrenched, but should also seek empirical evidence as to whether investments in the poverty reduction or environmental conservation areas had beneficial unintended effects for the other area (and, if so, what aspects of project design contributed to the co-benefits?). Given UNDP’s reliance on Global Environment Facility funding of environmental issues, it was especially important that UNDP could demonstrate co-benefits for both the global environment and for local development.

The hypothesis behind the poverty–environment nexus evaluation is that there is a set of closely linked issues – the nexus – that affects two major goals of United Nations developmental and environmental agencies: poverty alleviation and environmental protection. The nexus stems in particular from evidence that development schemes often sacrifice longer-term environmental sustainability for short-term economic and job creation benefits, and that over-exploitation of natural resources adversely affects ecosystem health (and, in time, reduces economic output). The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, completed in 2005, the largest review of such linkages to date, produced compelling evidence at the global, national and local scales that inter alia, human health and welfare depends on the sustainable functioning of ecosystems and that these ecosystems are vulnerable to depletion by overuse that is often driven by the needs of poor people. For example, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment found that ‘over 1 billion people lack access to safe water supplies; 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation. This has led to widespread microbial contamination of drinking water. Water-associated infectious diseases claim up to 3.2 million lives each year, approximately 6 percent of all deaths globally. The burden of disease from inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene totals 1.7 million deaths and the loss of more than 54 million healthy life years’ (Corvalan et al. 2005). It is the poor that are selectively and adversely impacted – it is also the poor who largely contribute to the microbial contamination. However, as this example illustrates, the links are by no means direct or uncontroversial. An evaluation should assist UNDP in building empirical evidence of how investments in poverty reduction might benefit the environment and, if they do, what multiple co-benefits may arise that would further justify gains in productivity bringing environmental benefits.

The rural poor disproportionately depend on the availability of natural resources for their subsistence livelihoods. Efforts to protect ecosystems and address other environmental factors can affect poor people’s access to resources. Conversely, reducing poverty can affect the environmental systems’ sustainability. There should, therefore, be a substantial poverty dimension to environmental protection, and a substantial environmental dimension to poverty reduction. Public support for these efforts is a critical factor, as efforts to reduce pollution and conserve natural resources are unlikely to succeed if they unfairly restrict opportunities for local people to work and feed their families. Taken together, these dynamics suggest that integrated programming is necessary to simultaneously improve livelihoods for the poor while protecting the environment. An evaluation must identify not only whether integration is built into project design, but also how it is practised.

Scope and method of the poverty–environment nexus evaluation

The Evaluation Office of UNDP conducted the evaluation and assigned two senior officers specifically for it. A team of three consultants undertook much of the interviewing and analysis and drafted the final report. The team was led by a senior developing country professional and former Minister of the Environment with leadership experience in a number of high-profile international organizations. A professional evaluator with World Bank experience and an academic with Global Environment Facility and substantial project experience supported the team leader. All three met with staff from the Evaluation Office of UNDP at least three times in New York. UNDP assigned two support staff for research and data analysis. In addition, 21 national consultants were contracted for detailed case studies. The whole exercise took just over one year to complete.

At an early stage, it was decided that the evaluation should be both retrospective and prospective – it should take stock of the past while looking into the future. The latter is especially important given UNDP’s leadership roles, being the most prominent agency sponsoring poverty reduction and, in many countries, the leading sponsor of environmental projects. Additionally, UNDP coordinates multi-agency donor support in many countries and has specific responsibilities regarding the United Nations reform processes.⁴

In terms of timeframe, the evaluation acknowledged that activities involving poverty–environment linkages have been ongoing since the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. However, the evaluation’s focus of analysis was limited to after 2004, covering the Second Multi-Year Funding Framework (2004–2007) and the st...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Foreword
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• Acronyms
• SECTION I Introduction and conceptual background
• SECTION II Approaches and challenges to evaluating environment in national development
• SECTION III Lessons from international cooperation
• Index