The failure of country-level environmental statistics to have any demonstrable influence on development assistance planning and the increasingly degraded resource base on which poverty reduction efforts must draw, requires a new approach: a spatially specific approach that integrates economic, social, demographic, and environmental data. Such an approach is likely to produce greater awareness of potential linkages in the development community and more targeted and timely interventions.

The development of indicators that are both pertinent to poverty reduction and to environmental and natural resources management will require a long-term strategy and significant investments in data collection, conceptual development, and analysis because of the following challenges: (i) Multidimensionality of poverty, (ii) lack of environmental data, (iii) and complex relationships between environmental conditions and poverty outcomes. A successful indicator strategy that overcomes some of these challenges will require action in the following areas: (i) Disaggregate national indicators. (ii) Have a geographic framework. (iii) Link ecosystems goods and services to poverty outcomes. (iv) Support high-resolution poverty maps. (v) Develop spatially-referenced environmental indicators that include measures of resource distribution and use, and leading indicators of resources productivity and degradation.

To support this indicator strategy, WRI has been developing spatially referenced environmental indicators (e.g., “Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems” and “Reefs at Risk”) or encouraged other institutions to do the same (e.g., “Millennium Ecosystem Assessment”). To further assist this effort, we are seeking to increase the demand for and supply of subnational spatial indicators of poverty, so called “poverty maps.” Poverty maps allow visualization of the incidence and magnitude of poverty often linking poverty to natural resource endowments and environmental change. Poverty maps are becoming an increasingly important instrument for investigating and discussing social, economic, and environmental problems.