Special Section: Global Development Policies -- Making the MDGs and PRSPs Work for the Poor and the Environment
IN THE PRECEDING CHAPTERS AND CASE STUDIES WE HAVE approached poverty reduction from the village and local level—the level where ecosystems are accessed for income. We have presented numerous examples of how community-scale projects have improved the livelihoods of the poor by enabling them to manage fisheries, forests, and common lands for income and sustainability.
But the rural village economy we have focused on exists within a national and international framework of economic, legal, and political policies. This special section deals with innovations in poverty policies at these larger scales. In the past five years, two developments have raised hopes that national governments and multilateral institutions can be mobilized to address world poverty: the establishment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the crafting of national Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRSPs). In this section we explore how the concepts of environmental income and pro-poor environmental governance apply to these efforts. A key link between MDG and PRSP processes and the world’s poor is the environment. The central question is: Do the Millennium Development Goals and the current crop of Poverty Reduction Strategies incorporate the environment and governance as central features in fighting poverty? And if not, how can they be made to incorporate these themes?
