The
momentum from China and India is sustaining Asia's
economic growth.
Yet, close to 900 million of
the world's poor live in the Asia-Pacific
region.
And poverty is closely linked to
deforestation and environmental
degradation.
People, Poverty, Deforestation in
Asia
• Forests are cleared by poor
people who are desperate to grow food.
•
Development projects insensitively alienated the
communities living in the forests, depriving them
of their basic sources of survival, forcing them
to become refugees in their own land.
• Oil
palm cultivation in Southeast Asia has greatly
reduced biodiversity, degraded the ecological
cycle, worsened climate change, and trapped
workers in inequitable conditions.
• Deforested
areas, replaced by muddy, silt-filled torrents,
are conducive to floods, and make the poor more
vulnerable.
• In India, money lenders, land
owners, and a caste system keep the poor
disenfranchised.
• The social, political, and
economic consequence of this cycle is
devastating. |
