The origin of rural poverty is complex and multidimensional. Some aspects of this origin include culture, climate, gender, markets, and public policy. Similarly, the rural poor population is quite diverse both in the problems they face and the possible solutions to those problems. This book examines nature and characteristics of rural poverty and how it develops, its persistence, and how it has caused destruction to environmental resources. The quest for global stability and peace has placed poverty issues at the centre of deliberation. In the year 2000, the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) directly addressed the problem of poverty and its alleviation. Natural resources degradation is usually understood in terms of over use of scarce non-renewable and potentially renewable resources. It entails damage or destruction of key natural resourcessuch as soils and forestsand the subsequent production of wastes. Low-income rural dwellers have much lower levels of consumption than middle and upper income groups, but occupy much more land per person than middle and upper income groups. Yet, low income groups consume less food and generally have diets that are less energy and land intensive than higher income groups. However, low income populations deplete natural resources for settlements, farming and extraction of resources for many urban dwellers. This book has created the linkages between poverty in rural areas and environmental resources degradation. It draws conclusions from examples from all over the world and emphasises on a case study in rural Ghana. This book is recommended for academicians, rural development professionals, environmentalists and the general public.

Contents: Introduction, Environmental Degradation and Rural Poverty, Environmental Degradation in Study Districts, Impact of Environment Degradation on Rural Poverty, Summary and Conclusions.

This book takes a new approach on understanding causes of extreme poverty and promising actions to address it. Its focus is on marginality being a root cause of poverty and deprivation. “Marginality” is the position of people on the edge, preventing their access to resources, freedom of choices, and the development of capabilities. The book is research based with original empirical analyses at local, national, and local scales; book contributors are leaders in their fields and have backgrounds in different disciplines. An important message of the book is that economic and ecological approaches and institutional innovations need to be integrated to overcome marginality. The book will be a valuable source for development scholars and students, actors that design public policies, and for social innovators in the private sector and non-governmental organizations.​

Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.

The report offers a simple framework for policy analysis by identifying three forest types: frontiers and disputed lands; lands beyond the agricultural frontier; and, mosaic lands where forests and agriculture coexist. It collates geographic and economic information for each type that will help formulate poverty-reducing forest policy.

Desertification affects 70 per cent of the world's arable lands in more than 100 countries. Inextricably linked to poverty, it is estimated that the livelihood of 250 million people are directly affected while another billion living in rural drylands are threatened by this phenomenon. This volume examines the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) signed in 1994. It studies the links between land degradation and poverty, the role of civil society and good governance in implementing the UNCCD and the various approaches to fighting desertification. Furthermore, it assesses the National Action Programmes, development planning and new avenues for strengthening implementation. Synthesizing the main strengths and weaknesses of the UNCCD as a tool for environmental and developmental governance, this informative volume highlights the main challenges facing the UNCCD in the future.