Exploring Hidden Dimensions: Environmental and Natural Resource Aspects of Poverty
Harun Dogo et al.
Environment-related dimensions of poverty are ?hidden? for many reasons, including externalities, remoteness, and lack of awareness. Twenty years ago, two-thirds of the world?s extreme poor lived in rural areas. Today, rural areas are home to over 80% of this population, highlighting the increasingly critical role of natural resources on the well-being of the world?s poorest people. This study illustrates and quantifies the links between the environment and the world?s extreme poor using the Hidden Dimensions Database, a unique geospatial dataset linking environment and natural resource measures to poverty and other human development indicators at the subnational level. This database is used to overlay more than 50 geo-referenced environmental datasets related to natural resources and pollution with approximately 50 monetary poverty and poverty proxy indicators at the district and provincial levels for over 80 countries. These overlays, consisting of both maps and scorecards, illustrate areas of high concurrence between environmental degradation and extreme poverty, and reveal hotspots where poverty alleviation interventions must necessarily address environmental concerns. This assessment also includes issues of poverty in areas with different land use patters, including conservation areas. The study concludes that the WBG goal of eliminating extreme poverty worldwide by 2030 can be better achieved by incorporating spatially explicit findings related to environmental and natural resource trends where the poor currently live.
Only personal, non-commercial use of this document is allowed.