The debate on poverty-environment nexus generally concludes that environment matters greatly to the people living in poverty. This issue itself speaks of livelihoods, health and vulnerability of the poverty stricken people. In essence, this should be the principal message coming out of this debate that there is a need to bring this issue to the forefront. The relatively well-known elements of poverty-environment nexus included:

Environment and Livelihoods
The basic idea here is that poor people are most dependent upon the environment and direct use of natural resources (NR). The 65% of the population lives in rural areas where poverty levels are higher and even a large proportion of urban population is dependent on the direct use of NRs such as fuel wood. Therefore, these people are most severely affected when the environment is degraded. Though the ongoing debate gives several examples of environmental degradation in Pakistan, it would be good to highlight the impact on the poor or on their access to natural resources, which is limited or denied. The forests in Pakistan are a classic case of limiting access.

Environment and Health
The poor people suffer the most when water, land, and air are polluted, and environmental risk factors are a major source of health problems in developing countries.

Environment and Vulnerability
The poor are the most often exposed to environmental shocks such as natural disasters, stresses and environment-related conflicts, and are least capable of coping when they occur. What is less well known is the fact that there has been considerable theoretical and empirical research on various aspects of the poverty-environment nexus. Several papers have contributed to a better understanding of the poverty-environment relationships (see, for example, Tim Forsyth et al, 1998; Eckbom and Böjo, 1999; and Jodha, 1998). One particular paper that has contributed significantly to this debate is by Eckbom and Bojo (1999), and they have done this by breaking down explicit and implicit hypotheses in the literature to its component parts. These hypotheses are:
H1: Poor people are agents of environmental degradation
H2: Poor people are the main victims of environmental degradation
H3: Incomplete property rights reinforce the vicious poverty-environment interaction
H4: Population growth causes both poverty and environmental degradation
H5: Higher per capita income increases environmental pressure

With respect to H1 (Poor people are agents of environmental degradation), Dasgupta (1997) challenges this argument that the poor degrade their environmental resource base because poverty forces them to discount future incomes at unusually high rates (see Bardhan 1996). Dasgupta does not find much empirical support for this argument, and infers that this should apply to the poor in the past as well. However, evidence suggests that many poor people and societies have been able to generate remarkably stable and resilient institutions for coping with the income variability that being poor implies (Dasgupta 1997; Ostrom 1990; Swanson 1995). Dasgupta instead says usually institutional failures are responsible for this situation.

There has been overwhelming support for hypothesis-2 that the poor people are the main victims of environmental degradation. Indeed, Songsore and MchGranahan (1993, p. 33) capture the essence of the hypothesis by saying, "environmental risks go hand-in-hand with socio-economic deprivation". This hypothesis includes issues such as: poor people are vulnerable to loss of biological resources; extreme environmental stress can force the poorest to migrate; inequality reinforces environmental pressure; and government policies can create or reinforce a vicious cycle of poverty-environment interaction.

With respect to H3 (Incomplete property rights reinforce the vicious poverty-environment interaction), there is also empirical evidence that supports the hypothesis that tenure security is correlated with the quality of environmental management (Saxena, 1988; Hoy and Jimenez, 1996; Southgate, Sierra and Brown, 1989). However, there is a need to exercise extreme caution with respect to policy prescriptions. The issue is not about the privatisation of rights rather the community rights to manage common property resources (Dasgupta, 1997; Ostrom, 1990; Forsyth, et al, 1998). Literature suggests that privatisation of common property resources works to exacerbate inequalities and hence degradation (Dasgupta, 1997).

The hyposhesis-4 (Population growth causes both poverty and environmental degradation) is probably the most contentious of these issues. The origins of the population growth thesis detrimental to the environment began with Malthus. Malthus basically postulated that population growth will tend to rise exponentially, while food production will tend to rise linearly.

The net result of his analysis is that population growth will eventually outstrip the supply of food resulting in famines, deprivation and chaos. A basic policy proposal is to limit population growth. Mink (1993), for example, argues that because of the poor living environment, and hence, lower productivity provides incentives to raise large families. This, he argues, would contribute to pauperism in an adverse, dynamic pattern. However others (such as Prakash 1997) while recognising that growing population does exert pressure on productive lands and resources, it is not necessarily the case that population causes the damage.

The complex of locally-specific, social, economic, environmental and governance circumstances, in which increasing population takes place that in turn can be strongly influenced by external policy and institutional factors, are usually the driving forces behind poverty-environment interactions (DFID, et al, 2002). In fact, there is much evidence which shows that the increasing population growth has led to rehabilitation and profitability of degraded, unproductive lands (Tiffen et al., 1994). Moreover, research in the middle hills of Nepal has shown that farmers adapt organisational and land management practices to reduce the impact of population growth and environmental change, such as by using local landslides to increase soil fertility (Ives and Messerli, 1989). A simple question comes to mind: would environment cease to be degraded if population growth is checked? Or in fact would environment cease to be degraded if poverty is reduced or eliminated?

Finally H5 (Higher per capita income increases environmental pressure) has been presented as a counter-hypothesis to H1 that looks at the relationship at macro-level between environmental degradation in poor versus rich economies. While it is clearly recognised that some environmental problems decline with rising incomes such as sulphur dioxide emissions, others such as CO2 emissions and municipal waste per capita increase. Hence, the idea that economic growth in and of itself will lead to environmental improvement is not based on sound empirical evidence. The reason for decline in some problems is more often due to policy and institutional response than the rising incomes (Ekbom and Bojo, 1999). Having said that, more important question is what to do if we are more or less convinced of the significance of poverty and environment nexus.

Pakistan has embarked on the development of a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), which represents the country's mainstream development policy framework. Now if we were to look into the Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (IPRSP), we would expect to find that it is reflective of the poor's priorities and the issues that matter most to them including poverty-environment links. However, disappointedly, the IPRSP has overlooked the poverty-environment relationships. This is particularly odd as results from the Asian Development Bank (ADB)'s "Poverty in Pakistan - Issues causes and Institutional Responses" indicates that the major poverty determinants identified by the poor themselves are ecological fragility; resource rights; vulnerability to natural disasters; access to water and sanitation; and mismanagement of natural resource base. The poor themselves speak of how the environment matters to them as they depend heavily on a range of environmental goods and services for their livelihoods; suffer most from environmental degradation; and are highly vulnerable to environmental disasters. Hence the question is, if the environment does matters to the people living in poverty, then shouldn't environmental management be an integral part of the (final) PRSP? The point is that, not only are the environmental determinants of poverty missing, but more crucially in terms of how they cut across and compound economic, social and governance determinants of poverty.

Two examples will suffice here. First, the IPRSP is correct to point out that it is the quality of growth that matters for poverty alleviation. However, even if the growth process impacts positively on the poor but leads to degradation of the natural resource base and environmental pollution over time, would the poor continue to be better off?

Second, IPRSP is again correct in pointing out that lack of access to health facilities is a social determinant of poverty. However, by providing access to health facilities without addressing the root environmental causes of disease would leave the poor better off? Put in another way, would it not be better that steps are taken to harmonise development activity with the goal of conservation, rather than leave it as an enemy, and concentrate attention on corrective or curative actions.

So to conclude, the poverty-environment nexus needs greater elaboration for us to better understand the relationships, and identify and prioritise the right set of policies, programmes and actions. Nevertheless, the debate on this issue is a good start. But it would be great that these discussions translate into more tangible outcomes like a well-integrated (with respect to poverty-environment issues) PRSP.