Impacts of Poverty and an Inability to Manage the Environment

It was taken for granted that poverty led to environmental degradation: poverty is related to massive consumption of raw materials, to overpopulation, and thus to overconsumption of natural resources, and so on. But more recent studies have shown that the poverty–environment link was caused by a combination of several factors. Traditional societies used to have their own system of preserving the environment, but when they came into contact with more modern nations, their efforts to develop often led to a depletion of natural resources, and thus to environmental degradation. In other words, the institutional weakness of traditional communities in poor countries is no longer adapted to development. As markets do not always take into account the cost of environmental protection, some policies and government decisions may lead to unintentionally disastrous results for the environment.