Poverty Reduction

Environmental Sustainability
Reducing vulnerability of the poor to degraded and hazardous conditions

Environmental sustainability is critical to sustainable development and, as a consequence, to the objectives of poverty reduction and ADB's Poverty Reduction Strategy [ PDF: 385kb | 51 pages ].

Poverty of opportunities, bad living conditions, and insecurity are often related to environmental degradation. The poor - both urban and rural - are often the biggest victims of environmental degradation and at the same time poverty can exacerbate ecological problems. Environment related poverty is often also closely related to regional and cross-border (particularly water) issues.

A major portion of Asia's core poor can be found

• living in remote forest areas (the upland poor, often also indigenous people),
• among the fisherfolk communities (the coastal poor),
• on marginal land areas (the dryland poor) and
• among those affected by regular floods (the wetland poor)
• in congested cities and towns with bad shelter conditions (the slum poor).

In addition, natural hazards make the poor particularly vulnerable to external shocks such as earthquakes, tsunami, and major storms (the disaster poor).

Often environmental poverty has cross-border and regional dimensions.

ADB's approach to environment related poverty considers the immediate needs of the poor affected by a degraded, hazardous, and marginal environments. Other more long-term approaches to environmental sustainability that benefit the poor comprise ADB's clean energy and urban transport initiatives.

Through its Poverty and Environment Program (PEP), ADB aims at accelerating learning about poverty-environment linkages.

In addition, ADB is currently enhancing its poverty reduction operations through sound environmental management in the areas of soil conservation, flood management, urban environmental improvement, sustainable ecosystem management, and disaster protection end emergency support for the vulnerable poor.

View ADB's knowledge products and operational expertise on addressing environment related poverty.