Poverty, the Environment and Rural Out-Migration
 

• Rural communities depend heavily on agriculture and natural resources for their livelihood.
• Environmental degradation from cultivation on hillsides and marginal soils reduces yields, food and income.
• Degradation exacerbated by high population pressure on the land.

Result: rural to rural out-migration, rural to urban out-migration.

1. Slash-and-burn agriculture and logging are expanding in the Biosphere Reserve, Yucatan, Mexico.  Rapid in-migration and high fertility.
2. Subsistence farmers have stripped forest cover from the Garo Hills in NE India.  High population pressure.
3. Destruction of the mangrove swamps for firewood, and dynamite fishing in coastal areas of West Africa.  High rates of rural out-migration to coastal towns.

"Here and elsewhere, the poor stand at the end of a long chain of cause and effect.  They are the messengers of unsustainability rather than its agents."

Solutions...

• Environmental conservation and poverty alleviation are parallel objectives. (Ecoagriculture)
• Local control of resources often leads to better management and stewardship.