Natural resources and their role in poverty alleviation

The Planning Commission is in the process of formulating the Tenth Five-Year Plan, which, based on press reports, will target a much faster reduction of poverty in India. Several approaches can be conceptualized for the elimination of poverty, but perhaps the most effective and certainly the most sustainable approach would be the building of natural assets on which the lives of the poor depend overwhelmingly. Impoverishment of natural resources only accentuates the disparity between the rich and the poor. The apparent dilemma of either protecting the environment or generating economic growth has proved to be misplaced. The destruction of the environment is clearly against the objectives of sustained economic growth. However, the creation or rebuilding of natural assets is not possible unless the question of access to these assets is addressed simultaneously. A large share of land and other natural resources in most societies is owned either by the wealthy or the government, and typically governments, even in healthy and vibrant democracies, have proved to be highly vulnerable to pressure by the wealthy. The result is an increase in income and wealth disparities. In 1998, for instance, the richest 10% of US households owned nearly 71% of the national wealth, more than 10 times the wealth owned by the poorest 60% of households. In India, recent trends have been disturbing, with the rich getting rapidly richer and the poor losing even the basic means of livelihood. In any society, the more remote the power centre from those locations where the impact of decision-making and authority is the highest, the greater is the danger of inadequate access to natural resources for the poor. With British colonialism came the nationalization of forest resources, breaking an age-old link between communities and the management of natural assets on which their lives depended. At this stage, to dismantle the 250-year-old colonial structure becomes difficult, but a useful move in this direction has been found in the JFM (Joint Forest Management) programme, a programme which TERI has pioneered in the state of Haryana, and which is gradually spreading to several other parts of the country. While the Tenth Five-Year Plan will certainly focus on resource allocation for the poor, it is hoped that it will also provide clear directions on governance issues, which would be the only safeguard against the use of natural assets by the privileged few and denial of access to the poor. This applies as much to water resources, land, and soil as it does to forestry products and fodder. It will be timely to organize a national debate centred around natural assets and their role in poverty alleviation before this issue is finalized in the drafting of the Tenth Five-Year Plan.