A rich diversity of development perspectives

People's Report 2004-2005: Bangladesh Environment
Edited by Atiur Rahman and Mahboob Hassan
Unnayan Shamannay, MoEF and UNDP

Although there has been a burgeoning of literature on the Bangladesh environment in recent times, a comprehensive treatment covering the complex nexus of environment, poverty and development has been strikingly rare. The principal worth of the publication under review lies in the fact that it attempts to fill in the above caveat in the contemporary literature, and moves beyond a mere techno-centric explanation of environmental problems in favour of a more humanistic and down-to-earth 'People's Account'. The report makes the case in the following manner:
In the case of Bangladesh, the poverty-environment relationship becomes a subject matter of interest from three perspectives, viz., (i) economic growth driven environmental degradation affecting the poor, (ii) natural disasters damaging people's livelihoods, and (iii) poverty having unfavourable consequences on the environment. This is the backdrop for the thematic focus of this Report (p.5).
The Report's above perspective of analysis is in conformity with the country's key national guiding policy document and the government's commitment to international development frameworks. The Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS), for example, also views environment within the broader perspectives of poverty and sustainable development, and argues that: "Human lives and livelihood in Bangladesh are intricately intertwined with nature. Consequently, no process of development and eradication of poverty can be conceived of without putting caring for environment and sustainable development at the centre stage" (PRSP/GoB, p.156). The Report's analytical perspectives are also very much compatible with the government's commitment to broad philosophical thrusts expressed in such international development frameworks as the government's commitment to the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), SAARC Development Goals (SDGs), and the social targets laid out in the Partnership Agreement on Poverty Reduction (PAPR).
The report is organised in nine chapters. Besides an introductory overview and a concluding chapter, the remaining seven chapters focus on such specialised topics as 'Background (to the theme of environment-poverty nexus),'Demography and Poverty', 'Spatial Dimensions of Poverty', 'The Eco-System', 'Urbanization and the Environment', 'Challenges and Initiatives', and 'Development Poverty Alleviation and Policy Interventions'. These broad titles, however, do not adequately reflect the range of 'subsidiary issues'. Under the title 'Demography and Poverty' (chapter 3), for example, the discussion sweeps across a wide gamut of issues, including the plight of tribal/indigenous populations and the ultra-poor in the environment-poverty nexus, area-specific (e.g. CHT, North Bengal, central Sal forest tracts), gender and feminization of poverty, a conceptual paradigmatic discussion on property, power and poverty; a collage of relevant media reports.
The presentational style of the Report is particularly interesting. Each of these discussion topics is pursued through two complementary perspectives (i) the concerned common citizen's views and perceptions on the topic together with (ii) analyses and specialist treatments of leading experts in the respective fields. The stylistic get-up and format of the publication is impressive, and the readers will find the rich collection of relevant photographs valuable and soothing.
In the concluding chapter, the Report recapitulates the core conceptual and theoretical and arguments concerning the complex dynamics of the 'poverty-environment- development' linkages. It provides an alternative perspective on the traditionally held notion that blames the poor for environmental degradation. The poor are often not the agents of environmental degradation (example: encroachment of state forest lands). Poverty in fact becomes a direct outcome of environmental degradation. In this context, the Report argues and pleads for a deeper understanding of the poverty-environmental nexus on the part of all those involved in policy making. Drawing on a host of empirical and theoretical evidences and arguments, it concludes by putting forth the following rationale and proposition:
Why the analysis of the poverty-environment nexus? In looking to the future, we focus on the policy perspective. An understanding of the nexus is important because it has consequences for the allocation and administration of public resources for poverty reduction and for mitigating environmental problems. And therefore the linkage between environment and poverty should get proper attention of the policy-makers for promoting sustainable development in Bangladesh (p.325)
Some discussions are, however, rather terse and lack the needed elaboration for non-specialist readers, some examples being the accounts of 'Logit Regression of Modelling Poor' or 'Regression of Poverty Status' (pp.206-208); 'Water level trend in the Barind' (pp.107-117); 'Climate change' (25-27) etc. Although for the most part the language of the Report is generally lucid, there are spots of obscurity in a few areas of the text. It would have been very useful for readers if the photographs had been appropriately captioned and labeled.
On the whole, this work should be worthwhile reading. It makes a valuable contribution to the literature on the Bangladesh environment and development by addressing a major gap (i.e. the 'poverty-environment-development nexus') and bringing in a rich diversity of analytic perspectives. This report, thus, deserves to be studied widely.
Happy reading!

Professor Niaz Ahmed Khan teaches in the Department of Development Studies, Dhaka University.