Fighting Isolation and Impotence ...

• Author: Grote, Ulrike

IT HAS TO DEMONSTRATE ITS STRENGTH AND LEADING POSITION IN GLOBAL MATTERS

Tremendous progress has been made in reducing world poverty. People live longer, in better health and conditions, fewer children die in young age from preventable diseases, more children can go to school, and adult literacy, especially of women, has risen enormously. Nevertheless, poverty persists in its many dimensions and the number of poor people in the world has increased. This is especially the case in countries hit by the financial crises and by natural or political disasters. Over 1 billion people live on less than $1 per day, and 3 billion live on less than $2 a day. These people lack access to basic needs like water and food, and face denial of opportunities and choices. They lack information and access to health and education facilities, productive assets or the market for their goods or labour. They live in inadequate or illegal housing--without piped water, electricity, infrastructure or security of tenure. They lack political freedom and therefore feel isolated and powerless. Social exclusion by ethnicity, caste, geography, gender or disability is not seldom. They often have no way of being heard in places where the decisions which affect their lives are made.

People in poverty survive based on the hopes for a better world for their children. They develop enormous creativity, strength and dynamism to solve their daily problems. Their own skills, values and cultures, their strong social bindings within their communities, and their detailed knowledge of their own environment are their assets. Where poor people are given additional rights and choices, they are able to make good use of them and manage to establish an existence worth living for. For many, the prospects of a sustainable livelihood are, however, worsening as population growth and economic growth accelerate environmental degradation. Therefore, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro, proclaimed in 1992 that eradicating poverty is also an indispensable requirement for sustainable development (Principle 5).

And further, in order to achieve sustainable development, environmental protection shall constitute an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in isolation from it (Principle 4).

In fact, significant progress has also been made worldwide in the last decade in the field of the environment. Environmental institutions have been...