Is Poverty Toxic?

By Farah Khan

Fatima Jibrell of Somalia remembers her pastoralist childhood, when she and her family would make fires and erect temporary fences to keep out marauding leopards and lions. Today, her descendants don't need the fires or the fences because the leopards are all gone, the lions so diminished in number that they do not pose a danger.

"Today there's no more fear, no more lion, no more leopard," she told an IUCN Futures Dialogue on the links between protecting biodiversity and poverty. Jibrell placed the blame for diminishing biodiversity firmly at the door of nations wealthier than hers.

She remembered seeing Jackie Kennedy wearing a coat made from the skin of a Somali leopard - an image that had stuck with her as she grew up.

In a rousing address, Jibrell pointed fingers at Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Europe for continuing to plunder Somalia, which numbers among the 10 poorest countries in the world.

Arabs had a penchant for food cooked using charcoal. To feed their taste for smoky eats, Somalia's acacia forests were disappearing as her desperate countrymen chopped down trees to burn their timber to make the charcoal. "We made representations to Saudi Arabia and to the UAE, but they told us they did not regulate business, unless there was illegal activity, like drug-smuggling."

She added that European fishing companies were also "doing a very good job" of depleting Somalia's marine biodiversity by fishing along its coastline. Most coastal African nations do not have the resources to protect their fishing stock.

"We're losing the food of our people," she said, pointing out that she had grown up on a diet of milk, seeds, gums, roots and fruits.

Desperation forced Somali's to migrate to the West where "they clean your toilets to survive". Many faced deportation back to their country. "You cannot destroy the land of people and then tell them to go back to that land ... to what land? The land that your companies have destroyed?"

The rest of the Futures Dialogue was less emotional, but still provocative as a debate raged between environmentalists on whether or not poverty reduction was necessary for general environmental protection and for biodiversity in particular.

Claude Martin, the director-general of the World Wildlife Fund questioned whether the focus on poverty relief with its emphasis on halving the number of people living on under a U.S. dollar a day, was a "fad", not a carefully considered goal. "I've lived with indigenous people who have never seen a greenback or a rupee who are not poor people. They live with the resource base," said Martin, whose view was echoed by several people in the audience.

"I think the view that poverty is the most toxic thing for the environment is bullshit," he added.

World Bank environmental economist Jan Bojo disagreed and said his organisation was placing much more emphasis on integrating 17 environmental indicators into country poverty reduction strategies. Initial findings by the Bank suggested that "attention to biodiversity is lacking or marginal".