How can research help address the vicious circle of environmental change, resource scarcity, poverty, and poor health?

The Brundtland Report (WCED 1987, 27) stated “[m]any parts of the world are caught in a vicious downward spiral: poor people are forced to overuse environmental resources to survive from day to day, and their impoverishment of their environment further impoverishes them, making their survival ever more uncertain and difficult.” This statement and other aspects of the report have been debated for 20 years. The question, posed slightly differently here, remains one of the fundamental unsolved challenges for human-environment relations.

3 comments

1. Ntchoua says:

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   I think the interdisciplinary problems, involving such issues as environmental change, resource scarcity, poverty, and poor health are among the most challenging problems a researcher can face. In Subsahara Africa for instance, you can’t carry out a research on environmental change without considering poverty alleviation, human health improvement which are common share.
   Thanks
2. kohlmann says:

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   The above comment sounds rather optimistic and to be optimistic is really wonderful. However, the Brundtland statement is correct, but it sounds cynical if you fail to notice the excessive and heedless exploitation of our planet by mighty multinational corporations, and the often undifferentiated reflection about the reasons for poverty on this planet.
3. Belouve says:

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   I think we will have very important technological developments which will solve the world global energy security problem : electric vehicles as soon as 2011 (Renault and many others, super-condensers using nanotechnologies, electricity from deep high energy geothermal power (ex: Soultz en Forêt, France), industrial CO2 emissions captured and transformed into biofuels by microscopicseaweed named chlorella, cheaper photovoltaic solutions, better energy efficiency in buildings, more growth of trees and crops with higher CO2 concentrations, improvement in security of new nuclear fast-breader reactors which will allow the use of uranium 238 and thorium to produce electricity, sustainable use of genetic engeneering to improve farming.

   All these improvements will be benefic to developping countries too. Many developping countries improve their industries, their business, revenues, health knowledge, family planning. They will participate to that new economical revolution.

   Unfortunately, others countries remain underdevelopped countries, especially many african countries under Sahara desert. But developing countries are more and more numerous and reduce the gap between the rich countries and themselves. However, this tendency could be slowed down by a too long and harmful economic crisis or by wars.