Sustainability, Growth and Poverty Alleviation: A Policy and Agroecological Perspective

The book has four objectives: 1. to examine links among three critical development objectives-agricultural growth, poverty alleviation, and the sustainable use of natural resources in rural areas of the developing world, especially the links between agricultural growth and sustainability and the links between poverty alleviation and sustainability; 2. to examine the nature and determinants of the links by agroecological zone and geopolitical area within major areas (the humid and subhumid tropics, the arid and semi-arid tropics and the tropical highlands); 3. to examine the policies, technologies, institutions and other factors that condition these links; 4. to draw implications for design and implementation of policies, technologies and institutions to make as compatible as possible, and pursue as much as possible, all three objectives. The book focuses on rural households and communities, key actors in natural resource management. It discusses findings on the concept of sustainability, links among sustainability, growth and poverty alleviation, and factors conditioning the links such as policies, technologies and agroclimatic conditions. Conclusions highlight certain key approaches to development strategy and practice. First, agendas of environment and agricultural growth and poverty alleviation are linked: pursuing one without regard to the others is a path of failure in the long run. Second, the links between poverty and environment and between growth and environment are conditioned by complex interactions among policies, technologies, and institutions. This complexity is exacerbated by differences in the links across agroecological zones. There is thus no simple solution such as low-input agriculture or local participation, or even renewals of Green Revolution approaches. Instead, there is a hard path ahead to seek combinations of innovative approaches that will find and promote "overlap technologies" that sustain the resource base while meeting ambitious but necessary growth goals. Finally, the key actors are rural households and communities, who put as top priority today's survival and food security. Solutions that are aimed at helping the environment without helping rural economies to grow and become less poor will, in the end, neither meet environment goals nor be sustainable. - summarized from Introduction