The World Bank identifies low-income countries as those having an average annual per capita gross national product (GNP) of less than $580 in 1989 (1). Among the 41 countries meeting this criterion, a dozen have an average per capita GNP of less than $250 (2). These 41 low-income countries are the primary focus of this chapter.
Per capita GNP is one measure of development but by no means the only appropriate one. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the quality of life as measured by longevity and literacy is also of critical importance in the development process. In 1990, the UNDP proposed a new measure--the Human Development Index (HDI)-- that considers these factors in addition to per capita GNP. The UNDP finds some 63 low-human-development countries, including most of the low-income countries and 25 other countries whose per capita GNP puts them above the low-income line (3) (4). These 25 additional countries are also included in the focus of this chapter because although they may not be poor in terms of per capita GNP, they are poor in the quality of life they provide their citizens. Thus, these countries face many of the same problems as low-income countries. (For convenience, low-income countries serve as the basis for the statistics reported here, unless otherwise identified. Because China and India differ from other low-income countries in a number of respects--including their size, degree of development of human resources, and possession of significant industrial sectors--data are sometimes presented separately for China and India.)
The low-income countries are congregated in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, but include Haiti in the Americas and several countries in East and Southeast Asia (5). Low-human-development countries include additional countries in North and sub-Saharan Africa, South and Central America, and the Middle East.
For the poor countries, the challenge of sustainable development is different from that facing more modern economies, but no less urgent. They face the need to provide for basic human necessities, stabilize populations, and stimulate the economic development that can alleviate poverty, all while conserving natural resources essential to economic growth.
Poor countries are often those with the lowest levels of education, the poorest health, the least access to safe water and sanitation, and the most impoverished natural resource base. Almost half (44 percent) of the aggregate population of the low-income countries is illiterate (51 percent if China and India are excluded), and in some of these countries three quarters or more of the people are unable to read and write. The low-income countries combined have an average life expectancy of 62 years (55 if China and India are excluded); high-income countries have average life expectancies of 76 or more years. The infant mortality rate is 70 deaths per 1,000 live births (94 if China and India are excluded), compared with 8 deaths per 1,000 live births for the industrial countries (6).
The low-income countries contain most of the world's poor people, but not all. Throughout the world, according to the World Bank, more than 1.1 billion people live in poverty, and, of those, 630 million are "extremely poor," having an average annual per capita income of less than $275 (7). Other estimates put the number of poor at nearly 2 billion of the world's 5.3 billion people (8). There are also about 1 billion adults unable to read and write, over 1.5 billion people without safe drinking water (9), about 100 million people who are completely homeless, 1 billion people suffering from hunger (10), 150 million children under age five (one in three) who are malnourished, and 12.9 million children each year who die before their fifth birthday. (See Chapter 6, "Population and Human Development.") Not just the poor countries that are the focus of this chapter but also poor populations in every country would benefit from strategies aimed directly at attacking poverty and deprivation while protecting the natural resource base on which those populations often depend.
The poor countries encompass an enormous range of conditions and a vast share of humanity. Cultural, religious, and ethnic preferences and conflicts play a major role in many societies: often the poor are set apart by such differences. Thus, development strategies must take such factors into account. Governments are sometimes part of the problem, not part of the solution to development needs, so that "empowerment" of poor people--and their direct and active involvement in planning and managing projects that affect them-- is essential if development is to succeed. (See Chapter 14, "Policies and Institutions.") Because every country is different, the policies discussed in this chapter cannot do justice to the diversity of conditions and needs among poor countries. The intent is rather to illustrate what sustainable development might mean in poor countries and to suggest, through specific examples, the range of opportunities for action.
Many of the poor countries are experiencing rapid population growth. Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole had an average annual population growth rate of 3 percent between 1985 and 1990, with some countries-- Cote d'Ivoire, Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia--having rates considerably higher. (See Chapter 16, "Population and Human Development," Table 16.1.)
In many poor countries, rapid population growth, agricultural modernization, and inequalities in land tenure are creating increasingly large populations with little or no access to productive land. Without jobs and without productive land, poor people are forced onto marginal lands in search of subsistence food production and fuelwood, or they move to the cities. Those who stay on the land are forced to graze livestock herds where vegetation is sparse or soils and shrubs are easily damaged and to create agricultural plots on arid or semiarid lands, on hillsides, in tropical forests, or in other ecologically sensitive areas. It has been estimated that 60 percent of the developing world's poorest people live in areas that are ecologically vulnerable (11). As more and more people exploit open-access resources in an often desperate struggle to provide for themselves and their families, they further degrade their environment (12).
The toll on natural resources takes many forms, including soil erosion, loss of soil fertility, desertification, deforestation, depleted game and fish stocks from overhunting and overfishing, loss of natural habitats and of species, depletion of groundwater resources, and pollution of rivers and other water bodies. The result is to reduce the carrying capacity and productivity of the land and its biological resources. This degradation further exacerbates poverty and threatens not only the economic prospects of future generations, but also the livelihoods, health, and well-being of current populations.
It is in the rural areas that poverty and environmental degradation come together most acutely. Most of the low-income countries are still primarily rural; in sub-Saharan Africa, 69 percent of the population lives in rural areas; and in South Asia, 74 percent. (See Figure 3.1.) By far, the greatest proportion--in some places as many as 80-90 percent--of the poor live in rural areas, depending on agriculture and related activities for their daily subsistence. Even in highly urbanized Latin America, 60 percent of the poorest people reside in rural areas (13). Because urban populations are growing rapidily, however--at an annual rate of 6 percent in sub-Saharan Africa and 4 percent in South Asia--urban poverty and urban environmental problems will be increasingly important in the future (14).
A contributing factor to poverty and environmental degradation is that rural areas lag behind urban areas in human development terms, with rural infant mortality in some countries 30-50 percent higher, and rural malnutrition in one study an average of 50 percent higher (15). In every society, the poor live shorter, less healthy lives than those who are better off financially. For example, in Colombia, infants from poor families are twice as likely to die as infants from the country's wealthiest families. In rural Punjab in India, child mortality among the landless is 36 percent higher than among the landowning classes (16).
These disparities are aggravated by disparities in the delivery of social services. In low-human-development countries, 72 percent of the population live in rural areas, but the rural population is only half as likely to have access to health, safe water, and sanitation services (17). Education is also less available in rural areas; in some African and Asian countries, rural literacy rates are less than half those in urban areas (18).
Women are particularly hard hit by the accelerating spiral of poverty and environmental degradation. When they have to devote more and more time to obtaining fuel and water, they have less time to devote to food production, to increase the household income, to pursue their own education, and to improve family welfare. These growing burdens can cause still further adverse social and economic consequences for themselves and their families (19).
Yet changes are taking place. The share of primary schooling in education budgets increased during the 1980s in 15 of 22 African countries examined, and countries in Africa and elsewhere are finding creative ways of both reducing costs and expanding services. Using teachers with less formal training (for example, as assistant teachers, as in Senegal and Colombia), increasing the size of classes, operating double (or even triple) shifts to save on the capital costs of buildings, equipment, and libraries, and recovering at least some of the costs of higher education through user charges all offer the potential for significant savings (22). Such savings allow more children to be reached without major increases in education budgets.
Community resources and parental involvement also can make a significant difference. The Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) is a nongovernmental organization providing a three-year basic curriculum at a cost of $15 per pupil per year. By involving village leaders and parents, and using simple classrooms and teachers who are not fully trained, BRAC prepares children who might not otherwise have access to schooling (especially girls from poor families) for entry into the official school system in the fourth year. Growing evidence suggests that schools managed, and to some extent financed, by local communities are more efficient than those run as part of a centralized system (23).