How are tropical deforestation and poverty in developing nations connected?
Salil Shetty: If you look at the connections between environment and agriculture, that’s where you can find the most direct linkages because by definition poor people are people who live off the land, lands that are consistently getting worse and worse in terms of quality. You have the results of direct deforestation, such as erosion and runoffs, that affect people because they usually live on low lands that are affected by run offs. From another perspective, in India, 8% of the population—which comes to 80 million people—is indigenous. These people live off the forests directly so if we don’t have forest protection policy sorted out they lose their livelihood. Unregulated forestry and logging is therefore detrimental to the poor communities—whether it’s in Liberia or the Amazon or Tanzania. In addition, there are also direct connections between water management and forestry, and often we look at these as separate issues. On a macro-level, climate change and Kyoto are central to these
