贫困与生态环境相互关系研究述评

The Review of the Relationship Between Poverty and Environment

扶贫与生态环境保护作为可持续发展的重要组成部分,已经成为全世界共同关注的焦点。然而实践中实现两者协同的案例非常鲜见,迄今对贫困与生态环境退化相互关系的认识仍然比较模糊,甚至还存在较大争论。围绕贫困与生态环境相互关系的理论渊源与研究脉络,梳理了学术界关于其原因与结果的争论的不同思想流派。在此基础上,指出目前研究的特点与趋势:总体层面上将贫困与生态环境问题置于同一分析框架内,微观层面上关注贫困人群并强调对其生计的保护,宏观层面探讨全球气候变化对贫困的影响及贫困人群与扶贫政策的适应,视角上尝试多学科交叉并推进多尺度融合。研究有助于揭示贫困与生态环境演变相互作用的内在机制,并为中国和其他发展中国家制定协同扶贫与生态环境保护的政策提供有益借鉴。

As two essential parts of sustainable development, the poverty alleviation and environmental protec- tion have become the focuses around the world. However, there are few successful attempts that aimed to inte- grate the economic and environmental objectives in practice. The knowledge of the relationship between the poverty and environmental degradation is still obscure and sometimes in debate so far. Historically, there are two theoretical origins on the relationship between poverty and environment. One is the some of pessimism af- fected by poverty trap and Environmental Kuznets Curve, which regards poverty and environmental degrada- tion as a downward spiral or a mutually reinforcing vicious cycle. The other is the relatively optimistic argu- ment, which emphasizes the possibility of integrating poverty alleviation and environmental protection due to the progress of technology. There are many debates about the causality of the poverty and environmental degra- dation, despite most scholars agreed that poverty is one of the consequences and the poor are the victims of en- vironmental degradation. However, there are wide differences among varied schools on whether environment degradation was caused by poverty or not. The first school attributed the environmental degradation to poverty or the poor. On the contrary, the second school attributed environmental degradation to the relatively wealthy country, region or the rich. The third school seems to integrate the former two schools and argued that poverty and environmental degradation were affected by varied factors and the conventional linear relationship is too simple and arbitrary. Based on it, it is concluded that there are four characteristics and trends about the re- search, i.e., putting the poverty and environment into one analytical framework on the whole, focusing on the poor and emphasizing their livelihoods at the micro level, exploring the impact of climate change on poverty and its adaptation at the macro level, and promoting the interdisciplinary and multi-scale fusion from various perspective. This study aims to help to disclose the intrinsic mechanism of the relationship between poverty and environment. At the same time, there are important policy implications to China and other developing countries. Firstly, when the policy of poverty alleviation and environmental protection, the livelihoods of the poor must be treated as important as the environment so as avoid two extreme, i.e., developing at the expense of the environment or damaging the poor＇ s interests in the name of environmental protection is designed. Sec- ondly, the benefits of different stakeholders such as the government, the public, the enterprise and the NGOs must be carefully respected and protected. Thirdly, the policy applicability of different scales must be compre- hensively understood basing on the specific regional context. Fourthly, some hotspot areas, such as the ecologi- cally fragile zones and the contiguous poverty-stricken areas in China must be recognized and given more as- sistance.