Ramón López - Böcker

This important collection of essays from the leading writers in the field, focuses on the importance of taking environmental issues into account in the process of development and poverty reduction. This book deepens our understanding of environmental sustainability in a context of economic growth, putting sustainable development firmly back on the agenda.

Economic growth as we know it today cannot persist indefinitely if it entails continuous degradation of natural resources and the environment. While in a few countries around the world it appears that environmental degradation has been the result of rapid economic growth, in the vast majority of the developing countries the environment has been equally spoiled despite slow or even negative economic growth. This book provides new insights on the common roots of economic stagnation, poverty and environmental degradation which, unfortunately, generally reside in misguided government policies and priorities. By doing this, the volume seeks to provide a broader policy option framework than those found in conventional policy analyses, mainly dominated by the "Washington Consensus". It shows that a major omission of the conventional view is that governments tend to allocate government expenditures in a biased way favouring subsidies to the economic elites to the detriment of investments in public goods, including human capital, R&D, as well as the development of institutions (environmental and otherwise), which are vital for long run growth, poverty reduction and environmental sustainability.

This study of rural poverty in Latin America draws on six case studies of rural household surveys for Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Paraguay, and Peru and several thematic studies examining land, labour, rural financial markets, the environments, and disadvantaged groups. Recognizing the heterogeneity within the rural economy, the studies characterize three important groups small farmers, landless farm workers, and rural non-farm workers and provide quantitative and qualitative analyses of the determinants of household income.