| The Problem as We See It |
| Poverty and the Environment |
| Inequality and the Environment |
| The Conventional Approach |
| Our Approach |
Whether
expanding
or contracting, the economies of Latin America
and
the
Caribbean
create their own environmental
problems. Mining
creates slag, waste
products, and
air pollution. The logging and fishing industries easily over-exploit
natural resources. Rapid expansion of agriculture
on fragile tropical
lands results in widespread erosion of the topsoil, polluted rivers,
and contaminated soils.
To promote development, many governments grant broad concessions to prospective resource-using industries. Rather than restrict growth by tightening environmental safeguards, public policy in many countries permits, and may even encourage, greater pollution by attracting those very footloose industries which face tougher environmental constraints, and hence higher costs, in Europe, Japan, and North America. But when rainforests are burned in order to clear land quickly for cattle and soybean plantations, the fires affect the air quality of the region and the climate change of the entire planet.
The
resulting economic growth, 
however,
may contribute little to alleviate the long-term poverty of the peasants
in whose name the resources are being used and who are often those employed
directly in the environmental destruction. The tropical soils that are
exposed yield a few good crops, at best. If they are not washed away
entirely, the land may soon be turned into grasslands for extensive
cattle-raising, employing even fewer people than found a livelihood
during the brief period of high yields.Pressures on the poor lead to
their cutting the mangroves on the coast for firewood and stands of
virgin forest in the interior.
The majority
of the poor in most of the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean
now live in the cities.
Their wretched living conditions are compounded by urban smog from car
and bus exhaust, polluted rivers andharbors, open air sewers, and waste
dumps of monumental proportions which themselves support a small, unfortunate
army of human scavengers. Environmental problems in most Latin American
countries have been well-documented by interdisciplinary teams of scientists.
Poorly understood, however, are the economic and social factors and
their connections with environmental problems. If these problems are
to be alleviated by intervention or regulation, environmental policy
must also consider the social and economic incentives that inadvertently
promote pollution in the first place. If the social causes are not addressed,
then the scientific or technological "solutions" promoted
by the environmental advocates are likely to fail.
Poverty
and the Environment
Poverty
is a basic condition that affects nearly 40% of Latin America's population.
In Colombia, Honduras, and Guatemala, the poverty rates are greater
than 50%; only in Chile and Uruguay are less than 20% of the people
considered poor.
One immediate
and noticeable symptom of poverty is its impact and effect on the environment.
The demand for cheap fuels and cheap food leads to rapid deforestation
and the burning of wood in the cities, adding to air pollution. Extensive
poverty means that tax revenue is minimal, and governments therefore
lack the ability to enforce their own environmental rules. The combination
of increased need and weakened enforcement permits the degrading of
the environment through over-fishing and over-logging, for example,
excessive mineral extraction, and industrial pollution.
 |
 |
Inequality and
the Environment
Hand in
hand with extensive poverty is great inequality in the distribution
of income. The implications of unequal incomes on the environment are
less studied and less understood but perhaps more important than those
of poverty.
There are
at least three major implications of inequality on the environment.
-
F
irst,
great inequalities undermine the stability of any democratic government.
The wide range in incomesleads to recurring demands for radical reform
and creates a society receptive to populist demagoguery. The military
often intervenes, democratic freedoms are suspended, and the citizen-led
"environmental protection groups" are suppressed. Environmental
concerns get put on the back burner, and the accumulated damage becomes
almost irreversible, for example, in Mexico, Chile, and Cuba. Even
when "democratic" governments have stayed in power, as in
Colombia and Venezuela, great inequality of income combined with extensive
poverty has meant little government help in meeting the people's basic
needs such as water,schools, and health care. Environmental concerns
get even less 
attention.
-
Second, the pattern of consumer spending of the top-most class in Latin America is imitative of their counterparts in Europe and North America, where family consumption is extremely energy-intensive. This explains the sprawling suburbs, the auto culture, and conspicuous waste in the countries which have much too few resources to waste.
-
Third, extreme inequality implies a much greater pressure on the poor, simply because their absolute share of a very small pie
leaves very little for them to consume. This compels short-sightedness by the governments and leads them to restrict their spending on public works whose pay off requires a longer time-horizon, such as safe drinking water and more adequate sewage and garbage disposal. It also leads to "rational" consumer choices in favor of substandard housing and cheapened foods and manufactured goods, all of which draw heavily on local resources and drain the local environment.
The major environmental issues today in Latin America are widely regarded as "technical" or "engineering" issues: drinking water, river pollution, coastal contamination, problems of the air, soil, forests, and mineral resources, and their impacts on human beings and on the future generations. These environmental issues are framed typically in their "technical" dimensions: the biology or chemistry of toxic waste; an engineering design for a factory that will alleviate the problem; the drafting of proper economic incentives or regulations that will prevent such-or-such an event or condition from happening again. See InterAmerican Development Bank site.
Similarly, the conventional approach to poverty and inequality is to measure it and chart the magnitudes of change, and to alleviate it through policies, programs, and awareness. See the Research and the PovertyNet sites of the World Bank, and the InterAmerican Development Bank site.
 |
 |
The goal
of our program is to connect the scientific studies with their underlying
economic and social causes and to devise integrated, social and economic
policies that would have an impact on environmental issues. Our research
program emphasizes the setting in which the environment has been consistently
compromised as a part of development. We model policies and their alternatives,
showing the real long-run costs involved in environmental destructions
and the long-term benefits of pro-development, pro-environment courses
of action.
Team Work Style and University Program
 |
 |
The team also supervises the fieldwork of graduate students, oversees
summer internships, and contributes to the graduate research seminar
(see time-line and training).
The results of the research by professors
and students will be published in English and Spanish as working papers
and monographs. They will also be disseminated at conferences with the
relevant policy-makers and citizen organizations.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |