jp8589 WRI.qxd - World Resources Institute

GLOBAL
DEVELOPMENT
POLICIES
SPECIAL
SECTION
MAKING THE MDGs AND PRSPs WORK
FOR THE POOR AND THE ENVIRONMENT
IN THE PRECEDING CHAPTERS AND CASE STUDIES WE HAVE
approached poverty reduction from the village and local level—the level where ecosystems are
accessed for income. We have presented numerous examples of how community-scale projects have
improved the livelihoods of the poor by enabling them to manage fisheries, forests, and common
lands for income and sustainability.
But the rural village economy we have focused on exists within a national and international framework
of economic, legal, and political policies. This special section deals with innovations in poverty
policies at these larger scales. In the past five years, two developments have raised hopes that
national governments and multilateral institutions can be mobilized to address world poverty: the
establishment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the crafting of national
Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRSPs). In this section we explore how the concepts of environmental
income and pro-poor environmental governance apply to these efforts. A key link between
MDG and PRSP processes and the world’s poor is the environment. The central question is: Do the
Millennium Development Goals and the current crop of Poverty Reduction Strategies incorporate
the environment and governance as central features in fighting poverty? And if not, how can they
be made to incorporate these themes?