Localizing MDGs for Poverty Reduction in Viet Nam: Ensuring Environmental Sustainability

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Localizing MDGs for Poverty Reduction in Viet Nam: Ensuring Environmental Sustainability

June 20, 2013

This series of papers on the Viet Nam Development Goals (VDGs) reflects a collective effort by the Poverty Task Force to propose a set of goals and intermediate indicators, which represent both the core developmental vision of Viet Nam as well as the Government’s efforts to meet international goals. This analytical work was carried out during 2001 and early 2002 as the Government of Viet Nam drafted a Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy (CPRGS) and was trying to establish a clear accountability framework for monitoring future progress.

Though Viet Nam has made tremendous progress in reducing poverty, there has been a general decline in environmental resources. The poor suffer more than non-poor from this downturn. There are several reasons for this. The first is that the poor are generally more dependent upon natural resources than the better-off. Most of Viet Nam’s poor still depend upon subsistence agriculture for survival, and as water and soil quality become degraded, so too do their livelihoods. The poor are also less able to protect themselves from environmental pollution or afford to treat the health problems polluttion causes. Furthermore, poor people suffer more from natural disasters because they have fewer resources to help rebuild their lives subsequently.

Fortunately, the environment-poverty linkage goes both ways, and improvements in the environment can help reduce poverty. Improving water supplies, for instance, can improve health and reduce the amount of time spent collecting water, allowing time for other tasks. Reducing the impact of natural disaster on the poor can make livelihoods and food supplies more secure. Improvements in natural resource management can help the poor who are dependent upon natural resources improve their well-being. Thus, general environmental improvements are likely to benefit the poor.

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