Protecting the environment...
Water Factsheet  (234
kb) | Environmental Sustainability Factsheet(151
kb) | Slumdwellers Factsheet(215
kb) |
DFID's approach to the
environment(858
kb) | Water and sanitation
Poor people often have limited access to clean water and fresh air, fertile land
and fertile crops, and the healthy livestock and other animals that are
essential for livelihoods and health. Also, it is the poor who usually bear the brunt of environmental
hazards and degradation.
In addition, poor people and poor countries are
dependent on natural resources such as timber, agricultural crops, fuel and
minerals for their livelihoods and for economic growth. So, sound environmental management and the
sustainable use of natural resources are essential to economic growth in
developing countries.
DFID is helping to tackle environmental problems by:
- Working to improve forest governance and
trade;
- Helping to accelerate reforms that will support better livelihoods and
more responsible management of forests (under the
 Rights
and Resources Initiative);
- Committing to double our assistance to water and sanitation
in Africa to £95 million a year by 2007/08, and more than doubling
funding again to £200 million by 2010/11;
- Supporting a programme with civil society organisations in Kenya
that aims to
better represent the needs of poor communities to the Government and
improve legislation for poor people;
- Significantly increasing
research funding
to improve the capacity of African countries to adapt to climate change;
- Working to improve climate science in Africa through the
Global
Climate Observing System (GCOS);
- Helping to develop guidance on how to screen all development
investments for the effects of climate change;
- Supporting
UN
Habitat, the UN agency leading on urban development and shelter, to
improve the lives of slum-dwellers;
- Funding a number of regional and country programmes, such as the large
urban services programmes in Kolkata Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh
in India, which total £266 million;
- Supporting the Climate Investment Funds and
the Environmental Transformation Fund.
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However, there are a number of environmental problems to tackle:
- Assessments of national development plans by the World Bank have
shown limited integration of the environment;
- Environmental assets (such as clean water, clean air, fertile crops)
provide roughly two-thirds of household income for the rural poor, but
the loss of environmental resources continues (forest cover, for
example, has declined by 7.3 million hectares per year over the past five years
– an area about the size of Sierra Leone);
- Climate change is a major threat to development: natural disasters
such as hurricanes and floods are expected to increase in intensity and severity,
higher temperatures will cause diseases like malaria to
spread, shorter and more changeable rainy seasons will cause crops to
fail and greater competition over resources could lead to conflict;
- Over 1 billion people still lack access to safe drinking water and
2.6 billion lack access to basic sanitation;
- According to UN Habitat, there are currently 989 million
slum-dwellers worldwide, and this is expected to increase to 1.4 billion
by 2020 if current trends do not change.
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Last updated: 17 July 2008 Back to top
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