sustainable development 20 years on from the ... - José Eli da Veiga

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inequality, access to basic services, health, and food security. The analysis conducted here starts from the
premise that a society with high levels of poverty and inequality is not <strong>sustainable</strong>, no matter how well
protected the environment. Conversely, the existence of poverty does not exempt States from the
responsibility to take whatever measures and make whatever investments are needed to ensure proper
environmental stewardship, because the poor are disproportionately disadvantaged, both directly and
indirectly, by environmental degradation. Damage to the environment also limits the resources available
to future generations for staying out of poverty. Many of the measures needed to ensure environmental
sustainability are, in fact, the very actions needed to protect the economic, social and cultural rights
enshrined in international conventions, such as those that refer to housing, water and sanitation, which
Millennium Development Goal 7 cites as targets for environmental sustainability.
1. Poverty and inequality
In the past <strong>20</strong> <strong>years</strong>, the Latin American and Caribbean region as a whole has made headway in reducing
poverty (see figure I.1) and, albeit to a smaller extent, in narrowing inequality and improving employment
indicators (see figure I.2), notwithstanding the crisis of <strong>20</strong>08-<strong>20</strong>09 (ECLAC, <strong>20</strong>10a). The region’s HDI 2
showed substantial gains between 1990 and <strong>20</strong>10 (see figure I.3). The Gini coefficient, which measures
income distribution inequality, also improved between the early 1990s and around <strong>20</strong>09, moving down
from 0.538 to 0.5<strong>20</strong>. This may be a small change, but it is highly significant in a region where inequity
has always been particularly recalcitrant (ECLAC, <strong>20</strong>10a). Since <strong>20</strong>02, the reduction in both poverty and
inequality has been attributable to real gains in labour income —associated in most cases with
simultaneously rising income per employed person with respect to the unemployed or dependent
population— and to narrowing labour income gaps between highly skilled and less skilled earners and an
increase in income transfers to the poorest population (ECLAC, <strong>20</strong>11a).
The progress is relative, however, since the Latin American and Caribbean region is still the most
unequal in the world (see figure I.4 and UNDP, <strong>20</strong>10a). Despite the improvements, the region’s poverty
and indigence levels remain high and the gap with respect to the developed countries has not narrowed.
The poor and indigent population in <strong>20</strong>10 —177 million— was larger in absolute terms than in 1980 (see
figure I.1). The region’s HDI for <strong>20</strong>10 was still behind the 1990 figure for the countries of the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (see figure I.3).
Aside from economic resources, the concept of poverty may encompass aspects of psychological
well-being or non-market assets such as literacy or access to natural resources or ecosystem services.
Poverty can, then, be defined as the lack of certain basic capabilities (ECLAC, <strong>20</strong>11a). From a human
rights perspective, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights defines poverty as “a human
condition characterized by sustained or chronic deprivation of the resources, capabilities, choices, security
and power necessary for the enjoyment of an adequate standard of living and other civil, cultural,
economic, political and social rights” (CESCR, <strong>20</strong>01).
2
The Human Development Index (HDI) is calculated by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on the
basis of the geometrical average of measurements of life expectancy, education and per capita gross national income.