ABSTRACT
Land degradation, deforestation, and desertification can seriously reduce the productivity of land, and jeopardise economic growth. The conflict between environmental sustainability and economic growth is obvious in poorer developing countries. In general, four adverse interdependencies are commonly acknowledged. First, the inaccessibility of poor farmers to modern technical knowledge and information leads to misuse of natural resources. Second, farm-gate prices in most developing countries are far below their world market levels. This discourages farmers’ incentives for soil conservation and encourages soil depletion. Third, lack of well-defined private property rights over natural resources leads to overexploitation and degradation of these resources. Fourth, pressured by their poverty, poor people adopt short-term survival strategies, and over-use land resources, thus giving environmental protection a low priority. The four interdependencies are supported by a large number of references which are summed up in Abdelgalil (2000), and need not be repeated here.
