ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with global environmental degradation attributes the source of the problem to one or more principal causes: economic growth, population change and, in the case of developing countries, poverty. Market failure exists when markets fail to fully reflect environmental values. Institutional failure arises through the lack of appropriate social institutions, or where existing institutions are inadequate or ineffective. Government or policy failure occurs when the public policies required to correct for market and institutional failures over-or under-correct for the problem. Additionally, various reviews have suggested that reducing population growth cannot be demonstrated to have major impacts on economic growth. For most indicators of environmental degradation, the turning point level of per-capita income at which the environmental Kuznets curve peaks is well above the current level of per-capita income for most economies in the world. Probably the most widely-cited linkages between poverty and the environment relate to deforestation and soil erosion.
