Noticing Connections b/w poverty and the environment

Today we all live in a incredibly complex and interconnected world where anything we do or buy can affect people we never met before. These are some simple ideas about how poverty and the environment are connected.

1) Poor Countries and, in particular, poor individuals lack the resources to deal with intense climate changes and yet they are hardly the ones that are causing it. It has been shown with around 90% accuracy that extreme climate change is linked with human activity, i.e. unsustainable practices and consumption habits. Where do we fall into this, well the richest 20% of the global population, account for 86% of global consumption. The poorest 20% account for 1.3%. This seems to imply that our own lifestyles are affecting the environment that is then affecting many people in the world.

2) The IMF and World Bank enforced policies (they thought would help) on developing countries that reduced social programs (education, health, ect) and encouraged monoculture farms through free trade that left them in severe debt. Struggling to get our of this institutional trap, poor countries resort to unsustainable practices in production to feed the huge consumption of affluent countries. Shouldn't they be feeding themselves?

3) The last thought is very simple: We have a finite amount of resources in our environment. If you had a finite amount of food in your home would you eat as much as possible before your family could get much or would you ration it out to make sure everyone was fed? But this is not what is happening in our finite world...

An interesting site that pulls together lots of resources can be found here for more information:
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Development/PovertyEnv.asp