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Gruber, Stefan --- "Poverty and the Loss of Cultural Heritage Sites" [2012] ELECD 658; in Le Bouthillier, Yves; Cohen, Alfie Miriam; Gonzalez Marquez, Juan Jose; Mumma, Albert; Smith, Susan (eds), "Poverty Alleviation and Environmental Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Poverty Alleviation and Environmental Law

Editor(s): Le Bouthillier, Yves; Cohen, Alfie Miriam; Gonzalez Marquez, Juan Jose; Mumma, Albert; Smith, Susan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781781003282

Section: Chapter 14

Section Title: Poverty and the Loss of Cultural Heritage Sites

Author(s): Gruber, Stefan

Number of pages: 20

Extract:

14. Poverty and the loss of cultural
heritage sites
Stefan Gruber*

14.1 INTRODUCTION

The connections between poverty and environmental degradation are numer-
ous (Klugman, 2002). For example, unsustainable farming practices and over-
grazing often cause soil erosion and even desertification. Deforestation
destroys whole landscapes to gain arable land, produce firewood or timber for
exports. Droughts are worsened by unsustainable water use and the overex-
ploitation of ground water. Overfishing and the use of illegal fishing methods,
such as the use of explosives, deplete fishing grounds. The impacts of climate
change are likely to exacerbate the situation further as the world's poor are
expected to be particularly affected by the related changes in the environment
and availability of resources (Brainard et al., 2009). Those effects have in
common that environmental resources are depleted beyond a sustainable level,
thus exceeding the capacity of the natural environment to maintain ecological
and human communities. While poverty often forces communities to overex-
ploit local environmental resources in order to sustain themselves, they also
destroy their source of income and that of future generations, which ultimately
causes further poverty in addition to the potential collapse of ecosystems and
other serious environmental damage. That phenomenon has been called the
`Poverty-Environment Nexus' (Hughes et al., 2009, p. 144ff; Jalal, 1993, p.
9ff; Jehan and Umana, 2003).
This chapter examines how poverty, in addition to the depletion of envi-
ronmental resources, often further leads to a significant drain on the cultural
wealth of societies. The effects ...