Schleicher, Judith and Schaafsma, Marije and Burgess, Neil D. and Sandbrook, Chris and Danks, Fiona and Cowie, Chris and Vira, Bhaskar (2018) 'Poorer without it? The neglected role of the natural environment in poverty and wellbeing.', Sustainable development., 26 (1). pp. 83-98.
Abstract
The relationship between sustainable development’s prime goal, human wellbeing, and the natural environment has been narrowly conceived. This paper focuses on the possibility and the implications of treating the natural environment as a ‘constituent’, or internal element, of the concepts of wellbeing and poverty, as opposed to a ‘determinant’, or instrumental, external factor. Our review of philosophical accounts and conceptual frameworks of wellbeing and poverty suggests that treating the environment as a constituent element is philosophically sound, conceptually robust and empirically grounded. We argue that failing to consider these missing environmental aspects can result in an incomplete capturing of the multiple dimensions of wellbeing and poverty, and their underlying drivers. This broader framing of the environment– wellbeing relationship has the potential to inform a new generation of individual level wellbeing and poverty indicators, creating measures of multidimensional poverty that reflect the broadened scope ambitiously articulated in the Sustainable Development Goals.
Item Type: | Article |
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Full text: | (VoR) Version of Record Available under License - Creative Commons Attribution. Download PDF (Advance online version) (123Kb) |
Full text: | (VoR) Version of Record Available under License - Creative Commons Attribution. Download PDF (127Kb) |
Status: | Peer-reviewed |
Publisher Web site: | https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.1692 |
Publisher statement: | © 2017 The Authors. Sustainable Development published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Date accepted: | 05 May 2017 |
Date deposited: | 16 October 2017 |
Date of first online publication: | 01 August 2017 |
Date first made open access: | No date available |
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