All too often environmental and poverty issues are looked at by different people, for different reasons. Fortunately less and less so, as the two issues are greatly interlinked: it’s the poor who all too often suffer the greatest impact of environmental issues (e.g. floods, droughts), and it’s regularly the poor who are forced to abuse natural resources thus exacerbating the impact on the local environmental (e.g. deforestation or desertification). At the same time, when looking at poverty alleviation/ development, environmental issues are often brushed aside as ‘luxury aspects’ the poor can’t yet afford to take into account, or development is aimed towards living standards as in the ‘developed world’, for which we’d need several further planets to sustain this.

Runaway growth in consumption (not consumption per se) in the past 50 years is putting strains on the environment never before seen, and the inequalities in consumption are stark. According to the 1998 UN Development Programme report, globally, the 20% of people in the highest-income countries account for 86% of total consumption expenditures (with all the environmental consequences to produce, transport and dispose of the waste of it!), the poorest 20% a negligible 1.3%.

If our unsustainable consumption continues, there will ultimately be no life, no dignity, no offspring, no property and no religion (the sustenance of which are the 5 aims of Sharia or Islamic law). Poverty alleviation not taking into account environmental aspects will thus be futile.

Taking an ‘environment-only’ approach to development, however, won’t work as it risks blaming the victims. Climate change e.g. is having dramatic environmental consequences to which the poorest often only marginally contributed, and people who live in the most fragile environments are all too often very aware of the impact they’re having, but often have no choice. With an international trade system greatly skewed against the poorer countries, our runaway over consumption rarely benefits the growers in poor countries (regularly thought as a reason/ excuse to consume more, to support poor countries in trade).

What is then the way forward? We should all restore a holistic approach to our role as khalifa (guardian), as God commands it of us. God created the world, its bounties and our religion not only for us, but for all generations, including those to come after us. Of more than 6,000 verses in the Qur’an, some 750, one eighth of the book, exhort Muslims to reflect on nature, to study the relationship between living organisms and their environment, to make the best use of reason and to maintain the balance and proportion God has built into the Creation. To include environmental considerations into all our actions (as individuals and organisations) is thus a major obligation.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the combined challenges of environmental issues and poverty. Remember, however, that we will all be accountable on Day of Judgment for what we could’ve done (e.g. reduce, reuse, recycle), each in our own way; we will not be accountable for what others didn’t do. And to end on the best encouragement I can think of: "If the Hour (Day of Judgment) comes while one of you holds a palm seedling in his hand and he can cultivate it, he should do so." (Al Aini) The Prophet (PBUH) thus reminds us that we should never be lazy or lethargic, even when the end seems nigh, or the effort possibly futile.

•    150,000 people die every year from climate change.
•    The economic costs of global warming are doubling every decade. The number of people affected by disasters rose to 2 billion in the 1990s, up from 740 million in the 1970s. Virtually all are concentrated in poorer countries.
•    Land area stricken by serious drought more than doubled from 1970s to 2000s
•    By 2025 more than 3 billion people could be affected by serious water shortages
•    The UN expects 50 million environmental refugees by 2010
•    150 million environmental refugees by 2050
•    30 million more people may be hungry because of climate change by 2050
•    Wars over increasingly scarce resources, such as water and fertile land, are becoming a factor more and more frequently (e.g. Nile river is feeling increasing pressure from use by 10 countries)
•    The environment-development trade-off is not a trade-off. It is moving misery and death from one person to another (or others).


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