EMPLOYMENT Poverty Allivation & Employment

Many developing countries can achieve multiple benefits with carefully designed schemes for improving roads, irrigation, sewerage and other infrastructures. As well as providing facilities of value to the whole society, schemes that use labour-intensive methods generate employment for large numbers of poor people, often mobilizing small, informal enterprises where many of the poorest workers are concentrated. Their poverty reduction effects are further amplified if the facilities are specifically beneficial to low-income groups or lead to improvements in their land, houses or other assets.

The livelihood of the poor is steadily undermined by soil erosion, water pollution, deforestation and other forms of environmental degradation. More attention needs to be paid to these ecological and environmental issues, which have an important effect on employment. Environmental regeneration is itself a major potential source of employment and, in the longer term, environmentally sustainable development will also lead to sustainable job creation. Programmes that restore the environment thus not only confer benefits on society at large but also build more sustainable livelihoods for those who work in these environments. More work is required to explore these possibilities.