Low-income communities frequently suffer from a lack of access to, or lack of control over, the natural resources that surround them. In many cases, their local environment has been degraded by years of resource extraction and pollution by distant corporations or government agencies. In such settings, initiatives that build natural assets in the hands of the poor can play an important role in poverty-fighting efforts.
Natural Assets explores a range of strategies for expanding the quantity and enhancing the quality of natural assets in the hands of low-income individuals and communities. The book:
• examines the social construction of rights to natural resources and the environment • describes efforts to curtail pollution of the air, land, and water and to reclaim resources that have been appropriated and abused by polluters • considers sustainable agricultural practices that not only maintain but actually increase the stock of natural capital • explores strategies to promote sustainable forest management while reducing rural poverty • examines the prospects for building natural assets in urban areas
Drawing on evidence from across the United States, the authors demonstrate that safeguarding the environment and improving the well-being of the poor can be mutually reinforcing goals.
Contents
Table of Figures
List of Tables
Foreword \ Melvin Oliver
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I. The Wealth of Nature
Chapter 1. From Natural Resources to Natural Assets \ James K. Boyce
Chapter 2. "A Question Of Degree'': The Sanctity of Property in American Economic History \ Gerald Friedman
PART II. Reclaiming Environmental Sinks
Chapter 3. Reclaiming Brownfields: From Corporate Liability to Community Asset \ K. A. Dixon
Chapter 4. Building Social Capital to Protect Natural Capital: The Quest for Environmental Justice \ Manuel Pastor
Chapter 5. Defending the Public Domain: Pollution, Subsidies, and Poverty \ Paul Templet
Chapter 6. Information for Empowerment: The EPA's Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators Project \ Nicolaas W. Bouwes, Steven M. Hassur, and Marc D. Shapiro
Chapter 7. The Sky Trust: The Battle For Atmospheric Scarcity Rent \ Peter Barnes and Marc Breslow
PART III. Cultivating Natural Capital
Chapter 8. White Earth: Recovering a Homeland \ Winona LaDuke
Chapter 9. The Watershed Commonwealth of the Upper Rio Grande \ Devon G. Pena
Chapter 10. The Lighthouse and the Potato: Internalizing the Value of Crop Genetic Diversity \ Stephen B. Brush
PART IV. Out of the Woods
Chapter 11. Values, Markets, and Rights: Rebuilding Forest Ecosystem Assets \ Constance Best
Chapter 1 2. Land and Livelihoods in the Northern Forest \ Deborah Brighton
Chapter 13. Community-Based Stewardship: Reinvesting in Public Forests and Forest Communities \ Cecelia Danks
PART V. Greening the Cities
Chapter 14. Can Natural Assets Help Address Urban Poverty? \ Greg Watson
Chapter 15. The Chelsea River: Democratizing Access to Nature in a World of Cities \ H. Patricia Hynes
Chapter 16. Poverty and the Environment: The Urban Agriculture Connection \ Raquel Pinderhughes
