SIAS organized a workshop on “Developing an Environmentally-adjusted Index for Multidimentional Poverty”. The workshop held on 25 May 2018 in Kathmandu contributed to towards ongoing research projects focusing on the relationships between the natural environment and poverty. Conducted in collaboration between the Southasia Institute for Advanced Studies (SIAS), the Universities of Cambridge, Sheffield and Southampton, the UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre, and the International Institute for Sustainability in Brazil, the workshop comprised two key components: (1) reviewing the conceptual and empirical basis for including the natural environment as a dimension of poverty and/or human wellbeing, and (2) assessing and developing ways of integrating the environment with multidimensional measures of poverty and wellbeing.
In the first component, role of the natural environment in the conceptual understanding of poverty was examined, by analysing the extent to which the environment contributes to definitions of poverty and wellbeing. In the second component, methodological requirements for integrating the environment within multidimensional measures of poverty were explored. Preliminary empirical analyses were focused on how environmental data could be integrated with measures of poverty and wellbeing in Brazil and Rwanda. Workshop was an attempt to explore these topics within the Nepalese context. This was particularly timely given the recent publication of Nepal’s Multidimensional Poverty Index by the Government of Nepal’s National Planning Commission.
Aims of the Workshop:
- Gain an overview of the different types of poverty measures used in Nepal, with a specific focus on measures of multidimensional poverty.
- Discuss the role of the natural environment for poverty in Nepal: What environmental aspects are particularly important for poverty and how are they related? What country-specific issues are important for a multidimensional poverty index that includes the environment, and what are the data needs for constructing such an index?
- Explore related work on poverty and environment measures in Nepal and the key actors and stakeholders who are involved in this work.
