SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND POVERTY ALLEVIATION EXPLORING THE LINKS

This research paper by Anantha Kumar Duraiappah of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) critiques the last 50 years of poverty alleviation strategies and proposes a new working model based on the principles of sustainable development. The author argues that previous approaches failed because they confused the means of economic growth with the end goal of poverty reduction, and suggests integrating Joseph Stiglitz's stakeholder-based transformation model with a guiding principle of sustainable development to ensure distributive and inter-generational justice.

• Global poverty statistics between 1987 and 1998 show that while the percentage of people in absolute poverty (those living below the dollar-a-day line) decreased from approximately 28 per cent to 24 per cent, the absolute number of people in this category remained stable at 1.23 billion. Additionally, nearly half of the global population of six billion lives below the two-dollar-a-day poverty line.
• Development strategies over the last 50 years are characterized as having failed most developing countries, with the possible exception of East Asia. The author notes that success in East Asia was not due to donor agency approaches, but rather the local adoption and modification of those approaches to fit specific conditions.
• The paper identifies a historical cycle of shifting development paradigms: the 1950s and 1960s focused on physical capital and infrastructure; the 1970s shifted toward human capital; the 1980s implemented the "Washington consensus" emphasizing trade liberalization and privatization; and the most recent focus has been on good governance and institutional modification to meet aid conditionality.
• A critical failure in previous strategies was the neglect of supporting institutional structures and social capital. The author argues that a divide between modern (formal) institutions, adopted by elites, and traditional (informal) institutions, where the poor remain, has created dual societies and increased poverty and instability.
• The author proposes a working model for poverty alleviation that integrates Joseph Stiglitz's five stakeholders—private sector, public sector, community, family, and the individual—with the guiding principle of sustainable development. This model evaluates needs across three types of capital (physical, human, and natural) and uses social capital as a binding factor to facilitate resource use.
• Sustainable development is presented as a superior framework because it addresses distributive justice and inter-generational equity, which the author claims are ignored in Stiglitz's model. It defines development as meeting present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own, extending the concept of 'resources' to include human, technological, and institutional assets.

APA

Duraiappah, A. K. (2000). SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND POVERTY ALLEVIATION EXPLORING THE LINKS. International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/pov_sd_overview.pdf

Chicago

Duraiappah, Anantha Kumar. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND POVERTY ALLEVIATION EXPLORING THE LINKS. International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2000. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/pov_sd_overview.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Duraiappah |first1=Anantha Kumar |title=SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND POVERTY ALLEVIATION EXPLORING THE LINKS |publisher=International Institute for Sustainable Development |date=December 2000 |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/pov_sd_overview.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{duraiappah2000sustainable, author = {Duraiappah, Anantha Kumar}, title = {{SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND POVERTY ALLEVIATION EXPLORING THE LINKS}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2000}, month = dec, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/pov_sd_overview.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }