Mercy Corps made cutting down trees for cooking fuel more sustainable through a reforestation project in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. Photo: JGrant for Mercy Corps.

A new program in Brazil is turning tragedy on its head by paying the poor to preserve their natural surroundings.

Resource depletion and environmental degradation are common echoes of poverty. Desperate to get by, many rural poor turn to the only income source around: the natural environment.

That's why Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff outlined a new program called Bolsa Verde (green allowance) to promote environmental protection and decrease deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, according to mongabay.com. The program will provide BR $300 (US $180 US) every three months to extremely impoverished families living in national forests and sustainable reserves. Recipient families must currently have monthly incomes of less than BR $70 (US $40) to qualify.

In exchange, residents pledge not to deforest illegally or to poach timber. It’s a huge jump in income for the poor, and in one of the world’s most rapidly growing economies, it's a small price for the public to pay.

“Incentive is important because we assign an economic value to nature. It's as if it were compensation for conservation," said Manuel Cunha, president of the National Council of Extractive Populations of Amazonia.

The program is modeled after Brazil’s existing and widely respected Bolsa Familia (family allowance) program, which has helped reduce poverty and inequality over the past several decades, according to The Economist.

Bolsa Verde seeks to expand these successes, reducing the strain of poverty on ecosystem services as well. And when the environment is protected, the poor lead better, healthier lives. So Brazil plans to increase people’s income so they take better care of their environment and themselves.

The government, however, isn’t trying to stop resource consumption that people depend on. "It is an incentive to have sustainable use of natural resources. [Residents] have the right to use biodiversity, but in a sustainable manner," Roberto Vizentin, Secretary of Sustainable Rural Development of the MMA, told Globo News.

If effective, this could mean both improved financial livelihoods and reduced vulnerability for Amazonian residents. And the environment and the rest of the world get something from the deal as well.

The drought this year has reduced China's normal rainfall by 40 to 60 percent. Photo: otrocalpe (flickr)

Crisis is lurking on the world's most valuable commodity: water. The answer, a former U.S. official says, is raising its price.

Peter Orszag, President Barack Obama's former budget czar, tells the story in a Bloomberg View column by looking closely at China. That nation's water goes mainly to its coal and hydroelectric power plants. As China’s Ministry of Water Resources says, "In 2010, coal-fired electricity in China used more than 30 trillion gallons of water, or about 20 percent of the country’s total consumption." The problem with this is that water sources are limited. While China is using its available water for electricity, climates are changing and reducing the amount of available fresh water. The drought this year has reduced China's normal rainfall by 40 to 60 percent, and the water that's left is going to crops and people, not coal plants. This, in turn, has rattled global diesel markets as China has grasped for alternatives to coal energy by relying more on diesel powered generators. Disturbances in the water market ripple throughout the world economy.

To fix this, Orszag suggests a three-step process for China and the rest of the world to follow when thinking about the way we use our water.

First, China needs to do a better job blocking pollution and expanding awareness of the dangers of climate change. According to the World Bank, "about 90 percent of the aquifers underneath major cities in China are polluted. More than 300 million Chinese lack access to safe drinking water." The first step to using water more efficiently is making sure the water we have is water we can use.

Second, China needs to allocate its water more productively. Currently, the water in China is not evenly divided between regions. Orszag explains that 80 percent of the country's water supply is south of the Yangtze River, though only about half the population lives there. The rest live in the North China plain, which encompasses Shanghai, Beijing, and less than 15 percent of the nation’s water. With such an imbalance, the per-capita amount in the North evens out to only about one-quarter the level considered to be the minimum amount to live on. Plans are underway to balance this with a desalination plant in the Tianhin-Binhai development zone and a re-routing plan to channel more water from the South to the North, according to The Guardian.

Third, China and other nations need to raise their water prices. At a first glance, this seems impractical. Reactions from comments on Orszag’s article were primarily negative. They argued that water is not a commodity, but a natural right for each person, and therefore shouldn’t be marked with a price. Orszag, anticipating this, suggests giving everyone a set amount of free, fresh water for basic necessities. Any water desired beyond that point would come with a tariff. This way, people will use water carefully, avoiding waste.

Orszag finds that this three-step strategy can be applied to almost any nation. The strategy could be used in the U.S. where water is heavily subsidized and in Europe where water pricing systems vary between countries that lack water and those that have an abundance.

"Just as we need to price carbon in order to avoid a climate crisis, we need to price water to avoid a water crisis," Orszag writes.

Has Kosovo's first year of independence truly been "totally successful," as Prime Minister Hasim Thaci asserts?

Nearly half of all Kosovars live in poverty, and there are only enough jobs for one out every two people.

Kosovo's economy is heavily dependent on remittances from abroad and foreign aid, two income sources expected to decline given the global financial crisis. And the foreign investment promised by the government has yet to materialize.

There remains untapped potential in the mining industry. Geologists recently discovered vast amounts of high-quality lignite coal (up to 15 billion tons) and considerable nickel, lead, zinc and bauxite deposits, and traces of gold.

But you have to wonder who would want to invest in any industry in a country ranked in the top fifth of the world’s most corrupt countries by Transparency International. Then there's the the threat of the mob. The UN mission in Kosovo estimates organized crime to account for some 15-20 percent of Kosovo's economy.

"For 10 years we linked every problem to status," said Shpend Ahmeti, director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Pristina, referring to Kosovo's struggle to separate from Serbia. "We thought independence was going to simplify things. It has not. Independence has removed a mental block among Kosovars. Now, in every poll, the priority is not status, but jobs. We've moved from survival, to development and prosperity as a great need we don't yet have."

This week's New York Times article Europe Takes Africa's Fish and Migrants Follow raises a perplexing problem:

A vast flotilla of industrial trawlers from the European Union, China, Russia and elsewhere, together with an abundance of local boats, have so thoroughly scoured northwest Africa’s ocean floor that major fish populations are collapsing.

That has crippled coastal economies and added to the surge of illegal migrants who brave the high seas in wooden pirogues hoping to reach Europe. While reasons for immigration are as varied as fish species, Europe’s lure has clearly intensified as northwest Africa’s fish population has dwindled.

Last year roughly 31,000 Africans tried to reach the Canary Islands, a prime transit point to Europe, in more than 900 boats. About 6,000 died or disappeared, according to one estimate cited by the United Nations.

The question then arises: who bears the brunt of responsibility for these dwindling fish populations and the subsequent affect on local fishers? The foreign boats which deplete the waters and the foreign consumers which demand them to do so? The local governments, who strapped for cash, make decisions to sell resources needed by their people to fill the government coffers and/or fund state programs?