Environmental degradation and poverty: A bibliometric review

doi:10.1016/j.regsus.2022.01.001

Abstract

Abstract:

Understanding the mutual logic between environment and poverty mitigation is vital for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study conducts a bibliometric review of the available literature on environmental degradation and poverty and summarizes the existing researches. By applying suitable keywords, we retrieved 175 peer-reviewed articles from the Web of Science published between 1993 and 2020. We utilized the visualization of similarity viewer (VOSviewer) for this bibliometric study and classified the leading publications, prominent journals, and institutions. Furthermore, our bibliometric review found a phenomenon in investigation that people are indifference about the impact of environmental degradation on rising poverty levels in poor and developing countries. In terms of contributions, this study classifies 4 leading thematic clusters that identify how environmental degradation increases poverty. By employing text mining analysis, this research connects specific environmental terms accountable for the recent rise in global poverty. We finally recommend that including other databases to strengthen the findings of environmental degradation and poverty is one of the future research directions.

Key words: Environmental degradation, Poverty, Bibliometric review, Co-occurrence analysis, Thematic clusters, Network visualization

Muhammad Ali Khan BURKI, Umar BURKI, Usama NAJAM. Environmental degradation and poverty: A bibliometric review[J]. Regional Sustainability, 2021, 2(4): 324-336.

Figures/Tables 13

Fig. 1.

Table 1

Fig. 2.

Co-citation network of 105 journals in the environmental degradation-poverty nexus research field. Nodes show the relative number of co-citations for specific journal. Different colors classify the nodes of the co-citation network. The arrangement of journals into different nodes indicates a series of similarities. The closer the journals are to the co-citation network map, the stronger the relatedness between them. Popul. Dev. Rev., Population and Development Review; Ny Times, New York Times; Q. J. Econ., Quarterly Journal of Economics; Rev. Econ. Stud., Review of Economic Studies; Rev. Econ. Stat., Review of Economics and Statistics; J. Econom., Journal of Econometrics; Nat. Resour. Froum, Natural Resources Forum; Resour. Policy, Resources Policy; Renew. Energy, Renewable Energy; J. Clean. Prod., Journal of Cleaner Production; Environ. Sci. Pollut. Res., Environmental Science and Pollution Research; Agric. Econ., Agricultural Economics; Land Econ., Land Economics; J. Dev. Econ., Journal of Development Economics; Environ. Dev. Econ., Environment and Development Economics; Econ. J., Economic Journal; World Dev., World Development; J. Environ. Econ. Manage., Journal of Environmental Economics and Management; Dev. Change, Development and Change; Soc. Sci. Med., Social Science & Medicine; J. Soil Water Conserv., Journal of Soil and Water Conservation; Am. J. Agr. Econ., American Journal of Agricultural Economics; J. Arid. Environ., Journal of Arid Environments; Agric. Syst., Agricultural Systems; Hum. Ecol., Human Ecology; Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr., Annals of the Association of American Geographers; Nat. Geosci., Nature Geoscience; Land Use Pol., Land Use Policy; Ecol. Econ., Ecological Economics; Environ. Conserv., Environmental Conservation; Conserv. Biol., Conservation Biology; Sustain. Sci., Sustainability Science; Sci. Total Environ., Science of the Total Environment; Ecol. Indic., Ecological Indicators; Ecol. Soc., Ecology and Society; Forest Policy Econ., Forest Policy and Economics; Int. For. Rev., International Forestry Review; Environ. Urban., Environment and Urbanization; Habitat Int., Habitat International; Waste Manage., Waste Management; Land Degrad. Dev., Land Degradation & Development; Agrofor. Syst., Agroforestry Systems; Philos. Trans. R. Soc. B-Biol. Sci., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences; For. Ecol. Manage., Forest Ecology and Management; J. Environ. Manage., Journal of Environmental Management; Crop Sci., Crop Science; Soil Tillage Res., Soil & Tillage Research; Agric. Ecosyst. Environ., Agriculture Ecosystems & Environment; Clim. Change, Climatic Change; Agric. Water Manage., Agricultural Water Management; Front. Ecol. Environ., Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment; Ecol. Appl., Ecological Applications; Environ. Manage., Environmental Management; Ocean Coastal Manage., Ocean & Coastal Management; Ices J. Mar. Sci., Ices Journal of Marine Science. The order of the full name is from left to right and top to bottom in the map."

Fig. 2.

Table 2

Table 3

Fig. 3.

Fig. 4.

Fig. 5.

Table 4

Top 24 highly cited articles in the environmental degradation-poverty nexus research field."

Title	Author(s)	Total citations	Rank
Show me the money: Do payments supply environmental services in developing countries?	Pattanayak et al. (2010)	341	1
Human impact on the environment in the Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands—a state of the art	Nyssen et al. (2004)	315	2
Global urbanization and impact on health	Moore et al. (2003)	196	3
The political economy of energy poverty: A review of key challenges	Sovacool (2012)	172	4
A downward spiral? Research evidence on the relationship between poverty and natural resource degradation	Scherr (2000)	164	5
Cautionary Tales: Adaptation and the global poor	Kates (2000)	147	6
Determinants of household energy consumption in India	Ekholm et al. (2010)	125	7
Payments for environmental services as neoliberal market-based forest conservation in Vietnam: Panacea or problem?	McElwee (2012)	119	8
Soil erosion in developing countries: a socio-economic appraisal	Ananda and Herath (2003)	115	9
Wastewater irrigation and environmental health: Implications for water governance and public policy	Hanjra et al. (2012)	112	10
Poverty, development, and environment	Barbier (2010)	102	11
Agriculture in Brazil: impacts, costs, and opportunities for a sustainable future	Martinelli et al. (2010)	96	12
A geographical perspective on poverty-environment interactions	Gray and Moseley (2005)	92	13
Linking climate change research with food security and poverty reduction in the tropics	Sanchez (2000)	91	14
Innovative grassland management systems for environmental and livelihood benefits	Kemp et al. (2013)	80	15
Harnessing innovation for change: Sustainability and poverty in developing countries	Khavul and Bruton (2013)	74	16
The economic determinants of land degradation in developing countries	Barbier (1997)	72	17
Estimating returns to soil conservation adoption in the northern Ethiopian highlands	Kassie et al. (2008)	64	18
The trends, promises and challenges of urbanization in the world	Zhang (2016)	63	19
Community participation and benefits in REDD+: A review of initial outcomes and lessons	Lawlor et al. (2013)	60	20
Design challenges for achieving reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation through conservation: Leveraging multiple paradigms at the tropical forest margins	Minang and van Noordwijk (2013)	57	21
The nature, causes and consequences of desertification in the drylands of Africa	Darkoh (1998)	55	22
The environmental impact of poverty: Evidence from firewood collection in rural Nepal	Baland et al. (2010)	53	23
Poverty, urbanization, and environmental degradation: Urban streams in the developing world	Capps et al. (2016)	50	24

Table 4

Fig. 6.

Table 5

Fig. 7.

Table 6

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Journal	Number of articles	Total citations	Average citations	Average normalized citations	TLS
World Development	6	134	22.33	0.95	80
Forests	4	74	18.50	0.61	41
International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology	4	31	7.75	0.79	5
Geographical Journal	3	160	53.33	1.46	45
Land Use Policy	3	127	42.33	1.52	20
Land Degradation & Development	3	69	23.00	1.18	8
Environmental Science & Policy	3	45	15.00	1.72	6
Environmental Science and Pollution Research	3	6	2.00	0.19	27
International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health	2	308	154.00	2.76	3
Energy Policy	2	159	79.50	2.41	3
Journal of Environmental Management	2	135	67.50	1.30	10
Environment and Development Economics	2	107	53.50	0.72	42

Institution	Number of articles	Total citations	Average citations	Average normalized citations	TLS
Charles Sturt University	2	192	96.00	2.17	3
Santa Clara University	2	134	67.00	1.97	39
International Livestock Research Institute	3	89	29.67	1.46	39
University of Gothenburg	2	76	38.00	1.72	38
London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London	2	74	37.00	1.92	25
University of North Carolina	2	70	35.00	1.27	26
Colorado State University	4	60	15.00	1.69	63
World Agroforestry Centre	2	60	30.00	1.11	56
Boston University	2	56	28.00	0.50	268
University of Namur	2	56	28.00	0.50	268
Wageningen University & Research	2	54	27.00	2.55	156
National Institute of Agricultural Research	2	45	22.50	1.89	186
Center for International Forestry Research	2	32	16.00	1.67	142
United Nations Development Programme	2	31	15.50	1.63	140
Auburn University	2	27	13.50	0.30	136
Fujian Normal University	2	27	13.50	0.30	136

Country	Number of articles	Total citations	Average normalized citations	TLS
USA	47	2077	1.17	2232
India	16	158	0.43	775
China	14	370	1.05	1679
Australia	11	358	0.97	618
England	11	130	0.72	835
Germany	9	89	0.96	1306
Kenya	8	329	1.66	818
South Africa	8	52	0.46	241
France	6	130	0.94	504
Netherlands	6	140	1.65	828
Brazil	5	164	1.23	639
Belgium	4	407	2.23	869
Canada	4	55	1.38	158
Ethiopia	4	404	2.20	402
Mexico	4	61	1.00	160
Saudi Arabia	4	11	1.11	84
South Korea	4	23	0.35	412
Turkey	4	52	1.99	44

Term	Occurrence	Relevance score
Forest degradation	15	6.6741
Deforestation	28	3.2978
Emission	25	2.9394
Forest	24	2.5119
Land degradation	15	1.2734
Household	22	1.2035
Sustainable development	21	1.1491
Water	20	1.0811
Economic growth	18	0.9478
Nature	17	0.9304
Environmental degradation	88	0.9199
Poverty alleviation	17	0.9119
Food security	20	0.7493
Country	151	0.7379
Agriculture	31	0.7305
Climate change	30	0.6644
Technology	29	0.5978
Economic development	16	0.5833
Income	32	0.5512
Opportunity	28	0.3557
Community	40	0.3391
Population	32	0.3323
Strategy	47	0.2925