Improvements in communication technology have enabled citizens of all developed countries to be fully aware of human misery. Widespread famine is recurrent despite superabundant food production. Recognizing poverty as their primary problem, many countries have set up aggressive development programs with the sole objective of increasing their populations' standard of living. But, in many cases, local education cannot meet development-program needs with respect to numbers of skilled workers. Environmental-protection needs are given short shrift.
Destitute people have little or no desire to protect the environment.
There is a misconception within the environmentalist community that technological development and environmental protection are inherently incompatible. Apparently, many environmentalists neglect the equivalence between poverty and exposure to the most toxic pollutants. They also neglect poverty's causal relationship to environmental problems, such as the large-scale destruction of flora and fauna, soil erosion and water pollution. While most industrialized societies have a good understanding of poverty and at least a marginal understanding of ignorance, what constitutes protecting the environment is controversial. In certain countries, environmental protection advocates call themselves ecologists.