But action against poverty needs to go beyond economic factors and the enabling environment. It requires special measures to increase the access of the poor to productive assets, including land and credit, and to make them economic, social and civil actors. ACC notes the linkages between population pressures, natural resources, food security, ill health and poverty, and stresses that these must be addressed as an essential component of sustainable development strategies. Executive heads emphasize that sustainable pro-poor growth requires sound environmental policies and in many cases measures to regenerate the resource base on which the livelihoods of the poor depend. Growth gives people the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty.
Human development builds their capacity to do so.
And even when they do, only low-quality services are available. Integrated strategies of empowerment, capacity-building and targeted assistance as well as attention to equity issues are essential to enable the poor to work their way out of poverty. It is also essential to promote a favourable microlevel environment, both in rural and urban areas, that helps the poor to raise their productivity and income and enables them to have access to assets, technology, infrastructure and fair markets. Such an environment will allow the poor themselves to become principal agents in poverty eradication. A major objective, therefore, is to find ways to fully involve the poor in the design of anti-poverty strategies and reach them with services that meet their requirements, including the specific needs of vulnerable groups such as single women, mothers, children, migrants, the disabled and the elderly.