The poor adapt and learn to live with poverty in a variety of ways. They also try to cope with shocks from events such as droughts, floods and loss of employment.
Environmental resources play a vital role in their survival strategies.
As the poor depend on environmental resources, one can expect them to have a stake in their preservation. Much of the damage done to natural resources is by others. Thus deforestation is much more an outcome of commercial logging for timber than fuelwood gathering by the poor. Well-meaning development projects, planned without a proper understanding of their ecological consequence have sometimes adversely affected natural resources on which the poor depend. Many development activities also adversely affect natural resources.