weathered soils, steep slopes, inadequate or excess rainfall, and high temperatures (Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture 2007). About 630 million of the rural poor live on these unfavorable lands in the developing world, whereas just under 320 million of the poor have access to favored lands (Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture 2007, Table 15.1).

Figure 1 further illustrates that rural poverty is correlated with the fraction of the population in developing countries found in degradable and poor quality lands. As the figure indicates, for a sample of 92 low and middle-income economies, the incidence of rural poverty rises with the share of the total population concentrated on fragile lands. Although the average poverty rate across all economies is 45.3%, the rate falls to 36.4% for those countries with less than 20% of their population in fragile environments. For those with more than 50% of their populations in marginal areas, however, the incidence of rural poverty rises to 50% or more.

The tendency for the rural poor to be clustered in more marginal environments prone to land degradation and poor productivity is also supported by studies at the regional and country level, although important differences exist within and between countries. Such a “povertyenvironment nexus” appears to be prevalent in three of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia – Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam (Dasgupta et al. 2005; Minot and Baulch 2002). In Cambodia, the core poor in rural areas appear to be located in areas that are already heavily deforested, although poor populations tend also to be more concentrated in the lowlands rather than steeply sloped lands. In Laos, the poorest rural provinces in the north and northeast also have the highest incidence of poverty, with poor households located mainly in forested areas and the highlands. In Vietnam, large poor populations confined to steep slopes exist in the provinces comprising the Northern and Central Highlands, but extensive rural poverty is also found along the North Central Coast and the Red River Delta.

Despite its robust growth and reduction of poverty overall, China has seen rural poverty persist and concentrate geographically in the relatively poor agricultural areas of the west and southwest (Gustafsson and Zhong 2000; Jalan and Ravallion 2002; Olivia et al. 2011; Ravallion and Chen 2007). In general, households living in the lowlands and plains are less poverty prone than those living in hilly and mountainous regions, which contain less productive and more degradable land. As poverty declines in coastal and lowland areas, the rural poor are increasingly found in upland areas. There are still more than 100 million rural poor in China living on less than $1 per day, and most of them live in western, inland China in mountainous areas with low rainfall or on marginal lands with low agricultural potential (Olivia et al. 2011). For example, the proportion of China’s rural poor living in the mountains increased from less than one-third in 1988 to a majority in 1995 (Gustafsson and Zhong 2000).

A study of the spatial pattern of rural poverty in Bangladesh concludes that “the pockets of high poverty incidence generally coincide with the ecologically poor areas” (Kam et al. 2005, p. 564). Overall, four such areas could be considered poverty “hot spots” in Bangladesh: the low-lying depression area in the north east; the drought-drought prone upland area in the north west; several flood-prone subdistricts fringing major rivers; and several of the subdisticts in the south eastern hilly regions. A similar poverty mapping exercise in Sri Lanka reveals that regions with lack of availability of water and poor quality land are most associated with high rural poverty and food insecurity (Amarasinghe et al. 2005). Poverty mapping in Syria indicates that rural areas with shallow soils or unfavorable topography, such as steep slopes, generally display lower regional income levels (Szonyi et al 2010). In Mexico, the rural poor are also concentrated 4