Communities face appalling health problems. In Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan, drinking water is saline and polluted, with a high content of metals that causes a range of diseases. Over the past 15 years there has been a thirty-fold increase in chronic bronchitis and in kidney and liver diseases, especially cancer and arthritic diseases have increased sixty-fold. The infant mortality rate is one of the world's highest.

Food production more than doubled (an increase of over 160%) from 1961 to 2003. Over this period, production of cereals—the major energy component of human diets—has increased almost two and a half times, beef and sheep production increased by 40%, pork production by nearly 60%, and poultry production doubled.

Food security is likely to remain out of reach for many people. Child malnutrition will be difficult to eradicate even by 2050 (low to medium certainty) and is projected to increase in some regions in some Millennium Assessment scenarios, despite increasing food supply under all four scenarios (medium to high certainty) and more diversified diets in poor countries (low to medium certainty).

Over the past 40 years, globally, intensification of cultivated systems has been the primary source (almost 80%) of increased output. But some countries, predominantly found in sub-Saharan Africa, have had persistently low levels of productivity, and continue to rely on expansion of cultivated area.

Access to improved drinking water is estimated by the percentage of the population using the following drinking water sources: household connection, public standpipe, borehole, protected dug well, protected spring, or rainwater collection.

There are major distributional impacts among countries and within countries that in many cases have not been favorable for small-scale farmers and rural livelihoods. The poorest developing countries are net losers under most trade liberalization scenarios.

Agricultural trade is increasingly organized in global chains, dominated by a few large transnational buyers (trading companies, agrifood processors and companies involved in production of commodities). In these globalized chains primary producers often capture only a fraction of the international price of a trade commodity, so the poverty reduction and rural development effects of integration in global supply chains have been far less than optim...

The Caucasus ecoregion, with the countries Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia and parts of Russia, Turkey and Iran represents a region in transition. Poverty is a key factor in human and economic development. The highest levels are in the parts of the Russian Federation present in the region, as well as in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. The value for Turkey and Iran are for the whole of the countries, and the values may not be representative for the ...

The Caucasus ecoregion, with the countries Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia and parts of Russia, Turkey and Iran represents a region in transition. Poverty is a key factor in human and economic development. This map show still very high poverty, up to 73 per cent in regions such as Ingushetia and Georgia.

This map represents the study area for the poverty mapping project for West Africa for generation of reliable statistical and cartographic products to communicate the relationship between rural poverty and land use potential in West Africa, in order to provide information to ensure optimal use of research investment.

Soils underpin the production of a wide range of agricultural and industrial goods and services. Soil productivity is essential to agricultural activities - for food security, cash income and supporting the livelihoods of the poor. Agriculture is the major engine of economic growth in a majority of developing countries – for instance low income developing countries have a high share of agriculture in gross domestic product. This map presents a ...

To alleviate rural poverty, one way is to sustainably use the natural resources available to the people and the communities. By supporting and expanding fisheries, small-scale mining, forestry, ecosystem services and other similar activities and making it easier to run a businesses out of these, economic growth can be gained. This illustration symbolizes this in the form of a tree, with different natural resources as leaves and the trunk being ma...

The rural poor of the World, and the poor countries that they live in, do not have much in monetary wealth - but natural resources represents a possible source of income. With the right support, on both the national level as well as from the international community, the economical growth generated from these resources can alleviate poverty sustainably.

With increased globalization and a smaller world, money flows more easily and the flows have increased. Where aid once represented a majority of the funds from high income countries to developing countries, this has now been surpassed by investments and worker’s remittances, and these flows show no sign of slowing down – maybe pausing for an occasional downturn in the global economy. The question is when this will start show as a significant decr...

Three-quarters of all poor people still live in rural areas. They are heavily reliant on natural resources for their livelihoods: soil, water, forests and fisheries underpin commercial and subsistence activities and often provide a safety net to the poor in times of crises. These natural resources which are abundant in many developing countries - represent an important asset and potential wealth for poor people and their communities. As many of t...

More than two billion people cannot access affordable energy services today. They depend on inefficient locally collected and often unprocessed biomass-based fuels, such as crop residues, wood, and animal dung. Because convenient, affordable energy can contribute to a household’s productivity and income generating potential, its availability can help families and communities break out of the cycle of poverty. At the same time it also provides gro...

In more than hundred countries around the world, miners dig minerals and metals out of the ground, satisfying a slowly but continuously increasing demand from industrial production, agriculture, construction, high-tech sectors, and merchandise producers. In contrast to the other natural resources presented here, minerals are a finite resource, and the resource and their profits needs to be managed carefully to ensure sustained livelihoods after t...

Approximately 240 million of the world's poor that live in forested areas of developing countries depend on forests for their livelihoods. Forest and its products provide cash income, jobs, and consumption goods for poor families. Forestry provides formal and informal employment for an estimated 40-60 million people. The sector contributes in some developing countries more than eight per cent to GDP. Timber may be the most important forest produc...

Freshwater – a natural resource which has been adopted as a human right by the UN in 2002: 'the human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient; affordable; physically accessible; safe and acceptable water for personal and domestic uses'. People depend on this resource for drinking and cooking, for irrigation of farms, for hygiene and sanitation and for power generation. The map presenting this resource only focuses on one part of the geogra...

Primary ocean productivity, as measured in grammes of carbon per square meter, from remote sensing imagery outlines the areas with rich marine life. These areas are characterised by an abundance of marine life and they provide natural resources in terms of fisheries and harvesting of these resources. The map is a part of a set, presenting different natural resources, with a focus on developing countries, and the use of natural resources for econo...