Abstract
Poverty reduction has been a significant and imperative task in developing countries. Investigating poverty–environment relationship from the perspective of geography provides an ideal way to in-depth understanding of the spatial distribution of poverty and its driving mechanisms. Based on latest district-level data and statistical analysis, this study reveals spatial features of poverty and recognizes the economic-impoverished types of Nepal. Main findings were as below: (1) The poverty incidence (PI) was gradually rising from the Eastern to the Far-Western with geographical differences. The Mid-Western and Far-Western presented higher PI and poverty depth than those of other three regions but with less absolute and relative differences on poverty distribution. By Lorenz curves of poverty distribution, the Central, Western, and Mid-Western Regions were more centralized on poverty population as compared to the whole nation, with the Far-Western Region more evenly distributed on poverty population. (2) A larger proportion of relative high and high poverty but a smaller proportion of low and relative low poverty districts were found in the Mid-Western and the Far-Western Regions. Mountain region was the only region where high poverty districts were observed while hill region held the lowest poverty districts. Tarai region was featured with most moderate and relative poverty districts. (3) All of the 75 districts were divided into three economic-impoverished types: Revealed Poverty Region, Hidden Poverty Region, and Specific Low-poverty Region. The stable revenue generated through tourism by the local government is considered a good and sustainable macroeconomic indicator in the Hidden Poverty Region, while local people have fewer opportunities to get involved in tourism development. As for the Specific Low-poverty Region, political struggles, and poor administrative management are identified as the main reasons for both low economic development and high poverty, forcing large number of people to look for better job prospects overseas.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the NSFC-ICIMOD Cooperation Project (No. 41661144038-02), the 2013 Aid project on Science and Technology for Developing Countries of Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the 2015 Seed Fund Project of Himalayan University Consortium of International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), and the Key Fostering Project for “One-Three-Five” Program of Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, CAS.
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Zhang, J., Liu, C., Deng, W., Koirala, H.L., Khanal, N.R., Su, Y. (2017). Responses in Nepal: An Overview Spatial Features of Poverty and Economic-Impoverished Types in Nepal. In: Li, A., Deng, W., Zhao, W. (eds) Land Cover Change and Its Eco-environmental Responses in Nepal. Springer Geography. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2890-8_12
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