MANILA, Aug 9: Extreme poverty in Asia will pose a serious threat to the environment over the next decade, the Asian Development Bank and the World Conservation Union warned on Wednesday.

A book commissioned by the Philippines-based ADB and the conservation group said the region's high numbers of poor were putting resources such as water bodies, grasslands, soils and forests under strain.

Asia's 620 million people living in severe poverty were also the most at risk from environmental degradation, said the book, titled: “Poverty, Health, and Ecosystems: Experience from Asia.”

“It is also the poor who have the most at stake when ecosystems degrade, as they suffer disproportionately from the health risks caused by inadequate or dirty water and polluted air, and bear the burden of collecting the resources for their daily use, such as water and fuel-wood,” it said.The book said that even projecting the most optimistic growth rates, the ranks of Asia's poor would decline only to between 150 million and 300 million living on a dollar a day by 2015 -- when up to 1.5 billion people would still be getting by on $2 a day.

It said it was not true that “poverty causes environmental degradation, or improvements in the environment reduce poverty.”

But it said previous studies had shown lowering poverty can reduce the pressure on resources.

The book's authors studied pressures facing agricultural systems in China, India, and Pakistan and explored links between households or communities and aquatic ecosystems in Bangladesh, China, India, Laos and Sri Lanka.

It was prepared as part of ADB's poverty and environment program, which is jointly financed by the bank, Sweden and Norway. —AFP