Our world is dominated by sharp contrasts that are easily overlooked. Among the many contrasts, what caught our attention the most was how pollution experiences differ between the low-income community and the affluent.

If you take a quick tour of your city’s wealthy and poverty-stricken areas, you’ll notice how the rich people are often surrounded by green trees, breathing clean air. Yet, people struck by poverty often live in homes bordering waste dumps or in the shadows of factories. We at Tribhuvan College, one of the leading environmental science colleges in Delhi, believe such a scenario isn’t merely a coincidence.

In fact, poverty and pollution have been creating a vicious cycle for decades, where low-income communities have faced disproportionate environmental burdens while lacking the resources to escape or combat them. So today, in this blog post, we’ve explored the hidden link between poverty and pollution so that more people can understand how the poorest communities have been at the receiving end of pollution. So, ensure you read the full blog.

The Environmental Justice Gap

The world’s poorest populations don’t just face more pollution; they experience it differently. They have the highest exposure to pollution because they live near industrial facilities and toxic waste sites, driven by economic factors.

Many people from this section also have limited healthcare access, and their pre-existing health stressors, malnutrition, etc., worsen their overall health. This pattern is unmistakable worldwide. Countless people living in extreme poverty breathe unsafe air regularly, making them the most vulnerable to pollution-driven health hazards.

Why Pollution Follows Poverty?

When discussing this topic, we at Tribhuvan College often get asked why pollution only follows poverty and spares the richer population. Here is our answer to this question.  If you locate polluting facilities in different countries of the world, you’ll find a common pattern – they’re all located in neighbourhoods experiencing an economic decline.

Such areas also have less organised community resistance to such facilities, so companies pay lower land costs there. In developing countries, the problem is even more concerning. The monitoring agencies in developing nations are chronically underfunded, and the regulatory fines are negligibly low.

A weak enforcement infrastructure also adds to the problem, enabling practices that prioritise industrial operations over community health. Without enough financial resources or advocacy networks, people living in these areas often become sacrifice zones in the name of development.

Where Poverty Meets Pollution

While there are numerous places worldwide where the poorer population faces extreme pollution hazards, places like Ghana’s Agbogbloshie district in Accra have it worst. Once Africa’s largest e-waste processing site, it has now become one of the world’s most polluted places. Some have even started calling Agbogbloshie ‘a toxic city’ due to its severe pollution from e-waste processing.

Unfortunately, several people from impoverished rural areas work at this site to earn money. They burn electronics to extract valuable metals, but the process releases toxic fumes and contaminates the soil and air with hazardous chemicals. The health consequences of working in such polluted sites are devastating, but economic pressures prevent people from refusing to work in them.

The Vicious Cycle of Poverty and Pollution

By now, you would have understood how the connection between poverty and pollution operates as a self-reinforcing trap. Economic necessity forces people into contaminated areas where housing costs less. Outdoor labour jobs increase exposure to pollutants among low-income workers who lack access to safer employment options.

The lack of quality healthcare further increases the effects of working or living in highly polluted areas. It is one of the key reasons why you can notice a higher mortality rate in poorer communities. There’s another interesting angle that many people overlook while exploring the link between poverty and pollution. Pollution deepens poverty among poorer communities by destabilising health. Health complications can significantly reduce a person’s working capacity and income, while medical expenses continue to drain their limited financial resources.

Severe pollution has also destroyed people’s livelihoods for years by making fishing grounds and agricultural land unusable. It has also been seen that children who grow up in these areas often develop mental and physical challenges, which end up limiting their future opportunities. Each turn of this cycle makes escape even more difficult.

Conclusion

The connection between poverty and pollution isn’t hidden anymore. Yet, many people tend to overlook how both trap people in low-income groups into a perpetual cycle of health hazards and poor financial status. Having said that, we at Tribhuvan College, one of the most well-known environmental science colleges in Delhi, firmly believe that there are solutions to this problem, but they require massive political will, international cooperation, and fair resource distribution.

People living in poverty in different regions of the world can significantly benefit from strengthened environmental regulations that hold big corporations accountable for their actions. We also believe that solving the problem at its roots requires not just environmental protection but also addressing economic inequality. Hence, anyone willing to contribute to environmental justice for the economically weaker section should work on both financial and ecological levels.