It states that 47% of the GDP of India's poor comes directly from natural resources, including fishing, harvesting from forests and collecting medicinal herbs to sell. The figure comes from a comprehensive study, using the incomes of 352 million of the 380 million Indian citizens classed as 'poor'.
The article points out that GDP does not mean much in the day-to-day lives of the rural poor, but it got me thinking of when us in the Western World lived by similar rural means. Surely if there had been such a concept as GDP in these times the figures for ourselves would be similar, with I'm assuming the rest of the hypothetical GDP would have come from agriculture.
From these humble beginnings we have prospered and focused our efforts on things such the service sector, which accounts for 73% of UK GDP today. Although our planet needs strict regulations on the natural resources that we have left it seems so unfair that this may mean many countries, India just being one example, may miss out or be slowed down on progress because of it.
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