Innovating Green Pathways to Prosperity
About
The Challenge: Breaking the Poverty–Environment Cycle
Global efforts have successfully reduced extreme poverty by over 65% since 1990. However, approximately 800 million people, the large majority of whom live in rural areas of the Global South, still live in extreme poverty (less than $3.00/day). For many, environmental degradation threatens further immiseration while foreclosing options for moving out of poverty. Deforestation, pollution, and other forms of environmental degradation in rural forest landscapes also increase the risk of others falling into poverty.
The Innovating Green Pathways to Prosperity (IGPP) project tackles these interlinked social-ecological challenges. Specifically, it aims to generate new evidence on interventions capable of effectively balancing poverty alleviation with environmental protection in rural areas of the Global South.
Research Team
The team is led by four core affiliated faculty of the Pulte Institute and a robust team of contributing scholars and partners:
Principal investigators
- Daniel Miller (PI), Coyle Mission Collegiate Associate Professor, Keough School of Global Affairs
-
Krister Andersson (co-PI), Professor of Sustainable Development, Keough School of Global Affairs
-
Lakshmi Iyer (co-PI), Professor of Economics and Global Affairs, Department of Economics & Keough School of Global Affairs
-
Ellis Adjei Adams (co-PI), Associate Professor of Geography and Environmental Policy, Keough School of Global Affairs
Core Research Collaborators
- Adriana Molina-Garzón, Assistant Professor, Indiana University Paul H. O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Indianapolis
- Sarah Castle, Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
- Seungmin Lee, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Keough School of Global Affairs
- Sacha Ortiz Siani, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Keough School of Global Affairs
- Ewan Robinson, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Keough School of Global Affairs
- María Chacón, Program Manager, Keough School of Global Affairs
- Poulomi Ghosh, Pre-doctoral Research Associate, Keough School of Global Affairs
Research Associates
- Aemro Ayalew, Master of Global Affairs graduate, Keough School of Global Affairs
- Valena McEwen, Master of Global Affairs graduate, Keough School of Global Affairs
- Braden Roosevelt, Undergraduate student, Department of Economics
- Nicolas Tsypin, Undergraduate student, Department of Economics
Our Global Partners: Collaborative Research for Impact
Our project is a coordinated effort spanning three continents, requiring deep local knowledge and strong institutional capacity. We are proud to collaborate with leading research centers in each of our case study countries, ensuring our interventions are context-appropriate and rigorously evaluated.
-
Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry Center (CIFOR–ICRAF) - Peru
-
Indian School of Business (ISB) - India
-
Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Forestry Research Institute of Ghana (CSIR-FORIG) - Ghana
- Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI) - Kenya
Journal Articles
- Adriana Molina-Garzón, Lakshmi Iyer, Phani Devarakonda, Valena McEwen, Braden Roosevelt, Nicolas Tsypin, Aemro Worku, Poulomi Ghosh, Ellis A. Adams, Krister P. Andersson, and Daniel C. Miller. “Can interventions Reduce Rural Poverty While Conserving the Environment? A Systematic Review of Evidence from Randomized Controlled Trials.” December 2025.