Section 1 provided a broad overview of the linkages between poverty and access to natural resources; section 2 considered the conceptual contribution SLA has made to an understanding of these linkages. This section will consider more closely the problems and opportunities that the rural poor face with respect to access to natural resources. Given the enormous volume of literature on this topic this section cannot provide a factual account of ANR or coverage of the related empirical issues. Instead the focus will be on problems and opportunities in ANR from the perspective of SL influenced research, thus demonstrating the SL approach. The following sections will first consider issues connected to access to land and then more briefly access to other natural resources.
Access to cultivable land is the most important natural resource for rural development and is key in determining the livelihood strategies of the rural poor. Agriculture accounts for most land use in developing countries and three quarters of the 1.2 billion people surviving on less than one dollar a day live and work in rural areas. The ownership, management and productive use of cultivable land is a key determinant of economic growth and has a direct though complex effect on how other natural resources such as water, forests, pasture and biodiversity are used. The future role of agriculture is one of the key unresolved issues in the current rethinking of poverty-environment-agriculture linkages. The notion that agricultural growth based on small farms would drive rural development is being called into question. Agriculture has declined sharply in relative terms both as an employer and a contributor to GDP and the long-term decline in agricultural commodity prices has weakened both the sector and the case for small farmer development. The agricultural sector is more integrated into the world economy with generally negative consequences for the terms of trade; and evidence that agriculture is pushing against natural resource boundaries is fairly conclusive. These trends have led to what has been termed a 'loss of confidence in the rural development project' (Ashley and Maxwell 2002) and funding to the sector and in particular to agriculture has declined despite evidence that poverty is still largely a rural phenomenon.
Table 3.1 Constraints and opportunities in access to cultivable land
|
Constraints |
Opportunities |
|
Limited natural capital and poor NR base; Limited financial capital to invest in conservation; Little information and awareness of rights limited; Property rights to natural resources insecure; Limited political inclusion in decision-making on development; Local institutional capacity to support adaptation to livelihood constraints limited; Lack of opportunities leads to negative diversification and further depletion of capital assets increasing household vulnerability. |
Ability to maximise trade-offs and substitution of capital assets; Local awareness of environmental degradation leads to positive action that supports agriculture; Local production can make use of new technology and markets; Household labor deployed to maximum advantage; Social capital networks support adaptation to livelihood constraints; Participatory processes build political capital; Opportunities for positive diversification lead to capital asset accumulation and reduced vulnerability. |
Given this broad context, what are the specific constraints and opportunities that the rural poor typically face with respect to access to cultivable land from an SLA perspective?
The balance between the constraints and opportunities faced by the rural poor and the livelihood outcomes that can be achieved are clearly highly context specific. The evidence on poverty and access to land does very broadly point to a mutually reinforcing negative linkage; the poor live in areas of low agricultural potential characterised by a fragile ecology, with little infrastructure and weak market integration and connectivity. Rural diversification has for long been seen in negative terms; as evidence of increasing rural vulnerability and a widening disparity in income between the rich and the poor in rural areas. In fact, the overall finding has been that income disparities in agriculture tend to reproduce themselves in the non-farm rural economy. Further, it was considered that diversification led to a stagnation or decline of agricultural output and the depletion of local social capital; with particularly poor gender effects as women have the least possibility to take advantages of new opportunities.
Despite the negative overall relation between poverty and the environment, the focus in current development policy, and in the SLA, is on people's strengths. Research from a livelihoods perspective has been at the forefront of a reconsideration of the constraints that the rural poor face. In essence, it has been pointed out that rural livelihoods should not be seen as agrarian livelihoods or even natural resource based livelihoods. Although natural resources and access to land remain a predominant source of rural income these have to be seen in wider perspective. In fact the positive effects of diversification have been shown to outweigh the negative ones. They include: the reduction of risk and vulnerability through spreading assets; more complete use of family and household labor; cash generation for investment in human or physical capital, and in some cases improvement in the environment because of reduced pressure on natural resources.
Given this positive experience of diversification the focus has shifted onto the types of livelihood strategies that are emerging and the types of resource access, capability enhancement and political economic factors upon which they have been based, and the conditions under which they make become more sustainable and poverty alleviating. The focus in SL research on access to land issues has been to capture the diversity and heterogeneity of responses rather than to quantify their incidence. Examples of such types of SL research include Brock and Coulibaly (1999) on livelihoods in Mali; Carswell et al (1999) on livelihoods in Ethiopia; Batterbury (2002) on livelihoods systems in Niger; Haan et al (2000) on migration and livelihoods in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Mali; and Goodrich (2001) with a summary of livelihoods research in Mali and Ethiopia. The findings from this research are too diverse to summarise here. Instead, to demonstrate how the approach has been used, the following are a few sample findings and related policy implications:
The presence of non-viable agricultural units has not necessarily led to the end of rural livelihoods. A significant feature of some regional economies has been the growth of a rural proletariat working on capitalist agricultural enterprises; such as non-traditional agri-horti-flori-cultural sectors. Whilst this has some negative effects - such as low wages and health hazards, the wages enable people to maintain a rural residence. Thus rather than criticising this option, it becomes relevant to ask, under what conditions can this contribute to livelihood security and sustainability; for example through improved legislation on skills training and control of health hazards. (Bebbington 2001).
Migration has been critical to the viability of rural people's livelihoods and is often merely a survival strategy. But in some cases migration has allowed significant family accumulation. It seems that a successful sustainable rural livelihood strategy that combines migration with subsistence production at home and continued control over land revolves around having the skills to enter higher paid labor markets in urban areas and having the networks to gain access to work opportunities. (Ellis 2000; Swift 1998).
The determination to maintain and/or gain access to land is a feature running through many livelihood strategies for reasons that are not necessarily related to material gain. Bebbington finds that residence appears to be associated with the maintenance of a range of cultural practices from participation in fiestas to volley-ball games. Bryeson finds that an agrarian 'cover' for livelihood strategies is still important to many rural households; in fact so much so that the extent of non-farm diversification is often not at all evident. (Bebbington 2001).
Most of the activities are highly opportunistic in nature, involving quick responses to market demand and supply. It was found that initial entry into non-agricultural work was seen as shameful but that such engagement is now seen as normal. In fact African peasants have been extremely responsive to neo-liberalism albeit with unclear implications for the social and economic fabric of society. Bryeson (2000) identifies four tensions in the allocation of assets for diversification:
Securing economic survival: market experimentation vs subsistence fallback
Marshalling resources: household solidarity vs individual autonomy
Identity crisis: agrarian conservatism vs sceptic otherness
Strengthening or weakening the economic foundation of rural livelihoods? Linkages between non-agricultural activities and agriculture.
The combined evidence of SL based research on access to land portrays a complex pattern of asset deployment and a delicate balancing act between land and non-land resources. Rural households have in fact between very effective against the odds and diversification is often a sign of flexibility, resilience and relative stability. SL based analysis of the role of access to land and agriculture in the lives of the poor points to the importance of understanding asset trade-off and substitution. For instance; diversification may lead to the reduction of social capital because of the break-up of community relations and thus the support networks on which people can draw. However they may also enable people to accumulate capital and free them from the obligation of reinvesting social capital. Asset trade-off and substitution should also be considered in relation to the economic strategies of other actors. For instance a household may lose assets due to ecological processes, but they just as commonly lose land, water and forests as a result of acquisition by other actors.
Consideration of access to land issues along these lines is likely to lead to more appropriate development policies. For instance, if it is known that rural households in a particular location depend on migrant remittances rather than agriculture, than a policy for training to enable better job security would be more appropriate than policies on new agricultural technology. Conversely, if in a particular rural context it is found that the capital assets of the rural poor are being undermined by other actors, it may be important to invest in social capital to enable people to act collectively. Bryeson (2001) suggests that in Sub-Saharan Africa the donor tendency to concentrate on social capital building is often misplaced. The social fabric of local communities is changing too fast and donor policies reflect their attempts to make-do with declining physical resource transfers rather than the actual needs of rural dwellers. Instead a consideration of the capital assets reveals that the build-up of human capital is what is fundamentally at issue in view of the labor redundancy African peasantries are currently experiencing.
Despite diversification in livelihood strategies, access to cultivable land and agricultural development is still the main factor affecting rural livelihoods; and also one of the principal determinants of natural resource management and degradation. The constraints and potentials that exist for rural people with regard to access to cultivable land (as given in the table above) are related and similar to those determining access to natural resources. There has been little SL research on the various natural resource sectors (forests, water, pastures etc); partly because by definition SL work has been non-sectoral. There have also been few attempts made to interpret the implications of such broad SL analysis for various sectors.
Most commonly, SL work on natural resource sectors has involved reinterpreting existing studies and knowledge on a particular sector through an SL focus. For example, considering the role that forests play in broader livelihood strategies, their role in the overall capital asset composition of the household and the effect of wider policies, institutions and processes in determining forest use and access. The table below illustrates the application of the SL approach to the question of potentials and constraints that the rural poor face in natural resource access, using the example of forests and drawing on work done by Arnold (1999). The scenarios outlined reflect frequently occurring types of forest-related situations important to rural livelihoods as seen from an SL perspective.
As the table suggests the SL can be effectively employed to examine different access to forests scenarios in terms of their contribution to a broader livelihood strategy. Whilst it is evident that access to forests continues to play a vital role in rural livelihoods; SL research suggests that some of these strategies are unlikely to be sustainable whereas others present viable opportunities for sustainable capital accumulation. The general picture is similar to that reached concerning access to land and agriculture: there is much more innovation and economic mobility at the household level than is often assumed. However 'community' forestry is a rarity and many instances of subsistence forest use are not in fact sustainable. Macro-structures have a significant influence on the choices that can be locally pursued. When considering strategies to empower and enable the poor to have access to forests it is therefore vital to consider both the diversity of local strategies; the agency of the poor and their strengths and capacities.
Table 3.2 Rural livelihoods and access to forests
|
Scenario of forest access |
Context: Constraints and opportunities |
Policy and technical issues |
|
Forests Continue to be Central to Livelihood Systems |
Principally hunter-gatherers / shifting cultivators who use forests as common pool resource. Labor intensive livelihood practices difficult to sustain in face of seasonal migration and little scope for improvement. Possible forest-based options include: expansion of market outlets for NTFPs; transformation into commercial agroforests; employment in forest opportunities. |
Policies needed that recognise local rights and provide holders with legal and regulatory support in protecting them. Policies to support trade also important although can expose people to risk as markets in forest products volatile. |
|
Products from forests play important supplementary / safety-net role |
Users agriculturalists who draw on forest for inputs that cannot be produced on-farm. Likely to be mulitple users with overlapping claims on the resource; internal differentiation of asset endowments among housesholds lead to competing claims and poor find it difficult to benefit from commercialization in this context and in danger of losing resource access to more powerful. |
Need for policy and legal framework that legitimises participation by poor; assistance in resource sharing and monitoring mechanisms; projects to rebuild social capital and technical assistance for forest management. |
|
Forest product activity opportunities are increasingly base on agroforest sources |
Potential for increased tree-growing on farms due to decline in sources from forests; demand for tree products; and changes in factor availability and allocation. Most farm-level tree management mainly for household needs; capacity of poor to take advantage of market is limited though outgrower schemes have enabled some participation |
Tenure conditions have to be clear; policies to improve market access; technical support to small farmers; flexible options appropriate to the incremental niche approach to tree growing. |
|
Opportunities exist to expand artisanal and small enterprise forest product activities |
Forest product activities a major source of employment in rural manufacturing. New entrants driven by need to sustain livelihoods; others responding to market opportunities. |
Intervention may be necessary to ensure policy environment does not discriminate against informal sector; support services generic to small enterprise sector; means to secure sustainable use of raw material |
|
People need to move out of declining forest product activities |
Forest products provide only a marginal and unsustainable existence. |
Balanced policies that enable people to exit and find better opportunities as well as supporting the use of forests as an interim support base. |
Source: Drawn from Arnold (1999)
With regard to water, to further demonstrate the application of the SLA to various sectors, the framework has been progressive in drawing out macro and micro policy issues and analyzing complexity (Soussan 1999; Calow and Nicol 2001). There are several points to be made here. First, the current global shift towards sustainable financing of water supply brings with it complex questions about the nature of local demand, willingness and capacity to pay and related questions of ownership, power and gender. A livelihoods perspective has been found to be critical for an understanding of the issues involved as water management environments are invariably complex and related directly to food security. Potential water vulnerability further needs to be understood in the policy context of tensions between moves towards decentralization and the need to maintain planning and management functions and the need for an integrated non-sector divided system for drought and famine warning.
Calow and Nicol (2001) have found that on the whole the SLA provided an effective means for both understanding access to water issues and then providing policy guidelines in their work in Ethiopia and Palestine. The approach added value in terms of a greater understanding of the multi-dimensional nature of vulnerability. An understanding of how water is combined with other assets to generate income helped in understanding how water insecurity can affect production and income, as well as direct consumption. In terms of policy development and project planning it suggested the need to broaden indicator sets currently used to warn of drought related problems. It was helpful in exploring different dimensions of sustainability and trade-offs between them and in exploring how these are affected by political interests.
Reviewing a technical soil and water conservation project that has been operating in Ethiopia for the last twenty years using the SLA led to a re-evaluation of some basic assumptions. In fact, some of the most successful instances of the application of SLA to ANR issues are in project evaluation and redesign. Perhaps this is because there is 'something to go on'; information and experiences that can be studied and entry-points that have already been made. A case study group at the Siena Conference organized by DfID and FAO (DfID/FAO 2000:17) found that reviewing the project through a SL lens led them to:
Question the project's basic assumption that land degradation is the main cause of food insecurity;
Look more closely at the relationship between the political context and coping strategies and the implications of mass mobilization, time and labor constraints and the utilization of local knowledge.
The re-diagnosis was expected to lead to the following outputs:
Knowledge of the main causes of food insecurity for different livelihood typologies at different levels
Greater understanding of the influence of policies, markets, tenure rights etc on food insecurity.
Greater understanding of the priorities and linkages between these causes.
Identification of more appropriate entry-points and a better idea of sequencing
The emphasis on holism in the SLA has led to concerns amongst practitioners that sectoral projects will be abandoned in favor of complex cross-sectoral projects. 'A frequent misconception concerning the livelihoods approach is that holistic analysis must necessarily lead to holistic or multi-disciplinary projects' (CARE:NRAC 99). DELIVERI a livestock project in Indonesia is a good illustration of how an approach can be SL guided, yet sectorally-anchored. The DELIVERI project uses livestock extension services as an entry point to support rural livelihoods and aims to change policies that constrain livelihood strategies though the project structure is anchored in the Ministry of Agriculture.
The objective of the SLA is to place the constraints and opportunities faced with regard to ANR issues in the broader context of other capital assets, PIPs and the vulnerability context. The SLA is clearly well suited to capture the diversity and complexity of ANR issues; there is less evidence of how this knowledge has been 'translated back' for the analysis of a particular sector. Most research done using the SL framework ex ante has focused on diversification and rural livelihoods. There is little work that uses the SL framework ex ante to gather information about a specific resource type. Most of the resource specific work appears to entail running existing scenarios through the SL framework. This is a gap; as the examples of forests and water above suggest, considering particular resources as they are located in local livelihood strategies and constrained by macro-structures is critical. Whilst this has been appreciated for a long time, the SL is a practical means for doing so that has not yet been fully tested.
