No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Rural household incomes and land grabbing in Cambodia
... Several case studies have shed light on potential socioeconomic effects of large-scale land investments (Bottazzi et al., 2018;Jiao et al., 2015;Nolte & Ostermeier, 2017) quantitative large-N studies have significantly advanced our understanding of how land deals 2 impact on outcomes such as food security (Müller et al., 2021) and environmental degradation (Chiarelli et al., 2022;Davis et al., 2020). To date, however, we lack systematic evidence on the extent to which land investments may affect local levels of social trust. ...
... Empirical evidence on the income effect of large-scale land investments is still inconclusive. Jiao et al. (2015), for example, find that economic land concessions have a negative impact on total household income as well as environmental income in Cambodia. Similar results are reported by Shete and Rutten (2015) for a large agricultural investment in Ethiopia. ...
... Agrarian transformations induced by large-scale land deals may profoundly change rural livelihoods. Previous scholars have cautioned that land deals may reduce local employment opportunities (Ali et al., 2019;Hajjar et al., 2020;Nolte & Ostermeier, 2017) as well as households' income (Jiao et al., 2015;Shete & Rutten, 2015), aggravate problems of food insecurity (Müller et al., 2021) and promote environmental degradation (Chiarelli et al., 2022;Davis et al., 2020). Although there is growing evidence on the socio-economic and environmental effects of land investments, we lack proper understanding on how the transition from smallholder farming to commercial, large-scale agriculture affects local social interactions. ...
The livelihoods of rural populations in Africa are closely tied to small-scale farming. In recent years, private investors as well as governments have shown a growing interest in large-scale acquisition of arable land across the continent. While researchers have started to analyze the local economic and envinronmental impacts of such investments, their socio-political as well as psychological consequences remain poorly understood. This paper investigates how changes in land ownership patterns caused by large-scale land acquisitions affect the level of interpersonal trust among rural communities. We main-
tain that the transition from community and individual-smallholder land ownership into large-scale investor property has a negative impact on local levels of trust. Furthermore, we assume that the deterioration of trust caused by large-scale land investments is stronger among women than men. To test our claims, we connect circa 71,000 respondents from Afrobarometer surveys to georeferenced information on the location of land deals from 33 African countries. Relying on a difference-in-differences type of empirical strategy as well as an instrumental variable approach, we show that large-scale land investments indeed disrupt local social fabrics by reducing interpersonal trust. Our results suggest that trust in relatives is particularly affected by large-scale land acquisitions. In addition, we find that land deals reduce personalized trust among women but not necessarily among men.
... Early agrarian Marxist scholarship examined the ways in which identity politics (linked to kinship, for example) intersected with class politics in peasant societies (Alavi 1973). Subsequent work has explored the range of peasant politics, from quiescence to everyday politics and all-out revolution, enquiring, for example, into how peasants struggle against neoliberal globalisation (Edelman 1999) or land grabbing (Hall et al. 2015). The links of contemporary agrarian politics to broader politics have been addressed in Brazil (Wolford 2016(Wolford , 2010 and many other settings (e.g. ...
... In different places and times, a new politics may emerge in distinct ways, combining 'everyday' with 'official' and 'advocacy' politics, frequently throwing up contradictions and new challenges (Kerkvliet 2009). For example, resistance to 'land grabs' and extractive industries has highlighted profound questions about what precisely is being defended and what constitutes a defence (Conde and Le Billon 2017; Hall et al. 2015). Confronting investments by global capital may be seen as progressive, yet defending existing informal and customary tenure can be exclusionary, patriarchal and in other ways oppressive (Ribot 2013;Ribot and Peluso 2003). ...
... Other research examines land grabbing's consequences for food security, employment, and welfare (e.g. Jiao, Smith-Hall, and Theilade 2015;McMichael 2012). In these debates, the state is frequently discussed according to a Manichean perspective: either as a weak 'target' state, which does not have the capacity to resist the pressures from foreign and domestic agricultural businesses, or as a 'host', which facilitates land accumulation by providing infrastructure and financial support to large farm enterprises. ...
... Given the fact that the majority of Cambodia's population lives in rural areas and traditional ways of living are preferred, the people are highly dependent on natural resources of the forest (Jiao et al., 2015), making forest extraction one of the most important livelihood strategies in these areas. This fact is also shown by a study in the area of Stung Treng, which demonstrates that of 582 households, about 44 percent, by far the majority, are natural resource extractors (Bühler et al., 2015). ...
... In this study, environmental income was divided into four groups, in which wood as a group accounts for 380 USD per year, the second largest group after vegetables, resin and fruits. Literature shows that by dividing households into income quartiles, the distribution of environmental income in each quartile ranges between 32 and 35 percent (Jiao et al., 2015). A study by Saha and Sundriyal (2012) with focus on India revealed that NTFPs account for between 19 and 32 percent of total income. ...
... A study by Saha and Sundriyal (2012) with focus on India revealed that NTFPs account for between 19 and 32 percent of total income. Jiao et al. (2015) makes an additional distinction between "processed and unprocessed forest products" (p. 321) and notes that processed forest products are more important for the less poor (15 percent share of annual household income) than for the poorer part of the households surveyed (6 percent share of annual household income). ...
... Several studies have revealed factors that influence income inequality from various perspectives, such as agricultural liberalization (Talukder, 2016), health levels (Gao and Yao, 2016), labor force migration from rural areas (Barham and Boucher, 2019), social characteristics of household economy (Militarua and Stanila, 2016), livelihood assets (Sok, 2017), public policy (Shrestha and Shrestha, 2017;Severini and Tantasari, 2018) and sources of income with an emphasis on non-agricultural and agricultural income in particular (Davis, et al., 2020;Jiao and Smith, 2016;and Adams, 2020), even on forestry-based income (Ali and Rahut, 2018), environmental income (Walelign, et al., 2016) and transfers (Berman, 2018). ...
... However, inconsistent results have been found. Some studies have found that non-farm incomes increase income inequality (Talukder, 2016, Davis, et al., 2020Jiao and Smith, 2016;and Adams, 2020), while others suggest that the opposite is true (Janvry et al. al, 2016). Xu, Qiu, Yang and Chen (2018) research show that income from household operations plays a dominant role in income inequality. ...
Indonesia's national economy is experiencing stagnant growth in income inequality (Gini ratio) and the number of poor people continues to increase, even though the national GDP growth indicators have been improving for several years. Regional economic growth in South Sumatra also increased based on the GRDP indicator, but the inequality in income distribution increased slightly and the inflation rate in South Sumatra fluctuated greatly in 2007-2017. Furthermore, the farmer's exchange rate, export value, human development index, and interest rate movements in South Sumatra in 2017 decreased compared to 2007, although overall infrastructure development continues to increase every year. This study analyzes income inequality and its implications for poverty in South Sumatra Province. Factors affecting income inequality are limited to farmers' exchange rates, exports, and infrastructure. The research population is all secondary data related to the research object in South Sumatra Province for the period 2007 - 2017. Based on the Multiple Linear Regression analysis using the OLS (Ordinary Least Square) method, the results show that the exchange rate of farmers' rupiah, exports, and infrastructure simultaneously affects income inequality. Then partially the exchange rate of farmers, exports, and infrastructure have a significant effect on income inequality. The novelty of the research lies in the object of research, where there are differences in the phenomena of economic growth and poverty rates between the National and the Province of South Sumatra.
... Roughly 250 000 people, the majority of them indigenous Kuy, live near the Prey Lang forest and depend on the forest for their livelihoods (Jiao et al. 2015). The Prey Lang, which means 'our forest' in the Kuy language, is also a vital part of Kuy cultural and spiritual life (Turreira-García et al. 2018). ...
... Hence, these two forest types have a special importance to the spiritual and cultural well-being of the local indigenous people. This is supported by Jiao et al. (2015), who documented the negative impact of deforestation on local household economies in the central lowlands, Cambodia. Dipterocarp forests yield far more than timber. ...
Current vegetation maps show evergreen forests of Cambodia as one homogenous forest type. However, ecological field studies in the central plains demonstrated a heterogenous mosaic of different evergreen forest types, each with a unique species composition and ecological characteristics. Based on six botanical expeditions, we describe four lowland evergreen forest types: 1) riverine forest dominated by Dipterocarpus costatus (Dipterocarpaceae); 2) tall dipterocarp forest dominated by Anisoptera costata (Dipterocarpaceae); 3) swamp forest dominated by Macaranga triloba (Euphorbiaceae); and 4) ‘Sralao', an open forest with a monodominance of Lagerstroemia cochinchinensis (Lythraceae). Ordination by non‐metric multi‐dimensional scaling (NMDS) indicated that the four forest types represent well‐separated floristic entities with Sralao as the most deviant community. The highest species diversity was found in the riverine forest ( = 2.65), followed by tall dipterocarp forest ( = 2.53) and swamp forest ( = 2.34), whereas the Sralao forest had the lowest species diversity ( = 1.64). We argue that botanical fieldwork remains essential to refine vegetation maps otherwise based on remote sensing, and that knowledge of species composition is essential to conserve Indochina's vanishing evergreen forest biodiversity.
... Accounts rarely provide concrete data, but rather rely on descriptive narratives to reach conclusions. Only 11 cases provided quantitative insights into local livelihood changes, including four cases that applied specialised quantitative analysis methods [89,[92][93][94]. The other seven cases at least presented and analysed quantitative data based on fieldwork rather than relying upon descriptive portrayals for drawing research conclusions [87,91,95,96]. ...
... Second, recent cases are dominated largely by descriptive ethnographic research, lacking quantitative methods and analyses. Among the 124 articles, there were only four that used an applied quantitative approach [89,[92][93][94] and three with combinations of quantitative and qualitative [91,95,96] approaches. Thus, economic and environmental outcomes are less quantitatively examined and lack conclusive, empirical evidence. ...
Over the past several decades, land investments have dramatically increased to meet global food and biofuel demands, produce industrial commodities, protect environments and develop urban centres. Scholars and media actors have labelled this phenomenon “land grabbing”, owing to its many negative impacts. Since existing knowledge was generated from individual case-studies, global land grabbing patterns are relatively underexamined, and broader extrapolations of results to inform land grabbing theories are limited. Thus, there is an urgent need to conduct a large-N analyse on existing knowledge of land grabbing to enhance the understanding of the state-of-the-art knowledge and identify the gaps in research. We conducted a critical review of existing scholarly literature on case studies of land grabbing. Based on formal criteria, we selected 128 case studies from 124 articles out of 252 peer-reviewed articles published since 2007. We examined geographic distribution and commonly referenced topics in existing research and the clarified environmental and socioeconomic outcomes of land grabbing, presenting the most current knowledge on the topic to date. Findings from this research also revealed substantial gaps in the existing literature in terms of conceptualization, methodology and research area. The paper concludes with a call for more interdisciplinary, holistic research that looks at broader regional/temporal contexts and the inclusion of more evidence-based data.
... Cambodia has one of the world's highest national deforestation rates (Hansen et al. 2013), mainly driven by large-scale acquisitions of land for agro-industrial purposes, primarily in the form of economic land concessions and mining concessions (Jiao, Smith-Hall and Theilade 2015;Work and Thuon 2017). These have led to large-scale agricultural conversion of forest land and extensive illegal logging operations outside the borders of the officially granted concession areas, which are in conflict with the land law, forestry law and the law on protected areas. ...
... These have led to large-scale agricultural conversion of forest land and extensive illegal logging operations outside the borders of the officially granted concession areas, which are in conflict with the land law, forestry law and the law on protected areas. Prey Lang forest holds great ecological (Theilade et al. 2011), economic (Jiao, Smith-Hall and Theilade 2015;Hüls-Dyrmose et al. 2017) and cultural (Turreira-García et al. 2017) value. Roughly 250,000 people live within the vicinity of Prey Lang, most of whom rely directly on the forest for their livelihoods. ...
Highlights
• Indigenous and local people are increasingly recognised as playing an important role in the global environmental science policy arena. Participatory environmental monitoring is promoted as a cost-effec-tive approach to collect and report data on environmental trends and support decision making while providing social co-benefits to local people.
• The use of geographic citizen science applications for data collec-tion has opened up new opportunities for communities wishing to engage in environmental monitoring. While geographic citi-zen science applications assist in data collection and analysis, the use of technology may present a barrier to broad community involvement.
• Using a geographic citizen science tool to collect data on forest crimes and forest resources in Cambodia showed that commu-nity members could collect large amounts of geographic data regardless of their gender or age. The documentation facilitated advocacy and awareness-raising on social media and helped petition the government of Cambodia to protect Prey Lang forest officially.
... 1 Despite the spate of media reports, there is still very little empirical evidence investigating the direct impacts of compulsory acquisition on rural households. Much of focus has been placed on the relationship between compulsory acquisition and urbanization at the aggregate level Jiao et al. (2015) and Harris (2015). 2 Since compulsory acquisition is often followed with social unrest and violence (Banerjee et al., 2007;Cao et al., 2008;Tang et al., 2008), carefully quantifying its impacts on affected households is crucial to facilitate a smoother and healthier structural transformation. ...
... A closer look at the saving purposes reveals that households intend to raise their human capital levels, thus, their competitiveness in the non-agricultural labor market.The presented findings offer meaningful implications for policy-making on structural transformation and urbanization. In the process of rapid industrialization and urbanization, compulsory acquisition is an inevitable phenomenon in many developing countries, forcing millions of people off their farm livelihood(Xu et al., 2011;Jiao et al., 2015). The practice of compulsory acquisition is particularly prevalent in Vietnam, as it is one of the fastest-growing economies. ...
The expropriation of agricultural land to provide new land for industrial and urban expansion, referred to as compulsory acquisition, is prevalent in developing countries. Using Vietnam as a laboratory, this study evaluates the impacts of losing farmland through compulsory acquisition on household welfare and reaches the following findings. A 10 percentage point increase in the proportion of land expropriated results in a 2.2% decrease in household welfare proxied by food expenditure. Besides, politically unconnected and ethnic minority households are disproportionately vulnerable. The adverse welfare effect could take up to 10 years to evaporate. The reduction in household welfare is attributable to the decline in agricultural income and the inability to participate in the non-agricultural labor market. Other aspects of household behavior following compulsory acquisition are also explored, such as saving, social capital, labor, and capital allocation.
... In the Mekong region, large-scale rubber concessions are associated with land-use and livelihood conflicts with local communities who lose their access to both individual farmland and communal forest land (Barney 2007). In Cambodia, while the policy objectives of the ELCs are to raise socioeconomic standards, increase agricultural yields, create employment and protect natural resources (RGC 2005), scholars have widely criticized their adverse impacts (Neef et al. 2013;Jiao et al. 2015). Jiao et al. (2015) found no evidence of the positive income effects of ELCs on rural households in their vicinity. ...
... In Cambodia, while the policy objectives of the ELCs are to raise socioeconomic standards, increase agricultural yields, create employment and protect natural resources (RGC 2005), scholars have widely criticized their adverse impacts (Neef et al. 2013;Jiao et al. 2015). Jiao et al. (2015) found no evidence of the positive income effects of ELCs on rural households in their vicinity. Scheidel et al. (2013) also highlight the ELCs' limitations in generating direct employment-instead, the concessions have been contributing to massive rural-urban migration, with a large number of now displaced or landless farmers migrating to urban areas to seek work. ...
... Refs. [7,19,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]). Yet surprisingly, none of these studies specifically looked at how different investors' LSLAs affected households' farm investments, even though information on how these investors' LSLAs affected households' farm investments could be helpful to policymakers. ...
Rural households remained the access-marginalized demographic in Africa despite massive land rushes by both domestic and foreign enterprises. As a result, investment decisions made by agricultural households are affected. To resolve this issue, a study that examines how exposure to large-scale land acquisition (LSLA) impacts people's agricultural investment decisions is required. Using data from 664 households selected using a multistage sampling technique, we examined the nexus between LSLA under local and foreign organizations and short-term investment (STI) and long-term investments (LTI) in land-improving measures. The results revealed that although LSLA under domestic and foreign entities tends to have a negative and statistically significant impact on the probability of LTI, it has a positive and significant impact on the probability of doing so for STI. The results also showed a simultaneity between LSLA and farm investment. Thus, giving farmers legal ownership safeguards them as they undertake LTI. To encourage household investment and reduce further exposure to LSLA, improvements in legal land ownership can be made.
... Spanning over 900,000 ha in 2009 (A.T, 2009), the forest at that time was inhabited by approximately 250,000 Kuy indigenous and Khmer people practicing blended systems of paddy and shifting rice cultivation, supplemented by hunting and fishing, gathering, husbandry, and gardening (Turreira-García et al., 2017). Between 2007 and 2012, over 275,000 hectares around the forest's perimeter were awarded for Economic Land Concessions (ELC) by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF) (Work & Thuon, 2017). 2 Across Cambodia, these Economic Land Concessions caused more social and ecological damage than economic growth (Hak et al., 2018;Jiao et al., 2015;Tucker, 2015) and were suspended in 2012. In 2016 the Ministry of Environment (MoE) grabbed Cambodia's remaining forest areas for conservation and as part of this act established the 432,000 hectare Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary (PLWS). ...
At the resource frontier of Prey Lang Forest in Cambodia, a new food regime marks multiple rifts in the social fabric. As the forest gives way to rural road development, migrant incursions, and cash cropping, long-term residents lament the paucity of available food. At the same time, new migrants suggest that there is now more food than ever. Based on how food is defined, we find one food, motofish, that emerged as a significant semiotic sign. It is a fish, regardless of species, that is farm-raised and carried from the market to the village by motorbike. It is opposed to a real fish that grows by itself in a river or stream. Long-term Kuy and Khmer residents of the forest see the fish as a sign of destruction and loss, because there are so few fish in the rivers and streams. New migrants see motofish as part of a new abundance coming to this remote corner of the world where there used to be no food. This abundance is facilitated by Cambodia's growing fish farming industry, fed by wild-harvested 'trashfish' and subsidized soy pellets. Motofish is more than a sign of gastropolitics, as it marks a rift in the semiotic landscape through which individual and collective worlds emerge. We use this worldmaking fish to launch a discussion of both the epistemic and metabolic rifts of agrarian transformation and how these rifts are interpreted by different actors in the same landscape: One that recognizes the metabolic rift and the other that carries with them its epistemic cleansing. Resumé A la frontière des ressources de la forêt de Prey Lang, un nouveau régime alimentaire marque de multiples ruptures dans le tissu social. Alors que la forêt cède la place au développement de routes rurales, aux incursions de migrants et aux cultures commerciales, les résidents de longue date déplorent la rareté de la nourriture disponible. Dans le même temps, les nouveaux migrants suggèrent qu'il y a maintenant plus de nourriture que jamais. Sur la base de la définition de la nourriture, nous trouvons un aliment, le motofish, qui est apparu comme un signe sémiotique. Un poisson, quelle que soit son espèce, qui est élevé à la ferme et transporté du marché au village en moto est un motofish. Il s'oppose à un vrai poisson qui grandit tout seul dans une rivière ou un ruisseau. Les résidents Kuy et Khmer de longue date de la forêt voient le poisson comme un signe de destruction et de perte, car il y a si peu de poissons dans les rivières et les ruisseaux. Les nouveaux migrants voient le motofish comme faisant partie d'une nouvelle abondance venant dans ce coin reculé du monde où il n'y avait pas de nourriture. Cette abondance est facilitée par une industrie piscicole en pleine croissance, alimentée par des « poissons poubelles » récoltés dans la nature et des granulés de soja subventionnés. Motofish est plus qu'un signe de gastropolitique, car il marque une rupture dans le paysage sémiotique à travers lequel émergent les mondes individuels et collectifs. Nous utilisons ce poisson créateur de mondes pour lancer une discussion à la fois sur les ruptures épistémiques et métaboliques de la transformation agraire et sur la manière dont ces ruptures sont interprétées par différents acteurs dans le même paysage: l'un qui reconnaît la rupture métabolique et l'autre qui porte avec lui son nettoyage épistémique. Mots clés: Rupture de l'échange métabolique, division épistémique, Cambodge, Kuy, développement, religion Resumen En la frontera de recursos de Prey Lang Forest, un nuevo régimen alimentario marca múltiples fisuras en el tejido social. A medida que el bosque da paso al desarrollo de caminos rurales, incursiones de inmigrantes y cultivos comerciales, los residentes a largo plazo lamentan la escasez de alimentos disponibles. Al mismo tiempo, los nuevos migrantes sugieren que ahora hay más comida que nunca. Basándonos en cómo se define la comida, encontramos una comida, pez moto, que surgió como un signo semiótica. Un pez, independientemente de la especie, que se cría en una granja y se lleva del mercado al pueblo en motocicleta es un pez moto. Se opone a un pez real que crece solo en un río o arroyo. Los residentes kuy y khmer de larga data en el bosque ven a los peces como un signo de destrucción y pérdida, porque hay muy pocos peces en los ríos y arroyos. Los nuevos migrantes ven a los peces moto como parte de una nueva abundancia que llega a este remoto rincón del mundo donde antes no había comida. Esta abundancia se ve facilitada por una creciente industria de piscicultura, alimentada por "morralla" silvestre y gránulos de soya subsidiados. Motofish es más que un signo de gastropolítica, ya que marca una grieta en el paisaje semiótico a través del cual emergen mundos individuales y colectivos. Utilizamos este pez creador de mundos para iniciar una discusión sobre las fisuras epistémicas y metabólicas de la transformación agraria y cómo estas fisuras son interpretadas por diferentes actores en el mismo paisaje: uno que reconoce la fisura metabólica y el otro que lleva consigo su limpieza epistémica.
... Consequently, researchers and policymakers have increasingly turned their attention to examining household income, recognizing it as a critical factor in addressing rural poverty and inequality. For example, Jiao et al. (2015) conducted a study on rural income and livelihoods in Cambodia, highlighting the need to include detailed environmental income accounting in future standard household economic surveys. ...
This study examined how income is distributed among rural households and the different sources that contribute to it, as well as their role in addressing income inequality. It used the Gini coefficient to assess the impact of rural household income and other sources of income on income equality in 16 villages in Chub commune, Tboung Khmum district, Tboung Khmum province, Cambodia. It was found that income from farm activities accounts for 68.78% of total income, and the income distribution is slightly unequal based on the Gini index and Lorenz curve (0.166614239; 0.169607843; 0.022865854). This suggests that diversification of income sources has influenced equality, highlighting the importance of households being able to diversify their income sources to achieve wealth equality. Access to resources such as inputs and finance could help improve income equality among rural families. The study highlights the need for policymakers to focus on the provision of productive resources and access to financial resources such as loans, as these can generate significant living income and potentially help prevent inequality in rural communities. Furthermore, the study revealed that non-farm and other activities contributed to the variation in income equality, accounting for 31.22% of the total income of rural households. The Gini index for non-farming income was 0.082741477; 0.176054916 compared to farming income, indicating slight inequality in household income.
... To understand the effect of Frankincense income in reducing income disparities, we employed the Gini decomposition formula, which was used in similar studies (Jagger, 2012;Jiao et al., 2015;Liao, 2016). The Gini decomposition analysis helped to investigate sources of households' total annual income with and without Frankincense incomes. ...
In recent decades, there is a major shift in forest resource governance and management. Participatory forest management (PFM) approach has been promoted widely. However, the link between rural communities’ livelihood dependence on forest resources and the likelihood of PFM success has been understudied. This study examines the contribution of PFM to improving rural livelihoods in Metema district, Ethiopia. A mixed quantitative and qualitative research design was employed. Quantitative data were collected from 180 randomly selected participants in three PFM groups. The survey data were supplemented with group discussions and key informant interviews. Results revealed that age is significantly associated with PFM membership. Other household (HH) socioeconomic characteristics did not affect the decision to be a member of a PFM group. The PFM members collect different non-timber forest products (NTFPs), and Frankincense (Boswellia papyrifera) income constitutes 9–25% of the members’ annual HH income. The contribution of Frankincense income decreases from the lowest to higher quantiles. Statistically significant differences were also observed in Frankincense income between the PFM groups investigated (p = 0.05). Moreover, the findings revealed that PFM approach and hence the Frankincense production has played an essential role in poverty alleviation as demonstrated by providing regular income to PFM member HHs, reducing income inequality and serving as a safety net and income gap filling roles. Overall, the PFM approach in the study area contributes to the livelihood improvement of the members that could, in turn, create an incentive for better management of the dry land woodlands.
... At the same time, changes to the agrarian economy have occurred due to loss of smallholder lands, conversion to industrial agriculture focused on large-scale production of export crops, and migration away from farm work (Kelley et al., 2020;Neef et al., 2013). In particular, the increase in legal ELC has resulted in many small-scale farmers losing their land to government-sanctioned economic development schemes, pushing many into wage labour on larger plantations (Bateman, 2010;Bylander & Hamilton, 2015;Jiao et al., 2015). ...
Cambodian cities continue to experience major growth, due principally to in-country migration. However, the recent trajectory and historical context of urbanisation differs from other Asian countries and as such are less investigated. Using a framework of interconnected migration factors, this article reports on rural-to-urban migration in five provinces around Phnom Penh—from the perspective of both urban migrants and their rural family members. The work examines the economic, environmental, and sociocultural factors influencing migrants’ current and desired movements, changing livelihood activities, and the permanency of migration choices. While there is evidence to support three major theories of migration—income differentials, environmental change, and social networks—it is argued that none of these alone explains current migration patterns. Explanations of Cambodian migration must account for the powerful attraction of home villages and kin relations, as well as the inseparability of two exogenous factors: the proliferation of microfinance (MFI) and the rise of the garment industry. The results show distinct patterns of migration with implications for adaptation, precarity, and rural livelihoods.
... Following Sen's feasibility capability theory, the "visible" direct welfare changes in this paper are economic income. Previous studies have shown that farmers' economic income is the decisive factor in their quality of life (Jiao, Smith-Hall, & Theilade, 2015;Nambiar, 2013;Zhang, Liu, & Gu, 2019). In the key development zones, the land owners (users) on the one hand increase the value of the soil by increasing the intensity of land use and, in turn, the value of land. ...
Spatial regulation produces different advantages in areas with different land resource endowments. It also affects the welfare of stakeholders in different regions. Existing studies mainly focus on the "visible" welfare "windfalls" and "wipeouts" caused by spatial regulation, yet pay little attention on the "invisible" effects. This article selects Tianyang County (a key development zone) and Tiandong County (a restricted development zone) as its principal research areas. These areas have been divided as part of China's major function oriented zone (MFOZ) planning. The MFOZ represents the most significant and broad exercise in spatial regulation. These regions located in Baise City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China. After applying Sen's feasibility capability theory as the foundation on which to build a theoretical framework, this article calculates and compares the changes in farmers' welfare before and after losing land in the key development zones (weak spatial regulation) and the restricted development zones (strong spatial regulation) by using a fuzzy mathematics method. The impact of spatial regulation on the "invisible" welfare of land-lost farmers is then analyzed. The results show that: (1) differences in spatial regulation produce "windfalls" in the total welfare of land-lost farmers in the key development zones, but "wipeouts" in the restricted development zones; (2) the "visible" welfare of economic income for land-lost farmers are "windfalls" in the key development zones, but are "wipeouts" in the restricted development zones; (3) the "invisible" welfares of social security, development opportunities, living conditions and psychological conditions are "windfalls" for land-lost farmers in the key development zones, but are "wipeouts" in the restricted development zones; (4) the "invisible" welfare of living environments for land-lost farmers are "wipeouts" in the key development zones, but are "windfalls" in the restricted development zones. This study thereby provides evidence-based insights which can enable countries to formulate spatial regulation systems that promote balanced development among regions, and to fully consider the "invisible" welfare compensation of land-lost farmers as part of land expropriation compensation policies.
... These results echo evidence on the association between expropriation and reduced agricultural work in Ethiopia (Ghatak et al., 2013), Cambodia (Jiao et al., 2015), and Vietnam (Tuan, 2021;Tuyen et al., 2014). My findings are most similar to those of (Le and Nguyen, 2020) for Vietnam, which finds that expropriation decreases agricultural production and food expenditures, but that households were unable to shift toward off-farm work. ...
A number of developing countries use land expropriation policies to expand cities and develop peri-urban areas. In China alone, an average of 1,600 square kilometers were expropriated annually between 2004 and 2018. The impact of this urban development strategy on expropriated households is not well-understood. I estimate the causal effect of expropriation on Chinese households' livelihood choice and earned income, relying on panel data and comparison to non-expropriated households to observe how household-level outcomes change in response to expropriation. Controlling for baseline outcomes, I find that for at least the first two years, expropriation reduces household agricultural participation and production but does not increase other types of income-generating activities. The result is reduced food security and ability to earn income. Compensation paid to households does not fully offset these effects in cases where households lose all their land or are uncompensated. These findings suggest concrete policies governments can implement to lessen the negative welfare impacts of urban development on expropriated households: higher compensation rates, development of rural non-agricultural labor markets, and direct food assistance to expropriated households.
... The direct benefits of conserving forests in Cambodia is primarily exemplified by their socio-economic importance to rural communities. Numerous studies have sought to quantify this, with Hansen and Top (2006) and Jiao et al. (2015) estimating that rural CEU eTD Collection households still derive between 30-42% of their total household incomes from forest resources and the RGC (2010) acknowledging that as many as 75% of subsistence farmers depend on these resources. This reliance on forest resources takes many forms, through the use of timber for the construction of homes and firewood to the collection NTFPs for general consumption, traditional medicinal uses and also to supplement livelihoods as a 'safety net' ...
PDF file (6599k)
Summary In the face of global environmental change, protected areas (PAs) have become an increasingly important tool in modern conservation, and as such there is a clear imperative to maximise the benefits they provide. In this regard a growing field of interest is the quantification of PA ecological effectiveness, often expressed in terms of avoided deforestation achieved relative to unprotected areas. However, such assessments are confounded by biases in both the non-random siting of PAs within landscapes as well as differential pressure upon their resources. These biases can be overcome by the use of quasi-experimental counterfactual study designs, that evaluate the impact of PAs against control areas of ‘similar’ biophysical and socio-economic characteristics. To contribute towards this knowledge domain this study presents an assessment of PA effectiveness for the Southeast Asian nation Cambodia, which, in light of its history of natural resource management, represents a pertinent case study. PA effectiveness was analysed using propensity score matching for three different outcome periods between 2010-2018 with the results finding significant positive treatment effects in each, with forested land in PAs being as much as 8% less likely to be deforested than similar unprotected forest. In addition to this a significant positive spillover effect of PAs was observed in 5km buffers zones adjacent to their boundaries, resulting in a maximum of 4% reduction in probability of deforestation. Furthermore, the effectiveness of PAs in Cambodia was found to vary under differential deforestation pressure as well as with regards to the duration of time since PA establishment.
... In Sierra Leon, Yengoh and Armah (2015) investigated the food security effects of LSLA. Their results were similar to Shete and Rutten (2015), and Jiao et al. (2015) in Cambodia, where LSLA was found to impact negatively on households. Meanwhile, the results of Bottazzi et al., (2018) in Sierra Leon indicate that LSLA decreased yields but increased the income of the affected villages. ...
In the wake of 2007-08 food and oil price hikes, and the subsequent financial crises, Africa saw an upsurge in large-scale land acquisition (LSLA). This generated debate among development practitioners who raised mixed concerns about the implications of such acquisitions on local occupants. In response, empirical studies investigated the effects of LSLA. However, information comparing the farmland access effect of LSLA by different actors is missing in the literature even though such information could be relevant for policy. Using data from 526 households and 6 group discussions, this study examined and compared the farmland access effects of direct and indirect exposure to LSLA by domestic entities (DE) to the farmland access effects of direct and indirect exposure to LSLA by foreign entities (FE) using bar charts, crosstabulations with Chi-square and Welch's t-test. The results revealed that households directly and indirectly exposed to LSLA by DE and FE are both less likely to access farmland for production. However, households directly and indirectly exposed to LSLA by DE are much less likely to access farmland in the area than households directly and indirectly exposed to LSLA by FE. Based on the findings, we argued that concerns about any impacts of LSLA should be directed to all actors involved.
... However, in deeply rural contexts such items may only make up a portion of the material resources used, while other 'ecological resources' may become much more important for mobilizations. Examples of ecological resources are any environmental goods or 'environmental incomes' obtained by people directly from the environment (Jiao, Smith-Hall, and Theilade 2015), such as forest products, crops (conventional ones, as well as illicit plants) or species and wildlife that could be sold to obtain cash incomes to support resistances (Scott 2009), or any other materials that could provide food, shelter, transport (i.e. animals) needed during mobilizations. ...
Which role plays the more-than-human world in shaping the possibilities for contentious actions and politics? We discuss this question by revisiting reflections from social movement theory, agrarian studies, and commons management, and by reviewing empirical cases of protest significantly shaped by ecological endowments. Distinct political ecological opportunities may arise from vulnerabilities in ecological cycles, ecological potentials, interspecies relationships, ecological invisibility, ecological visibility, ecological resources, and ecological connectivity, among other features. However, whether people, activists, and social movements are able to turn them into a dynamic source of power ultimately depends upon how they perceive and relate themselves to the more-than-human world.
... Small landholders have no choice but to reorganize their cropping systems according to crop booms ( Mahanty and Milne, 2016;Bourdier, 2012). This process is found overall to have negative consequences on impacted communities ( Hak et al., 2018;Bühler et al., 2015;Jiao et al., 2015). C ash-crop price volatility has exposed small producers to severe consequences that are best illustrated by the fall of cassava prices ( Hought et al., 2012). ...
... Additionally, the total cassava harvesting area in the country is 652,531 ha, which is the second largest area after rice, as observed in 2019 [1]. Consequently, the newly introduced cash crop production has changed the income and lives of small-scale producers in Cambodia [3][4][5]. ...
Cassava is one of the most important cash crops in Cambodia. Agricultural mechanization promotes productivity, but overinvestment may disrupt the balance between inputs and outputs. Depending on the production scale, sometimes hiring equipment is considered better than purchasing it. While we can hypothesize that mechanization and investments might be crucial factors of productivity, technical efficiency analysis for estimating their effects has not yet been conducted. Therefore, this study investigates the impact of mechanization and investments on cassava yield and producers’ technical efficiency in Cambodia using the Cobb–Douglas stochastic frontier production model. For the study, 205 respondents were randomly selected and interviewed in the Battambang and Pailin provinces in northwestern Cambodia in 2017. Our results show that tractor or truck-hire cost was positively significant, and the cassava uprooting machine-hire cost was negatively significant. The average technical efficiency score of 0.62 indicates that cassava producers can increase their level of technical efficiency. Although cassava production in Cambodia is mechanized and investors are investing, it would be more beneficial to producers if they were provided with financial assistance when uprooting the cassava at the harvest time. Appropriate control of input costs can effectively improve cassava yield, following the implementation of the National Policy on Cassava 2020–2025 by the Royal Government of Cambodia.
... Their results confirmed the findings of Shete and Rutten (2015) and yet contradict with Baumgartner et al. (2015) who also investigated the impacts of land grabbing on household income in Ethiopia, and found that land grabbing leads to at least a 50% increase in income. Further, their results confirm that of Jiao et al. (2015) in Cambodia where land grabbing decreased household income. In Sierra Leone, a study conducted by Yengoh and Armah (2015) to investigate the food security effects of land grabbing revealed results that were similar to that of Shete and Rutten (2015) and Alamirew et al. (2015). ...
Following the 2007-08 multiple crises, land-rich nations witnessed an unprecedented rise in land grabbing by different actors. However, there is lack of evidence for the impact of land grabbing by actors even though such information could be very useful for development, theoretical and empirical studies. This study investigates the food security (i.e., farm income, food consumption score, household food insecurity access score, and selfreported food security) impacts of land grabbing by domestic (LGDE) and foreign entities (LGFE) in Ghana, using a farm household level data from a survey conducted during the 2017/2018 cropping season. Specifically, we test two main hypotheses on food security impacts of LGDE and LGFE: (i) given that land grabbing leads to farmland loss and fewer job opportunities, food security will decrease under both LGDE and LGFE; and (ii) the decrease in food security will be higher under LGFE as compared to LGDE since foreign actors dominate in land grabbing, and control more land than domestic actors. The multinomial endogenous switching regression and multinomial endogenous treatment effect models were applied to control for potential selection bias, and to test these hypotheses. The results revealed that decrease in food security ranged between 15% and 61% for LGDE, and 11% and 49% for LGFE. These suggest that both LGDE and LGFE decreases food security but the decrease is much associated with LGDE as compared to LGFE. Thus, concerns about the negative impacts of land grabbing should be directed to all actors in land grabbing. The findings also have implications for development, theorical and empirical studies.
... Of the land developed into large-scale agriculture over the analysis period, 53% originated from smallholder agriculture. This result sets Ethiopia apart from many other countries undergoing LSLTs, where other forms of land and livelihood dispossession, including deforestation, can dominate (Jiao et al. 2015). The prominence of smallholder agriculture within our sample of LSLTs highlights the potential importance of LSLTs in affecting smallholder livelihood transitions in Ethiopia, affecting such conditions as capitalization of agriculture, tenure insecurity, loss of livelihood assets, and population displacement (Keeley et al. 2014, Moreda 2015, Oberlack et al. 2016, Hajjar et al. 2019, Nanhthavong et al. 2021. ...
Large-scale land transactions (LSLTs) can precipitate dramatic changes in land systems. Ethiopia has experienced one of the largest amounts of LSLTs in Africa, yet their effects on local land systems are poorly understood. In this study, we quantify the direct and indirect land use and land cover (LULC) changes associated with LSLTs at eight socio-environmentally diverse sites in central and western Ethiopia. To estimate these effects, we employ a novel, two-stage counterfactual analysis. We first use a region-growing procedure to identify a "control" site with comparable landscape-level characteristics to each LSLT. Then, we sample and reweight points within each control site to further improve covariate balance. This two-stage approach both controls for potential confounding factors at multiple spatial levels and reduces the costs of extensive LULC data classification. Our results show that the majority of the reported transacted area (62%) remained unconverted to large-scale agriculture. Most of the land that was developed into large-scale agriculture displaced smallholder agriculture (53%), followed by conversion of woodland/shrubland (35%) and forest (9%). Beyond their boundaries, LSLTs indirectly influenced rates of smallholder agricultural expansion and abandonment, pointing to site dependence in how LSLTs affect adjacent land systems. In particular, the low prevalence of forest within and around these LSLTs underscores a need to move beyond measures of deforestation as proxies for LSLT effects on land systems. Our two-stage approach shows promise as an efficient method for generating robust counterfactuals and thereby LULC change estimates in systems lacking wall-to-wall LULC data.
... Conversely, in Cameroon (Makoudjou et al., 2017, a study has indicated that forest income increased inequality by 3%, attributed to access to forest income by a few individuals through illegal logging. The findings reflect similar observations from studies in Nepal (Oli et al., 2016), Cambodia (Jiao et al., 2015), and Ethiopia (Babulo et al., 2009) which observed the potential of the income-equalizing effect of forest products. The study is also comparable to a study on selected JFM and CBFM villages in the Eastern arc mountains (MNRT, 2001), which found that forest income had the effect of inequality reduction by 4 and 2%, respectively. ...
Despite the importance of forests to the communities in rural Tanzania, information is scarce regarding the contribution of non-timber forest products to household incomes. Based on the variation in institutional regimes and income categories, we aimed to assess the contribution of NTFPs to the households in rural communities of West Usambara, comparing those households located around state and community managed forests. We randomly sampled 159 households from four villages at the fringes of jointly managed forests and community managed forests in the West Usambara Mountains. Household income accounting and cluster analysis were employed, in order to categorize households into income groups based on their total income. We observed a significantly higher amount of NTFPs income for households located around the state than the community managed forest, and high-income households had high absolute but lower relative NTFPs income. The NTFPs proved to be crucial in poverty and inequality aspects of the low-income households. Our findings imply that NTFPs are important income sources in rural communities and insightful assessment is needed, within a particular context, to understand the local situation. Interventions that improve the conservation of forests and NTFP flows to rural communities are important to the rural development agenda.
... There is broad consensus that the concession economy has not benefited indigenous populations much and that ELCs have negatively impacted their income, size of available cultivable land and livestock holdings (Jiao et al., 2015). Others argue that ELCs create few jobs and that working conditions 'today are not fundamentally different from colonial time indentured labour' (Slocomb, 2007, p. 106). ...
This volume sets out to explore the dialectic relating agriculture, crisis and conflict, and attempts to expand the knowledge on these interactions. Part 1 of the volume (chapters 1-6) discusses thematic issues and methodological approaches to understanding the intersection of agriculture, crisis and conflict. Part 2 (chapters 7-20) provides case studies that take a detailed approach to understanding agricultural contexts facing crisis and conflict, or the role played by agriculture within crisis and conflict. Studies are selected from areas that might be expected to feature in such a volume (the Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and Latin America) as well as less obvious regions where conflict within agriculture refers not to widespread violence or wars but rather latent or simmering crisis (Central Asia and Europe). Crises stemming from politically-driven violence, natural disasters and climate change are covered, as well as competition over resources.
... Other research examines land grabbing's consequences for food security, employment, and welfare (e.g. Jiao, Smith-Hall, and Theilade 2015;McMichael 2012). In these debates, the state is frequently discussed according to a Manichean perspective: either as a weak 'target' state, which does not have the capacity to resist the pressures from foreign and domestic agricultural businesses, or as a 'host', which facilitates land accumulation by providing infrastructure and financial support to large farm enterprises. ...
... Also, the uneven and selective formalization of property rights on the 8 scale of an agribusiness explained how the legal discourse on land was justified in order to execute a case of land grabbing. Jiao, X., Smith-Hall, C., & Theilade, I. (2015). Rural household incomes and land grabbing in Cambodia. ...
... These include the loss of access to land (Bottazzi et al., 2018;German et al., 2013;Nolte, 2014) and water (Johansson et al., 2016;Rulli et al., 2013), negative environmental impacts such as land degradation (Shete, Rutten, Schoneveld, & Zewude, 2016), water contamination (Arduino et al., 2012), and a threat to local land-use methods (Dell'Angelo et al., 2017;Ndi & Batterbury, 2017). These harmful spillovers may contribute to poverty, food insecurity, a loss of income, marginalization, social unrest, gender-related disempowerment and conflicts (Borras & Franco, 2012;Dell'Angelo et al., 2017;Hall et al., 2015;Jiao et al., 2015;Ndi & Batterbury, 2017;Nyantakyi-Frimpong & Bezner Kerr, 2017;Shete & Rutten, 2015). ...
The accelerated growth of large-scale farming operations in developing countries, in particular Africa, has raised concerns that smallholders may be negatively affected. Drawing on nationally representative smallholder data and a census of large-scale farms in Zambia, this study investigates spillovers from large-scale farms to smallholders. First, we conceptually discuss potential spillovers from larg-scale farms to smallholders and sources of spillover heterogeneity. Second, we analyze the large-scale farm sector and its locational pattern. Large-scale farms operate in areas with good infrastructure and market access, i.e. in proximity to smallholders. Third, we adopt a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the spillovers of large-scale farms to smallholders’ area cultivated, access to fertilizer, and maize yields. We observe that the establishment of large-scale farms has little effect on average farm sizes of smallholders. However, we find a strong shift of crop portfolios towards maize among smallholders near recently established large-scale farms to the detriment of other staple crops. We do not find any spillovers on fertilizer adoption by smallholder farmers but large positive effects on maize yields. The locational pattern suggest that large-scale farms compete with smallholders for land. In sum, it is crucial not to overestimate the development potential of large-scale farms. Instead, immediate threats to smallholders need to be addressed, in particular through securing land tenure rights. Further, the mechanisms of spillovers need to be better understood in order to design infrastructure and agricultural extension policies that can complement and reinforce positive spillovers from large-scale farms and mitigate potential negative spillovers including environmental impacts.
... The forest covers about 520,000 ha and supports more than 200,000 people, including Kuy indigenous communities as well as Khmers. The forest forms an integral part of the local culture, and most people in the area directly or indirectly derive their livelihood from it by collecting resin, building materials, medicine, and food (Jiao et al., 2015;Hayer et al., 2015). ...
... In creating a fiscal incentive mechanism for REDD+ through DD, the intervention needed to be given to the collection, allocation and distribution aspects of the DD to encourage actors at the local level, especially village community, to use a portion of their DD for REDD+ related activities. Using DD as an instrument of a fiscal incentive mechanism for REDD+ under village governance has some advantages, inter alia: first, the village as lowest-level jurisdiction is on the front-line facing adverse impacts from deforestation and forest degradation (see Pouliot et al., 2012;Jiao et al., 2015). 6 Therefore, involving the villages in combating deforestation and forest degradation is crucial and deemed as an effective way. ...
... Empirical evidence on the income effect of large-scale land investments is rather nonconclusive. Jiao et al. (2015), for example, find that economic land concessions have a negative impact on household total income as well as environmental income in Cambodia. Similar results are reported by Shete and Rutten (2015) for a large agricultural investment in Ethiopia. ...
The livelihoods of rural populations in sub-Saharan Africa are closely tied to small-scale farming and other types of land use. In recent years, private investors as well as governments have shown a growing interest in large-scale acquisition of arable land across the continent. While authors have started to analyze the local economic impacts of such investments, their socio-political as well as psychological consequences remain poorly understood. This paper investigates how changes in land ownership patterns caused by large-scale land acquisitions affect the level of trust among rural communities. We maintain that the transition from community and individual-smallholder land ownership into large-scale investor property has a negative impact on this particular dimension of social capital. To test our hypotheses, we rely on georeferenced information on land deals, tenure systems as well as survey data from Afrobarometer at the individual level of analysis. Employing a quasi-experimental design based on different matching techniques and difference-in-means estimations, our models show that the global land rush indeed disrupts local social fabrics and social cohesion by reducing interpersonal as well as institutional trust. Moreover, our findings indicate that the negative effect of agrarian transformations on local trust levels is particularly strong among women.
... Angkor Sites, nominated as United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage in 1992, is located at Siem Reap and draws millions of tourists each year. Prior studies (such as Gaughan et al., 2009) have focused on deforestation from the perspective of tourism and increasing urbanization, whereas others (Evans and Traviglia, 2012) have investigated logging for fuelwood as a major driver for deforestation (Jiao et al., 2015). Decision makers need information on the dynamics of land cover change as well as understand the implications of urbanization. ...
With the world population projected to grow significantly over the next few decades, and in the presence of additional stress caused by climate change and urbanization, securing the essential resources of food, energy, and water is one of the most pressing challenges that the world faces today. There is an increasing priority placed by the United Nations (UN) and US federal agencies on efforts to ensure the security of these critical resources, understand their interactions, and address common underlying challenges. At the heart of the technological challenge is data science applied to environmental data. The aim of this special publication is the focus on big data science for food, energy, and water systems (FEWSs). We describe a research methodology to frame in the FEWS context, including decision tools to aid policy makers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to tackle specific UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Through this exercise, we aim to improve the “supply chain” of FEWS research, from gathering and analyzing data to decision tools supporting policy makers in addressing FEWS issues in specific contexts. We discuss prior research in each of the segments to highlight shortcomings as well as future research directions.
... As in Vietnam, emerging research has shown that the Cambodian countryside acts as a repository of wildlife for the consumption of urban individuals, thus encouraging the depletion of valuable forest resources for the rural poor (Flora and Fauna International, 2018). More generally in the context of resources, mostly uninhibited logging in Cambodia has certainly had devastating effects on rural communities, for whom forest resources may constitute 50% of their income (Jiao et al., 2015). ...
... This is totally comprehensible since our study focuses on rural areas where most of the households' incomes come from agricultural jobs. Furthermore, not only the quantity, as indicated in our results but also the quality of land is found to influence income of households remarkably (Narayan and Pritchett 1999;Jiao, Smith-Hall, and Theilade 2015). By contrast, the coefficient of total productive assets shows insignificant correlation with income. ...
... Much of this work has focused on localized areas such as refugee camps, community forests, or other small geographic areas, but few have attempted to identify national-level groups using statistical tools (e.g., Zenteno Claros, 2013). However, similar tools to the ones we employ, including principal component analysis (PCA), cluster analysis, and multiple regression analysis, have been applied to describe livelihoods and to examine the effect of marginal resource differences on subnational groups (Jiao, Smith-Hall, & Theilade, 2015), dynamics (Jiao et al., 2017), and sustainability (Soltani, Angelsen, Eid, Naieni, & Shamekhi, 2012). Additionally, HEA has been adopted for vulnerability analysis in the climate change literature (Seaman et al., 2014;Luxon & Pius, 2012) and livelihoods research is often informed by HEA outputs (e.g., Opiyo, Wasonga, & Nyangito, 2014). ...
Understanding livelihoods patterns is a key component of food security and poverty analysis. The Household Economy Approach (HEA) is a leading method of conceptualizing, organizing, and analyzing information on livelihoods systems that is widely used within the food security analysis community. This approach is typically informed by data collected using qualitative methods. However, the increasing availability of large-scale household survey datasets presents an opportunity to explore the degree to which these data can be used to strengthen HEA analysis. Here, we present the results of a novel pilot study that uses large-scale household survey data to create livelihoods products for Nigeria, using a combination of spatial interpolation, principal component analysis, and cluster analysis. We show how these techniques can leverage existing data to create low-cost maps of quantitatively described livelihoods that are stable over time and conceptually consistent with products derived using traditional methods. We also outline future research for how to incorporate these outputs into practitioner analysis.
... Recent studies show that in developing countries PES and REDD+ incentives are progressively being allocated to larger owners who can guarantee ecosystem services supply at lower costs (McDermott et al. 2013;Lansing 2014). This focalization in larger owners can lead to "green grabs" (Jiao et al. 2015;Tura 2018), involving the appropriation of land and the exclusion of local people from natural resources on the basis of "green" credentials (Fairhead et al. 2012) or the "ecosystem service curse" described by Kronenberg and Hubacek (2013) as the undesirable socioeconomic consequences of PES due to the unequal bargaining power of large landowners as compared to small tenants. ...
Traps in social-ecological systems depict situations where human actors and institutions interact with ecological dynamics and unintentionally steer development into vulnerable paths difficult to reverse. We use the social-ecological trap (SET) metaphor and path-dependence analysis to describe the emerge of trap situations in two contrasting cases: (1) Panguipulli municipality, representative of the significant land inequalities that dominate the rural landscape of southern Chile, and (2) southern king crab artisan fishery (Lithodes santolla) of the Magellan region, a semi-open access fishery of high economic value, where illegal extractions are a pressing problem. In Panguipulli, the system is caught in a “trilogy of inequalities” (land, forest, and ecosystem services) that together conform an inequality trap. Government policies surrounding land and forest tenure since the imposition of colonial rule and the modern State have interacted with other factors to concentrate economic power in large landowners, marginalize small peasants, and weaken customary management institutions. In the Magellan case, the trap could be erroneously confounded since there are no apparent human losers. As 3 years of interviews and participant observations reveal, the apparent absence of a trap rests on the confidence that “there are still resources for all” and that illegal fishing is not pressing the size of the stock.
... Recent studies show that in developing countries PES and REDD+ incentives are progressively being allocated to larger owners who can guarantee ecosystem services supply at lower costs (McDermott et al. 2013;Lansing 2014). This focalization in larger owners can lead to "green grabs" (Jiao et al. 2015;Tura 2018), involving the appropriation of land and the exclusion of local people from natural resources on the basis of "green" credentials (Fairhead et al. 2012) or the "ecosystem service curse" described by Kronenberg and Hubacek (2013) as the undesirable socioeconomic consequences of PES due to the unequal bargaining power of large landowners as compared to small tenants. ...
The Pichis river basin is located in the Selva Central region of Peru; it has large biodiversity of flora and fish that are of importance in local food security. However, deforestation of riparian forests directly affected their presence and the quality of the ecosystem. In this chapter, we discuss different techniques for the restoration of riparian forests, which would allow decision-makers at the community and government level to reach agreements for an integrated management of fisheries. The methodology integrated local indigenous knowledge and scientific research. The main results were the “Conservation Agreements for the restoration of riverine forests,” with the restoration of up to 55% of the ecosystem by 2015. The most common techniques used in the recovery of the riparian forest were the management of natural regeneration, reforestation, and plant succession, using about 40 species of native flora. The other relevant result was the creation of the first “Fishing Surveillance Committee,” confirming the reappearance of fish species. The local and regional government implemented and strengthened environmental regulations in favor of managing fisheries and riparian forests, including an economic fund to strengthen environmental monitoring and education in the Pichis river basin.
... La question se pose de savoir si et dans quelle mesure les petites exploitations ont les moyens d'investir dans l'hévéiculture et, au-delà de l'investissement de départ, peuvent en tirer des revenus conséquents, notamment en raison de la concurrence qu'exercent les entreprises agricoles de grande taille et de l'organisation de la commercialisation du latex. À l'opposé de l'argument des effets d'entraînement, le problème est de savoir si le développement des grandes entreprises ne compromet pas le maintien des petits exploitants (Cotula, 2009 (Jiao et al., 2015). Une différenciation nouvelle et plus prononcée se dessine, selon que les ménages parviennent ou pas à développer des cultures pérennes, ceux qui n'y parviennent pas étant contraints de se tourner vers la recherche d'emploi salarié, souvent synonyme d'émigration (Diepart et Sem, 2016). ...
Depuis le milieu des années 2000, le Nord-Est du Cambodge connaît une transition agraire rapide et radicale impulsée par des entreprises agricoles qui se sont constituées en acquérant et, en partie, en accaparant d’importantes superficies de terres agricoles, et par une forte immigration khmère. Les ménages autochtones, qui se sont vus dépossédés d’une partie de ces terres et ressources naturelles, tentent de réorganiser leurs activités productives, mais sans succès pour la majorité d’entre eux, au prix d’un mode d’exploitation des terres restantes et d’un endettement qui ne semblent pas durables. L’article analyse ces processus marqués par des inégalités économiques et sociales croissantes entre autochtones et Khmers, comme parmi les populations autochtones.
... Other research examines land grabbing's consequences for food security, employment, and welfare (e.g. Jiao, Smith-Hall, and Theilade 2015;McMichael 2012). In these debates, the state is frequently discussed according to a Manichean perspective: either as a weak 'target' state, which does not have the capacity to resist the pressures from foreign and domestic agricultural businesses, or as a 'host', which facilitates land accumulation by providing infrastructure and financial support to large farm enterprises. ...
How do authoritarian populist regimes emerge within the European Union in the twenty-first century? In Hungary, land grabbing by oligarchs have been one of the pillars maintaining Prime Minister Orbán's regime. The phenomenon remains out of the public purview and meets little resistance as the regime-controlled media keeps Hungarians 'distracted' with 'dangers' inflicted by the 'enemies of the Hungarian people' such as refugees and the European Union. The Hungarian case calls for scholarly-activist attention to how authoritarian populism is maintained by, and affects rural areas, as well as how emancipation can be envisaged in such a context.
... world, such as Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) and REDD + are increasingly being allocated to larger properties capable to ensure ES supply at lower costs ( Corbera and Brown, 2010;Lansing, 2014;Markova-Nenova and Wätzold, 2017;McDermott et al., 2013), which has set off important criticisms. Among them is the observation that these mechanisms can lead to the so-called "green grabs" ( Jiao et al., 2015;Sikor, 2013;Tura, 2018), involving the privatization or appro- priation of land and the exclusion of local people from natural resources on the basis of "green" qualifications (Fairhead et al., 2012). In turn, Kronenberg and Hubacek, 2016, 2013 have put forward the "ecosystem service curse" hypothesis to refer to the counterintuitive negative socio-economic consequences of PES, which they link, among others, to problems of unequal bargaining power between large and small landowners. ...
A main challenge in sustainability sciences is to incorporate distributional aspects into ecosystem management and conservation. We explored and contrasted land ownership, forest cover and ecosystem services supply (ES) distribution in two municipalities of southern Chile (Panguipulli and Ancud), comprising 5,584 private properties. We relied on farm typologies data and ES indicators for forage, water regulation, and recreation opportunities. We calculated Lorenz curves and Gini coefficients to establish concentration ratios, and performed a hotspot analysis to determine ES supply distribution across properties. In both municipalities land ownership was highly concentrated: large properties (>1,000–30,000 ha) represented less than 1% of total and comprised 74.5% and 20.7% of farm area, in Panguipulli and Ancud respectively. Forest cover distribution followed the same pattern (80.5% and 58.2%, respectively). As a result, water regulation and recreation opportunities concentrated in medium and large properties, whereas forage concentrated in small and medium ones. Gini coefficients ranged from relatively equal to relatively unequal for land ownership, forests cover and ES in both study areas. These inequalities reflect a historical land ownership concentration in private lands since colonial times, a structural condition that challenges both nature conservation and development and, therefore, it should be brought to the forefront of policy design in developing countries.
... This is totally comprehensible since our study focuses on rural areas where most of the households' incomes come from agricultural jobs. Furthermore, not only the quantity, as indicated in our results but also the quality of land is found to influence income of households remarkably (Narayan and Pritchett 1999;Jiao, Smith-Hall, and Theilade 2015). By contrast, the coefficient of total productive assets shows insignificant correlation with income. ...
Using the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) with a panel of households present from 2008 to 2016, the study investigates the impact of social capital on household vulnerability. The empirical results indicate that both commune shocks and household shocks are associated with the higher likelihood of having group memberships, except for the case of the political party. Group membership is also strongly influenced by a number of household characteristics. Most importantly, participation in local organizations could reduce both households' probability of being poor and the utility loss caused by covariate risks. In addition, social capital shows its influence on some intermediate factors, which in turn contribute to the lower vulnerability at the household level. While participation in the Women Union or the Farmer Union reinforces the households' ability to overcome negative shocks, the memberships of the Communist Party and the Farmer Union are associated with a higher level of saving. Members of the Communist Party are more likely to possess insurance, and members of the Women Union and the Farmer Union are able to access general information better. The findings imply that poverty reduction policies in rural Vietnam should consider the role of social capital, especially in the forms of group participation, as an effective informal coping strategy.
... While forest-dependent people are difficult to define and therefore to count 9 , many millions of people living on the forest frontier in tropical countries make their living from small-scale swidden agriculture and harvesting products from the wild. 10,11 In many areas these livelihoods face rapid change because of increasing land constraints and reductions in the availability of wild-harvested products due to increases in human populations and over exploitation of previously-abundant species [12][13][14][15] as well as conservation restrictions. In other areas, agricultural intensification and increased salaries for off-farm jobs is resulting in a shift away from forest-dependant livelihoods 16 . ...
The Government of Madagascar is trying to reduce deforestation and conserve biodiversity through creating new protected areas in the eastern rainforests. While this has many benefits, forest use restriction may bring costs to farmers at the forest frontier. We explored this through a series of surveys in five sites around the Corridor Ankeniheny Zahamena new protected area and adjacent national parks. In phase one a stratified random sample of 603 households completed a household survey covering demographic and socio-economic characteristics, and a choice experiment to estimate the opportunity costs of conservation. A stratified sub-sample (n = 171) then completed a detailed agricultural survey (including recording inputs and outputs from 721 plots) and wild-harvested product survey. The data have been archived with ReShare (UK Data Service). Together these allow a deeper understanding of the household economy on the forest frontier in eastern Madagascar and their swidden agricultural system, the benefits households derive from the forests through wild-harvested products, and the costs of conservation restrictions to forest edge communities.
... Foreign investment may provide opportunities for economic growth for local communities, including the creation of employment opportunities and the transfer of technology (FAO, 2009). However dispossession, or reduction of farmland and forests, have negatively affected the livelihoods of local farmers who may be dependent on them for income generation and subsistence living (Jiao et al., 2015;Suhardiman et al., 2015). ...
The recent decade has seen a wealth of studies documenting the economic importance of environmental income in rural livelihoods in the Global South. Such subsistence and cash income is derived from fuel, food, fodder, medicine, construction materials, and a string of other products harvested across a range of non-cultivated habitats including forests, meadows, and rivers. Environmental income also often includes wages from natural resource-based activities and transfer payments for environmental services. This chapter summarises what we know considering the household-level economic evidence on the static and dynamic contributions of environmental income to: (i) current consumption, including patterns of absolute income and reliance, (ii) gap-filling and safety nets, and (iii) poverty reduction. The debate on forest vs non-forest environmental income is detailed as is the discussion on the role of environmental products and services in moving rural households out of poverty. The chapter ends by specifying the research frontier, including the need to better understand intra-household factors and employ new data generating methods.
This article analyses the gendered dimension of rural livelihood reorganization in Cambodia, and its consequences on food security. With the growing need for cash, men predominantly have engaged in wage work. However, out of necessity, women also engage in wage work. Thus, new gender divisions of productive labour contribute to reshaping normative gender roles and spaces, and provide women some autonomy, in a way. At the same time, since women remain responsible for family food procurement they are dependent on men's income. Above all, the majority of women experience stress from lack of time and lack of money for food.
Large-scale Land Acquisitions (LSLAs), often labeled “land grabs,” are long-term leases of land obtained by private companies. I merge data on the precise locations of 236 LSLAs in Cambodia established between 1996 and 2012 with newly geocoded data from the Cambodian Socio-Economic Surveys to estimate the effects of LSLAs on employment, household spending, and agricultural investment. I find that LSLAs cause a shift away from independent agricultural production towards employment in agricultural labor in adjacent regions. Additionally, I find that LSLAs result in a decline in household spending and little evidence that LSLAs result in local technology adoption.
Deforestation has become an issue of public interest and sensitivity in Cambodia. Community-based forestry (CBF) and the accompanying local institutional community forestry (CF) arrangements are increasingly recognized as successful mechanisms to achieve sustainable forest management. However, in most community-managed forestry studies, there has still been no significant exploration of the viewpoints of local people to determine the monitoring and actions needed to enable CBF to achieve sustainable forest management. Therefore this study examines the perspectives of local experts across a range of issues and challenges facing CBF sustainability, using Q-methodology. This paper adapted and used four criteria for sustainable forest management to design the 43 Q-statements to guide examination of the subjectivity of local experts concerning CBF sustainability in Cambodia. The 52 respondents were purposively selected from the 13 Community Forestry sites to Q-sort the Q-statements. The findings revealed that most local experts felt that the environmental condition (criteria I), the loss of forest, is critical but one factor strongly disagreed. Considering socio-economic benefits and needs (criteria II), there were similarly polar views about whether the community desperately needs external finance now or whether they have the collective will to act and need to show that first. Only one of the factors supported further REDD+ projects reasonably strongly; others valued eco-tourism opportunities. None of the factors ranked the quality of community-based forest management practices (criteria III) strongly although there was mild agreement about a lack of CF management accountability. There were contrasting views on the legal, policy, and institutional framework and governance (criteria IV), with disagreement about the importance of local enforcement, and quality of local communication and consultation. All agreed, however, that the current position does not give them meaningful ownership and control over forest resources.
In Ratanakiri province, home to a large share of Cambodia's indigenous minorities, land commercialization involving large-scale land transfers and in-migration has led to shrinking access to land for indigenous households. Drawing on qualitative interviews and a household survey conducted in Ratanakiri, this paper explores the links between social reproduction and agrarian production in the current phase of agrarian transition through the lens of everyday gendered experiences. It argues that while wage labour is becoming an essential component of agrarian livelihoods for land-poor indigenous households, gendered hierarchies mediate access to local wage labour opportunities due to the incompatibilities between care work and paid labour. This paper contributes to the literature by exposing locally-specific processes through which gender-differentiated impacts are produced under multiple modes of dispossession. It also illuminates the links between dispossession and social reproduction and the tensions between capitalist accumulation and care activities in agrarian trajectories following land commercialization.
Over the last 40 years, it has been shown at the global level that sustainable forestry can be achieved through comprehensive forest management, with the decentralized institutional arrangements of community-managed forestry coordinated by effective policy implementation. However, there is still a shortage of evidence regarding whether community-based forestry is well characterized by forest policies, assessing what action is most needed and how best to address the challenges faced by community-based forestry in halting deforestation and promoting rural livelihoods. The study analyzed experts’ assessments of the characteristics and success of community-managed forestry in Cambodia and explored three case studies of community-managed forestry practice to identify priorities for addressing forest policy implementation inadequacies in halting deforestation and promoting rural livelihoods. There were two methods of data collection. Firstly, this study used a survey of 27 experts to analyze perceptions about how far forest policy supported community-managed forestry effectively, the major challenges faced by the national community-managed forestry program, and the community-managed forestry contribution to halting deforestation and reducing rural poverty. Secondly, data was collected by content analysis of three case studies to explore the knowledge and practical experience of local experts about community-managed forestry practice at local level. The study employed Kendall’s Coefficient of Concordance to analyze the level of concordance of experts on related forest policies (n=15) considering community-managed forestry, the challenges faced by the national community-managed forestry program, and the actions required to enable community-managed forestry to support communities. Analysis revealed that experts were in moderate agreement, denoted by Kendall’s W=0.152, on how well forest policies articulate and implement the characteristics of community-managed forestry. Ranking of the major challenges faced by the national community-managed forestry program yielded Kendall’s W of 0.104, indicating the confidence in the ranking among experts was fair. There was only low confidence in the ranking of the action needed, with Kendall’s W of 0.055. Content analysis of the three case studies examining local experts’ opinions on the attributes of community-managed forestry concerning the access, local participation and protection of the sustainable forestry revealed that Attribute one ‘Local people have access to the forest land and forest resources’, and Attribute three ‘Local people begin by protecting and restoring the forests’, received high attention from local experts. Of lesser importance or agreement was attributing two: local participation in decision-making concerning the forest.
Thousands of surveys on rural livelihoods in developing countries are being done every year. Unfortunately, many suffer from weaknesses in methods and problems in implementation. Quantifying households' dependence on multiple environmental resources (forests, bush, grasslands and rivers) is particularly difficult and often simply ignored in the surveys. The results therefore do not reflect rural realities. In particular, 'the hidden harvest' from natural resources is generally too important to livelihoods for development research, policies and practice to ignore. Fieldwork using state-of-the-art methods, and in particular well-designed household questionnaires, thus becomes an imperative to adequately capture key dimensions of rural welfare.
This book describes how to do a better job when designing and implementing household and village surveys for quantitative assessment of rural livelihoods in developing countries. It covers the entire research process from planning to sharing research results. It draws on the experiences from a large global-comparative project, the Poverty Environment Network (PEN), to develop more robust and validated methods, enriched by numerous practical examples from the field. The book will provide an invaluable guide to methods and a practical handbook for students and professionals.
The paper develops a new approach to determining the marginal impact of various income sources on overall income inequality. We show that each source's contribution to the Gini coefficient may be viewed as the product of the source's own Gini, its share of total income, and its correlation with the rank of total income. Applying the approach to the 1980 U.S. distribution of income yields several interesting results, including the finding that spouse's earnings had a larger marginal impact on inequality than did property income.
Cambodia is currently experiencing profound processes of rural change, driven by an emerging trend of large-scale land deals. This article discusses potential future pathways by analyzing two contrasting visions and realities of land use: the aim of the governmental elites to foster surplus-producing rural areas for overall economic growth, employment creation and ultimately poverty reduction, and the attempts of smallholders to maintain and create livelihoods based on largely self-sufficient rural systems. Based on the MuSIASEM approach, the rural economy of Cambodia and different rural system types are analyzed by looking at their metabolic pattern in terms of land use, human activity, and produced and consumed flows. The analysis shows that the pathways of self-sufficiency and surplus production are largely not compatible in the long term. Cambodia's rural labor force is expected to increase enormously over the next decades, while available land for the smallholder sector has become scarce due to the granting of Economic Land Concessions (ELC). Consequently, acceleration in rural–urban migration may be expected, accompanied by a transition from self-employed smallholders to employment-dependent laborers. If the ELC system achieves to turn the reserved land into viable agribusinesses, it might enable added value creation; however, it does not bring substantial amounts of employment opportunities to rural areas. On the contrary, ELC have high opportunity costs in terms of rural livelihoods based on smallholder land uses and thus drive the marginalization of Cambodian smallholders.
Forests in Flux
Forests worldwide are in a state of flux, with accelerating losses in some regions and gains in others. Hansen et al. (p. 850 ) examined global Landsat data at a 30-meter spatial resolution to characterize forest extent, loss, and gain from 2000 to 2012. Globally, 2.3 million square kilometers of forest were lost during the 12-year study period and 0.8 million square kilometers of new forest were gained. The tropics exhibited both the greatest losses and the greatest gains (through regrowth and plantation), with losses outstripping gains.
Quarterly socioeconomic data from 240 households are used to study the links between forest-related income and rural livelihoods in southern China. Results show average forest-related income shares of 31.5%, which was predominantly derived from cultivated non-timber sources. Forest-related income was important to households at all income levels, although lower income households were more dependent due to a lack of other sources. Higher income households monopolized off-farm income and had more land than low income households. Forest-related income could be increased by making forest land more accessible to the poor, improving productivity, and removing constraints to smallholder engagement in timber marketing.
The propensity score is the conditional probability of assignment to a particular treatment given a vector of observed covariates. Both large and small sample theory show that adjustment for the scalar propensity score is sufficient to remove bias due to all observed covariates. Applications include: (i) matched sampling on the univariate propensity score, which is a generalization of discriminant matching, (ii) multivariate adjustment by subclassification on the propensity score where the same subclasses are used to estimate treatment effects for all outcome variables and in all subpopulations, and (iii) visual representation of multivariate covariance adjustment by a two- dimensional plot.
This paper estimates rural household-level forest reliance in the western highlands of Guatemala using quantitative methods. Data were generated by the way of an in-depth household income survey, repeated quarterly between November 2005 and November 2006, in 11 villages (n = 149 randomly selected households). The main sources of income proved to be small-scale agriculture (53 % of total household income), wages (19 %) and environmental resources (14 %). The latter came primarily from forests (11 % on average). In the poorest quintile the forest income share was as high as 28 %. All households harvest and consume environmental products. In absolute terms, environmental income in the top quintile was 24 times higher than in the lowest. Timber and poles, seeds, firewood and leaf litter were the most important forest products. Households can be described as 'regular subsistence users': the share of subsistence income is high, with correspondingly weak integration into regional markets. Agricultural systems furthermore use important inputs from surrounding forests, although forests and agricultural uses compete in household specialization strategies. We find the main household determinants of forest income to be household size, education and asset values, as well as closeness to markets and agricultural productivity. Understanding these common but spatially differentiated patterns of environmental reliance may inform policies aimed at improving livelihoods and conserving forests.
The contributions to this collection use the tools of agrarian political economy to explore the rapid growth and complex dynamics of large-scale land deals in recent years, with a special focus on the implications of big land deals for property and labour regimes, labour processes and structures of accumulation. The first part of this introductory essay examines the implications of this agrarian political economy perspective. First we explore the continuities and contrasts between historical and contemporary land grabs, before examining the core underlying debate around large- versus small-scale farming futures. Next, we unpack the diverse contexts and causes of land grabbing today, highlighting six overlapping mechanisms. The following section turns to assessing the crisis narratives that frame the justifications for land deals, and the flaws in the argument around there being excess, empty or idle land available. Next the paper turns to an examination of the impacts of land deals, and the processes of inclusion and exclusion at play, before looking at patterns of resistance and constructions of alternatives. The final section introduces the papers in the collection.
This paper aims to make a modest contribution to an overdue need to locate the current land rush in its historical context, less as a new phenomenon than as a surge in the continuing capture of ordinary people's rights and assets by capital-led and class-creating social transformation. It aims to do so by looking back to earlier land rushes, and particularly to those which have bearing upon sub-Saharan Africa, the site of most large-scale involuntary land loss today. In particular, the paper focuses upon a central tool of land rushes, property law. The core argument made is that land rushes past and present have relied upon legal manipulations which deny that local indigenous (‘customary’) tenures deliver property rights, thereby legalizing the theft of the lands of the poor or subject peoples. Even prior to capitalist transformation this feudal-derived machination was an instrument of aligned class privilege and power, later elaborated to justify mass land and resource capture through colonialism. Now it is routinely embedded in the legal canons of elite-aligned agrarian governance as the means of retaining control over the land resources which rural communities presume are their own.
Highly publicised large-scale land deals for biofuels are raising prospects for macro-level benefits in recipient countries, but also carry the threat of appropriation of land and natural resources from the poor local people who depend on these assets. This paper examines the extent to which local people are party to land allocation processes, considering both the procedural issues of consultation and consent, and the distributive issues around compensation. Current evidence is that local people's capacity to bargain or give free consent to investments is limited by their lack of access to economic and institutional alternatives. While host governments may offer policy support to local rights and claims, government agencies tend to align with the interests of large-scale investors when tested in real negotiations.
Much research has focused on understanding the importance of forest environmental income in different communities and highlighting key socioeconomic characteristics of forest-dependent households. This paper examines the economic importance of forests among rural agriculturalists in Vietnam. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey of 104 households in five study villages in Ha Tinh province in north central Vietnam surrounding the Ke Go Nature Reserve (KGNR). Variables such as migration status of the household, age, income class and landholdings were used to identify characteristics of households with high forest income in both absolute and relative terms. More than half of households reported receiving forest environmental income in cash. Socioeconomic variables were compared between forest cash income (FCI) households and non-FCI households. Non-FCI households had more alternative income sources from wage labour and livestock, while FCI households were significantly younger, tended to live closer to the forest and had larger landholdings. Contrary to other research on forest use, the households deriving the most forest income in both absolute and relative terms were not the poorer households, but those in the middle class. These findings highlight the need for conservation and development projects to pay attention to the specific household factors that influence forest use, rather than relying on assumptions that poverty and forests are always linked.
Income diversification among households living in forest margins helps to maintain a sustainable livelihood. Reducing forest
dependency helps in-situ conservation of biodiversity thereby conserving forest resources. This paper presents evidence of
income diversification and its effects on forest resource extraction by rural communities living in forest margins. Diversified
income sources of typical households include crop farming, off-farm employment, animal husbandry, home gardening and extraction
of non-timber forest products and fuelwood. The calculated mean indexes of diversification for the households in forest margins
under investigation were 2.53, 2.57, 2.19 and 2.25. Results of the analysis show that the income diversification index had
a negative and significant effect on dependency of rural households on forest resource extraction for three forest reserves.
A positive relation between the index of income diversification and total income indicates an increase in household income
due to increasing diversification income sources. However, given the complex nature of protecting natural forests, income
diversification should be part of a broader integrated policy goal to protect natural forests.
In resource dependent rural areas of developing countries, common property resource management has been considered as one of the most viable options for combining poverty reduction, enhancement of local level economic development and biodiversity conservation. The past decade has witnessed an increasing emphasis on community-based forest management, with transference of forest management responsibility into the hands of local communities. However, although community forestry (CF) has succeeded in halting resource degradation and conservation of biodiversity, the equity aspect of CF not been fully examined. Nepal is a good location for a case study to examine this question, as community forest programs have been in place longer than in many other countries. This study analyzes the relationship between key household characteristics and common property resources used in order to assess whether poorer households are able to gain greater access to community forests as a result of institutional change. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses suggest that forest product collection from community forests is dependent on various socio-economic variables. In general it appears that land and livestock holdings, caste, education of family members and household economic status exert a strong influence on appropriating benefits from the commons. Based on this analysis, it can be concluded that, at least for some key products, poorer households are currently facing more restricted access to community forests than ‘less poor’ or relatively better off households.
There are few observations on the role of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) in shifting from subsistence to commercial plantation-dominated systems with long-term monitoring, despite interests in NTFPs for sustainable development and livelihood dependence. During 1998–2004, we conducted an annual survey of households in the two villages, Baka and Daka, which represent different stages in the shift from a subsistence agroecosystem to a rubber plantation-dominated system in Xishuangbanna, southwestern China. Significant negative correlations were observed between gross income and dependence on NTFPs-generated income in both Baka and Daka villages (P = 0.029 in Baka and P = 0.028 in Daka), which is supporting evidence that poorer households derive greater benefits from NTFPs than do wealthy households. When the rubber price dropped during 1998–2001, the NTFPs income of Baka increased greatly from US$59.10 to US$145 per household, or from 6.4% to 26.6% of household gross income. In contrast, in Daka village, NTFPs income increased by insignificant amounts of US$1.6 per household in 1998 to US$23.8 in 2001, but this was compensated by an increase in income from off-farm work of US$11 to US$147 (an increase from 1.8% to 16.2% of gross income per household) from 1998 to 2001 in Daka. NTFPs retained important roles both in alleviating risk associated with monoculture price fluctuations and in generating income for relatively poor people.
To what extent do rural people in developing countries depend on forest environmental income? This study addresses this question through a meta-analysis of 51 case studies from 17 countries. Cases were selected on the basis of a broad literature search, focusing on (i) data on household environmental income as well as other income sources; (ii) productive assets and socio-cultural information; and (iii) information on contextual variables that are likely to influence the use of forest sources of income. Results reveal that forest environmental income represents on average 22% of the total income in the population sampled. The main sources of forest environmental income are fuelwood, wild foods and fodder. Forest environmental income has a strong equalizing effect on local income distribution. Income diversification declined with total income; diversification did, however, increase with dependence on forest resources up to a point, beyond which diversification declined. The partial or complete omission of environmental income in current poverty assessments may lead to an underestimation of rural income and, under certain circumstances, to flawed policies and interventions.
This paper examines variation in dependence on forest resources among rural households in Chilimo, Ethiopia, and the income-equalizing effects of such resources. Data were collected through a systematic questionnaire survey of 102 households, randomly selected from two peasant associations in the area. Forest income contributed 39% of the average household income, roughly equal to agriculture, which contributed 40%. Forest income was more important than all other income sources combined for the poorest 40% of households and contributed more to household income than agriculture for 65% of households. While forest income represents 59% of the total household income for the poorest quintile, the contribution drops to 34% for the wealthiest quintile. On the other hand, the rich households derive a larger absolute income from forest resources than the poor households. Forest resources have an important income-equalizing potential among the rural households. Reduced access to forest resources would greatly affect the welfare of the rural population and increase wealth differentiation among rural households in the study area.
Nonfarm activities generate, on average, about 60% of rural households' incomes in the Himalayas. This article analyzes the determinants of participation in nonfarm activities and of nonfarm incomes across rural households. A unique data set collected in the Himalayan region of India allows us to deal with the heterogeneity of rural nonfarm activities by using aggregations into categories that are useful both analytically and for policy purposes. We conduct an empirical inquiry that reveals that education plays a major role in accessing more remunerative nonfarm employment. Other household assets and characteristics such as land, social status, and geographical location also play a role. (c) 2008 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved..
Nonfarm activities generate on average about 60 percent of rural households' incomes in the Himalayas. This paper analyzes the determinants of participation in nonfarm activities and of nonfarm incomes across rural households. A unique data set collected in the Himalayan region of India allows us to deal with the heterogeneity of rural nonfarm activities by using aggregations into categories that are useful both analytically and for policy purposes. We conduct an empirical inquiry that reveals that education plays a major role in accessing more remunerative nonfarm employment. Other household assets and characteristics such as land, social status, and geographical location also play a role
The study addresses the two intertwined challenges of rural poverty and forest degradation in rural areas of Zagros, Iran. For a watershed in Zagros, a quantitative analysis based on the sustainable livelihood framework approach is used to identify household livelihood strategies, analyze livelihood choices, and investigate which strategies are most sustainable. The study revealed that most households (64%) follow a mixed strategy with a combination of forestry, animal husbandry, and subsistence agriculture. Households following a livelihood strategy that is highly dependent on forest extraction and livestock grazing (27%) are the poorest, whereas those that combine cultivation of commercial crops with non-farm work (9%) are able to earn higher incomes. The results also give some evidence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve: households that both adopt a mixed strategy and fall into the middle-income category are responsible for the highest overuse of forest resources and pasture. Since the end of 1980s, a number of households have shifted from a strategy based on forest and livestock to a strategy of mixed practices. An increasing share of households is adopting a strategy of non-farm and/or commercial practices, as well as outmigration to urban areas.
Forests contribute to livelihoods of rural people throughout the tropics. This paper adds to the emerging body of quantitative
knowledge on absolute and relative economic importance, through both cash and subsistence income, of moist forests to households.
Qualitative contextual information was collected in six villages in lowland Bolivia, followed by a structured survey of randomly
selected households (n = 118) that included four quarterly income surveys. We employed a novel data collection approach that allows detailed estimation
of total household accounts, including sources of forest income. We estimated the average forest income share of total annual
household income (forest dependency) at 20%, ranging from 18 to 24%. Adding environmental income increased the average to
26%, being fairly constant across income quartiles at 24–28%. Absolute levels of forest income increased with total household
income, while forest dependency was the highest in the best-off income quartile—the primary harvesters of forest products
are better-off households. The pattern of high forest dependency among better-off households has also been reported from other
countries, indicating that this pattern may be more common than advocated by conventional wisdom. Using ordinary least squares
(OLS) regressions, we found significant determinants of absolute forest income to be household size, sex of household head
and area of cultivated land; the significant determinants for forest dependency were level of education, whether household
head was born in village and whether household was food self-sufficient. Better-off households were able to realise cash income
from forests, while poorer households—in particular if headed by women—were more reliant on subsistence forest income. We
argue that the differential patterns of forest income across income quartiles should be considered in future development interventions
and that findings indicate a potential for forests to contribute to moving households out of poverty.
Forests are important to the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people in developing countries. This study contributes to the emerging body of quantitative knowledge on the economic importance of forests to rural households through a study in the Nepal Himalaya. Qualitative contextual information was collected in six villages, followed by a structured household (n=180) survey that included four quarterly income surveys. The average forest income share of total annual household income was 22%, ranging from 12 to 31%. For all income groups, the level of forest income exceeded (except for livestock income for the most well-off income quartile) income from each of agricultural products and livestock products. In absolute terms, the level of forest income increased with total income. Forest income mainly supports current consumption. Determinants of household absolute and relative forest income were available labour, education, and location. The number of livestock units and degree of debt had positive effects on absolute forest income, while the size of remittances and savings had negative effects on forest dependency. Income diversification was the norm for all income groups. There is also clear evidence of differential income diversification both across and within income sources. The consequences for policy-makers are briefly discussed.
The current global land grab is causing radical changes in the use and ownership of land. The main process driving the land grab, or ‘foreignisation of space’, as highlighted in the media and the emerging literature is the production of food and biofuel for export in the aftermath of recent food and energy crises. However, there are several other processes driving the land rush. In this article I argue that an analytical framework that focuses on only one or two processes that drive the global land grab offers a narrow perspective on this complex process. It will be unable to take into account the full range and extent of agrarian and social changes that occur in light of the land grab and their strategic implications for poor people's livelihoods. An important starting point is to identify the broad processes driving the current land rush, and trace their structural and institutional origins. To do so, I identify and examine seven factors that are giving rise to radical changes in landownership and land use in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Finally, ‘codes of conduct’ as proposed by several quarters in the context of global land grab are unlikely to work in favour of the poor.
Over the past few years, agribusiness, investment funds and government agencies have been acquiring long-term rights over large areas of farmland in lower income countries. It is widely thought that private sector expectations of higher agricultural commodity prices and government concerns about longer-term food and energy security underpin much recent land acquisition for agricultural investments. These processes are expected to have lasting and far-reaching implications for world agriculture and for livelihoods and food security in recipient countries. This paper critically examines evidence of trends, scale, geography and drivers in the global land rush. While this analysis broadly corroborates some widespread assumptions, it also points to a more complex set of drivers that reflect fundamental shifts in economic and geopolitical relations linking sovereign states, global finance, and agribusiness through to local groups. Only a solid understanding of these fundamental drivers can help identify levers and pressure points for policy responses to address the challenges raised by large-scale land acquisitions.
‘Land grab’ has become a catch-all phrase to refer to the current explosion of (trans)national commercial land transactions mainly revolving around the production and export of food, animal feed, biofuels, timber and minerals. Two key dimensions of the current land grab – namely, the politics of changes in land use and property relations change (and the links between them) – are not sufficiently explored in the current literature. We attempt to address this gap by offering a preliminary analysis through an analytical approach that suggests some typologies as a step towards a fuller and better understanding of the politics of global land grabbing.
Recent sharp increases in food prices have prompted some food-importing countries to promote the acquisition of farmland abroad as a strategy to secure food supplies at affordable prices. Businesses are recognizing new opportunities for strong returns from agricultural investment, including agri-food, biofuels and other agricultural commodities. Dubbed ‘land grabs’ in the press, large-scale land acquisitions have kindled much international debate, in which strong positions are taken on the impacts of such investments on the environment, rights, sovereignty, livelihoods, development and conflict at local, national and international levels. This article provides an analysis of this complex and shifting situation, focusing on Africa and drawing on quantitative inventories of land acquisitions in four countries and on a small sample of land deals. The article lays out key trends and drivers, and discusses the main features of international land deals before analysing the main risks and opportunities involved, focusing on implications for local, national and global food security. The article concludes by outlining practical steps to make the renewed momentum in agricultural investment work for development, and avoid the pitfalls of exacerbated political tensions.
Both livelihoods and diversity have become popular topics in development studies. The livelihood concept offers a more complete picture of the complexities of making a living in rural areas of low income countries than terms formerly considered adequate, such as subsistence, incomes, or employment. Diversity recognizes that people manage by doing many different things rather than just one or a few things. This book sets out the rural livelihoods approach within the larger context of past and current themes in rural development. It adopts diversity as its principal theme and explores the implications of diverse rural livelihoods for ideas about poverty, agriculture, environment, gender, and macroeconomic policy. It also considers appropriate methods for gaining quick and effective knowledge about the livelihoods of the rural poor for project and policy purposes.
The propensity score is the conditional probability of assignment to a particular treatment given a vector of observed covariates. Both large and small sample theory show that adjustment for the scalar propensity score is sufficient to remove bias due to all observed covariates. Applications include: (i) matched sampling on the univariate propensity score, which is a generalization of discriminant matching, (ii) multivariate adjustment by subclassification on the propensity score where the same subclasses are used to estimate treatment effects for all outcome variables and in all subpopulations, and (iii) visual representation of multivariate covariance adjustment by a two-dimensional plot.
The changing role of forests in people’s livelihoods in frontier areas is important from the perspective of poverty alleviation and forest conservation. This study explores the link between expanding economic opportunities, forest dependence, and welfare in 73 villages. Village economic options, forest cover, and land suitability for agriculture and forestry are determining factors of people’s well-being. Increased accessibility to markets and deforestation are strongly associated with economic diversity at the village level. Increased economic diversity, larger areas of forests, more intensive land use, higher endowments of agricultural land and forest, and higher village population are related to increased well-being.
Previous studies of rural households in developing countries have tended to find that the dependence of these households on common-pool resources declines with income. Our study of households in Jhabua, India, finds a more complex relationship. Using the share of resource income in total long-run or “permanent” income as our dependence measure—which we argue is more appropriate than the short-run income-based measure commonly used in the literature—we find that for households that collect any resources at all, dependence exhibits a U-shaped relationship with income. That is, the poorest and richest households depend more on resources than households with intermediate incomes. The poorest and richest households are also found to be least likely to collect, however, indicating that resource use at the income extremes is bimodal—either zero or above average. Moreover, the observed trends for resources as a whole are not mirrored in those for individual resources. Dependence on fuelwood and dung declines with income, for example, while dependence on fodder and construction wood increases. These findings suggest that common-pool resources are a productive source of income not just for the poor but also for the rich, and that improvements in the stocks of these resources can potentially form the basis of poverty reduction efforts in these economies.
A survey of Amerindian households in the Honduran rain forest was done to test hypotheses about the effects of household variables on deforestation and identify policies to lower neotropical deforestation. The results suggest that: 1.(a) the relation between income or age and deforestation resembles an inverted U;2.(b) fallow lands and illness had a positive link to deforestation;3.(c) household residence duration and size, education, off-farm income, credit, wealth, and rice yields reduced clearance.
Cambodia forms part of the Indo-Burma hotspot. Its extent of biodiversity, however, is subject to considerable uncertainty, as there has been little systematic collection of flora and fauna. During the Khmer Rouge regime institutions were banned, academics were prosecuted and written documentation systematically destroyed. Compared with neighbouring countries Cambodia has a low population density and relatively large natural areas that are still intact. However, deforestation is expanding rapidly and a significant but un-estimated area of forest has been degraded by development of agro-industries, encroachment, illegal logging, over-harvesting and forest fire as well as the use of chemicals during war. The purpose of the paper is to: (i) apply reserve selection methods to design more robust conservation networks when knowledge of species occurrence is incomplete and habitat is threatened, and (ii) evaluate the usefulness of systematic conservation planning in a developing country where data are limited and institutions for implementation are weak. This study investigates the performance of four non-probabilistic strategies: (i) a so-called ‘rule of thumb’, (ii) hotspot, (iii) minimum cost representation, and (iv) maximum coverage; and one probabilistic design strategy, i.e. maximum expected coverage. The maximum expected coverage approach is between 15% and 24% more efficient than the non-probabilistic strategies. Finally, the relevance of such tools to real-world conservation planning in Cambodia is investigated. By incorporating experts in the generation of data, running the models and setting up premises, they acknowledge that it is possible to contribute to more systematic conservation planning in developing countries.
Analysis of rural households and environmental resources is beset by inadequate data, especially in Africa. Using purpose-collected panel data from Zimbabwe, we demonstrate seven empirical regularities in the rural poverty-environment relationship. Most important, environmental resources make a significant contribution to average rural incomes. Poorer households also depend heavily on these resources, which contribute c.40% to their incomes. Richer households, however, use greater quantities of environmental resources in total. Finally, considerable differentiation exists in the economic characteristics of environmental goods. These results demonstrate the considerable economic significance of environmental resources to rural households. Surveys which ignore them miscalculate rural incomes and welfare.
We examine an area of northern India where forestry acts to ameliorate the incidence of poverty and destitution, though it does not otherwise contribute significantly to the reduction of income inequality. The poor would be doubly disadvantaged without common property access to forest products. Conservation measures entailing curtailment in the right to common access pose a dilemma. This issue is explored here.
Summary This paper uses a newly constructed cross-country database composed of comparable income aggregates to examine the full range of income generating activities carried out by rural households. The analysis paints a clear picture of multiple activities across rural space in countries on all four continents, though less so in the included African countries. For most countries the largest share of income stems from off-farm activities, and the largest share of households has diversified sources of income. Diversification, not specialization, is the norm. Nevertheless, agricultural sources of income remain critically important for rural livelihoods in all countries.
"Large-scale acquisitions of farmland in Africa, Latin America, Central Asia and Southeast Asia are making headlines in a flurry of media reports across the world. Lands that only a short time ago seemed of little outside interest are now being sought by international investors by the tune of hundreds of thousands of hectares. And while a failed attempt to lease 1.3 million hectares in Madagascar has attracted much media attention, deals reported in the international press constitute the tip of the iceberg. Despite the spate of media reports and rare published research, international land deals and their impacts still remain little understood. This report is a step towards filling this gap. The outcome of a collaboration between IIED, FAO and IFAD, the report discusses key trends and drivers in land acquisitions, the contractual arrangements underpinning them and the way these are negotiated, and the early impacts on land access for rural people in recipient countries. While international land deals are emerging as a global phenomenon, this report focuses on sub-Saharan Africa. The report draws on a literature review, on qualitative interviews with key informants internationally, on national inventories of ongoing and proposed land acquisitions since 2004 in five African countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Mali and Sudan) and qualitative studies in Mozambique and Tanzania, and on legal analysis of national law and of a small sample of investor-state contracts."
In this paper, we give a short overview of some propensity score matching estimators suggested in the evaluation literature, and we provide a set of Stata programs,which we illustrate using the National Supported Work (NSW) demonstration widely known in labor economics. Copyright 2002 by Stata Corporation.
By explicitly incorporating forest environmental products (FEPs) in household income accounting, this paper examines the role and significance of FEPs in household income and in rural poverty and inequality. As most conventional household surveys do not incorporate income from environmental sources, substantial gaps exist in our understanding of the actual functioning of rural economies and the extent of rural poverty and inequality. Using data from 360 randomly sampled rural households from 12 villages in Tigray (northern Ethiopia), we measure forest environmental resource use with a monetary yardstick and compares the value of FEPs with other household economic activities. We found that products from environmental sources represent an important component in rural livelihoods. Our analyses indicate that in the study area income from forest environmental sources occupies the second largest share in average total household income next to crop income. Poverty and inequality analyses show that incorporating forest environmental incomes in household accounts significantly reduces measured rural poverty and income inequality. Therefore, we suggest that sustainable forest management schemes should be adopted to maintain and enhance the flow of economic benefits to the surrounding communities without damaging the natural resource system.
Summary This paper uses data from the 2003/04 Cambodia Household Socioeconomic Survey to investigate the effects of property rights to land. Plots held with a paper documenting ownership in rural Cambodia are found to have higher productivity and land values than other plots, while property rights have weak effects on access to credit. The paper also investigates whether the introduction of private property rights leads to decreased availability of common property resources. The data offers only weak support for this hypothesis. The general insight is that policies to strengthen land property rights can have important, positive effects on the rural economy, even in an environment of low state capacity.
In Vietnam, NTFPs has become an important source of cash income for local people living in or near the forests. The commercial collection of these products could reduce both the number of species and population of a species in the forests. In order to keep the balance between biodiversity and commercial collection of NTFPs, this paper evaluates the dependence of forest dwellers on NTFPs and identifies the relation between household characteristics and cash income generated by NTFP collection. As a result, commercial collection of NTFPs is negatively correlated to dependency ratio, poverty level and distance to the provincial city, and positively correlated with female labors of households. Moreover, NTFPs are proved to be very important in poor households or in those who lack rice or high rate of female labor. The households who have higher dependency ratio benefit less from NTFPs sold, while those who lack rice for their own consumption or have a higher rate of female labor depend more on NTFPs. Poor households are more dependent on NTFP collection than other groups. Finally, the result of this study highly recommends that the Government of Vietnam be aware of gender balance, distance to provincial city, poverty level and dependency ratio when applying a policy related to NTFP conservation. An appropriate incentive policy for woman and poor households might be a possible solution for less commercial collection of NTFPs. The poor households who have low dependency ratio or high female labor rate should be encouraged to participate in the forest management system to control the balance between commercial collection of NTFP and conservation.
Status of tropical forest management
ITTO, 2006. Status of tropical forest management 2005. Tropical Forest Update 1,
vol. 23. International Tropical Timber Organisation, Yokohama, Japan.