C Futemma, F de Castro, ES Brondízio. 2020. Farmers and Social Innovations in Rural Development: Collaborative Arrangements in Eastern Brazilian Amazon. Land Use Policy, vol. 99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104999
Abstract
Brazilian small-scale farmers are seeking new types of collaborations and economic opportunities amid a changing world. Market opportunities, however, have incurred demanding environmental, financial and labor requirements, and created trade-offs between expanding cash crops and maintaining livelihood security. We analyze the Tomé-Açu region in the Brazilian Amazon, where different collaborative models between small-scale farmers and other social agents (industries, government, non-governmental organizations) have emerged. Local farmers are engaging in collective actions and pursuing different types of partnerships, which facilitate knowledge exchange and access to market niches, also helping them overcome the infrastructural and logistical deficiencies that have historically limited rural development in the region. In particular, we discuss the diffusion and adoption of agroforestry and oil palm production systems among small-scale farmers. We examine the challenges and opportunities these partnerships and social innovations have created for local farmers, who are part of heterogeneous groups with distinct roles, assets and contexts. The state-led oil palm program posed challenges to small-scale farmers who experienced asymmetrical relationships within their partnership with private companies. On the other hand, the farmer-led agroforestry model opened new opportunities for farmers who had more flexibility in deciding their production arrangements, developing new agroforestry techniques, and pursuing commercialization pathways. Despite their limited power, small-scale farmers have been able to overcome some structural barriers through innovations, entrepreneurship, and renegotiation of oil palm contract farming. Thus, their ability to engage in both farmer-led agroforestry and state-led oil palm programs provides concrete examples of the potential of local governance based on collaborative arrangements to support sustainable farming production systems.
Find the full text at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104999
Mach KJ, Adger WN, Buhaug H, Burke M, Fearon JD, Field CB, Hendrix CS, Kraan CM, Maystadt J, O’Loughlin J, et al(2020). Directions for Research on Climate and Conflict. Earth’s Future, 8(7). https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EF001532
Abstract
The potential links between climate and conflict are well studied, yet disagreement about the specific mechanisms and their significance for societies persists. Here, we build on assessment of the relationship between climate and organized armed conflict to define crosscutting priorities for future directions of research. They include deepening insight into climate‐conflict linkages and conditions under which they manifest, ambitiously integrating research designs, systematically exploring future risks and response options, responsive to ongoing decision‐making, and evaluating the effectiveness of interventions to manage climate‐conflict links. The implications of this expanding scientific domain unfold in real time.
Find the full text at: https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EF001532
Mehta, L., Adam, H.N. & Srivastava, S. (2019). Unpacking uncertainty and climate change from ‘above’ and ‘below’ Reg Environ Change 19, 1529–1532.
Abstract
Climate change undoubtedly is one of the most significant development challenges of our times. Research over the last few decades has demonstrated clearly the links between anthropogenically induced emissions and climatic changes. Despite these scientific advancements, uncertainties persist at multiple scales; with respect to future societal emissions, predictions of accuracy, frequency and scale of climatic events, or possible feedback loops.
The current extreme weather events across the globe bear testimony to such aspects of uncertainty. How should one prepare for and engage with a phenomenon that remains subject to so many dimensions of uncertainty, both at an ‘abstract’ scientific level and in the everyday lives of ordinary people? What could be the possible pathways towards a more just and fairer world under conditions of climatic uncertainty? These are the key questions explored in a recently published special issue of Regional Environmental Change, entitled ‘Unpacking uncertainty and climate change from ‘above’ and ‘below’ , edited by Lyla Mehta, Hans Nicolai Adam and Shilpi Srivastava.
Read the full text at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-019-01539-y.
Read a blog about this text at https://t2sresearch.org/output/unpacking-uncertainty-in-times-of-climate-change/.
Verzijl, A., Boelens, R., & Núñez, O. (2019). Modern temples and sacred spaces: Entangled hydrosocial territories in Cuchoquesra, Peru [Templos modernos y espacios sagrados]. Estudios Atacameños (Online), (63), 251-274.
Abstract
Este artículo, muestra cómo un moderno proyecto de desarrollo hidráulico desconfiguró la comprensión local del espacio, agua, y territorio hidrosocial en la región andina de Ayacucho, Perú. Nuestro análisis, se centra en dos lógicas distintas de concebir las estructuras hidro-infraestructurales y practicas relacionadas que juegan un papel crucial en la constitución de las nociones hidroterritoriales: una gran represa de terraplén y una “plataforma ushnu”. Presentamos las prácticas y tecnologías desplegadas por el proyecto modernista-ingenieril conectado a medir fuentes hidro-meteorológicas, levantar marcadores geodésicos, diseñar (la forma y relleno de) la presa y controlar la filtración. La presa del terraplén está construida para proporcionar agua para uso poblacional, riego y electricidad a miles de usuarios. Pero, la represa sumergió el principal humedal y territorio habitado por la comunidad de Cuchoquesera-Quispillaqta – reduciendo sus prácticas y objetos hídrico-rituales e incluyendo sus nociones de filtración, forma y relleno de la plataforma ushnu, marcadores comunitarios y seres de montaña protectores del territorio. En este contexto, ambos territorios hidrosociales ocupan el mismo espacio, interactúan y entrelazan en fricción mutua. Esto ha producido cambios en los paradigmas y las prácticas tanto de la ingeniería de riego como del uso comunitario del suelo, el agua y espacio sagrado.
Translation: This paper shows how a modern hydraulic development project interfered with local understandings of place, water, and hydrosocial territory in the Andean region of Ayacucho, Peru. Our analysis centres on two logics regarding hydraulic structures and related practices that play a crucial role in the constitution of the area’s divergent waterscapes: a large embankment dam and an ushnu platform. We present the practices and technologies deployed by the project engineers bringing forth a modernist hydrosocial territory connected to hydro-meteorologically measured sources, surveying and geodesic markers, dam shape and fill and seepage control. The embankment dam provides domestic and irrigation water to thousands of downstream users. Yet the dam also submerged the lived territory of the Cuchoquesera-Quispillaqta community – that is founded on water ritual practices and objects, including locally rooted notions of seepage, ushnu platform shape and fill, community markers and mountain beings protecting the wetlands. Both hydrosocial territories occupy the same space, interact and entangle in friction. This has led to changing paradigms and practices regarding (both irrigation engineering and community steered) land and water use patterning.
Read the full text at https://doi.org/10.22199/issn.0718-1043-2019-0036.
Domínguez Guzmán, C. (2019). Big words, small farmers: exploring academic overflows and ‘surplus water’ in Motupe, Peru [Grandes narrativas, pequeños agricultores]. Estudios Atacameños, (63), 365-381.
Abstract
En la costa norte del Perú el cultivo de mango de exportación se encuentra en manos de pequeños agricultores, muchos de los cuales cultivan en tierras comunales sin licencias de agua o aprobación oficial para sembrar cultivos perennes. En este artículo presento el caso de los pequeños agricultores del valle de Motupe, conocidos también como los excedentes de agua, ya que sólo tienen acceso a irrigar sus campos en tiempo de abundancia o exceso de agua. Aunque estos pequeños agricultores se consideran desplazados por la agro-exportación moderna, ellos y sus plantaciones de mango han logrado echar raíces en un clima desértico y sector mercantil desfavorable, desafiando no solamente dichas condiciones para hacer agricultura, sino también, el cómo escribir sobre ellos y sus realidades de agua. Es en este último punto donde se concentra el principal aporte del presente trabajo. Inspirado en la teoría del actor red, el artículo presenta alternativas o vías de desborde para situar las ontologías parciales que emergen del caso de estudio como punto de interferencia para conversar o intercambiar con las grandes narrativas y sus aspiraciones holísticas, sin necesidad de sumar a ellas.
Translation: In the Motupe valley on the north coast of Peru, the cultivation of mango for export is in the hands of smallholders, many of whom cultivate on communal lands without water rights or official approval to grow perennial crops. In this article I present the case of the smallholders, known as excedentes de agua, who only have access to irrigate in time of abundance or excess water. Although these small farmers are considered displaced by modern agro-export, they and their mango plantations have managed to put down roots in a desert climate and adverse market sector. They challenge in this way, not only such conditions for doing agriculture, but also how to write about them and their water realities. It is this last point that constitutes the main contribution of this work. Inspired by actor-network theory, this article presents alternative ways to situate the partial ontologies that emerge from the case study as a point of interference – to converse or interchange with the grand narratives and their holistic aspirations, without having to add to them.
Read the full text at https://doi.org/10.22199/issn.0718-1043-2019-0029.
Huybrechs, F., Bastiaensen, J., & Van Hecken, G. (2019). Exploring the potential contribution of green microfinance in transformations to sustainability. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 41, 85-92.
Abstract
In this review, we explore the potential of green microfinance to contribute to transformations to sustainability. Green microfinance aims for environmental objectives in addition to microfinance’s traditional financial and social goals. We argue that the questions of whether and how these instruments contribute to social-ecological change on the ground have so far remained underexplored. Moreover, the incipient green microfinance practice and discourse often reflect individualistic economic framings of social-ecological dynamics, at the risk of maintaining or even strengthening the structures that reproduce social exclusion and environmental degradation. To better understand green microfinance’s potential contribution to transformations to sustainability, we advocate for a systemic and power-sensitive approach to its theory and practice.
Read the full text at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2019.11.001.
Mehta, L., & Srivastava, S. (2019). Pastoralists Without Pasture: Water Scarcity, Marketisation and Resource Enclosures In Kutch, India. Nomadic Peoples, 23(2), 195-217.
Abstract
Scarcity and uncertainty loom large over the landscape of Kutch, an arid to semi-arid district in western India, where pastoralism has been practised for generations. Despite its clear potential to tackle the dryland dynamics, the tradition of pastoralism in Kutch has been systematically denigrated and marginalised in the district over the years. Drawing on research conducted in eastern Kutch, and along the coast, this article shows how pastoralist communities have been displaced from a range of vital hydric resources – such as mangroves and water sources – in the name of development and conservation. Together, these have accelerated processes of dispossession and exacerbated both ‘old’ and ‘new’ resource scarcities.
Read the full text at https://doi.org/10.3197/np.2019.230203.
Mehta, L., Srivastava, S., Adam, H. N., Bose, S., Ghosh, U., & Kumar, V. V. (2019). Climate change and uncertainty from ‘above’and ‘below’: perspectives from India. Regional Environmental Change, 19(6), 1533-1547.
Abstract
Climate-related uncertainty refers to the inability to predict the scale, intensity, and impact of climate change on human and natural environments. Debates of uncertainty in climate change have emerged as a ‘super wicked’ problem for scientists and policy makers alike. The article draws on ongoing research in different socio-ecological and cultural settings in India (Kutch, the Sundarbans and Mumbai) and introduces the heuristic of the ‘above’, ‘middle’ and ‘below’ to explore how climate change and uncertainty are understood and experienced by diverse actors. Responses from ‘above’ (especially by planners and policy makers) tend to be directed towards controlling uncertainty through top-down, techno-managerial solutions whereas scientists tend to rely on quantitative assessments and models based on probabilistic scenarios. These may have little to do with the experiences and lived realities of local people, especially in the global South, who are often at the frontline of climate change. Also at the local level, climate-related uncertainties seldom stand alone, rather they closely interact with other socio-economic drivers of change that create new uncertainties and vulnerabilities, especially for poor and powerless people constraining their adaptation choices. This article demonstrates deep differences in ways different actors understand and experience climate change and uncertainty. It argues that diverse knowledge and approaches need to be deployed to understand and embrace climate related uncertainties in order to facilitate socially just adaptation.
Read the full text at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-019-01479-7.
van der Haar, G., & van Leeuwen, M. (2019). War-induced displacement: Hard choices in land governance. Land, 8(6), 88.
Abstract
Civil war and violence often force large numbers of people to leave their lands. Multiple waves of displacement and (partial) return generate complex overlapping claims that are not easily solved. As people return to their regions of origin—sometimes after decades—they tend to find their land occupied by other settlers, some of whom hold legal entitlements. In the places of arrival, displaced people affect other people’s access as they seek to turn their temporary entitlements into more definite claims. The overlapping claims related to displacement pose serious dilemmas to land governance, which existing land laws and land governance institutions are not well-equipped to deal with. This paper outlines the main challenges for land governance as a first step to move the debate forward. The paper summarises the key challenges around three tensions: first, between short term conflict resolution and structural solutions; second, between state and customary/community-based governance; and finally, between principles (such as the right to return or restitution) and acknowledgement of the new situation.
Read the full text at doi.org/10.3390/land8060088.
