Rimjhim Aggarwal ends his recent contribution with the statement:
"Over time, however, agricultural intensification has led to degradation of local ecosystems. This, in turn, has had led to falling agricultural incomes leading on to greater pressure for migration. On the urban side, mounting deficits in recent years (together with neoliberal policies) have put pressure on government to reduce food subsidies, thus escalating the problem of urban food security and reducing the pull factor to urban areas. My point here is that in order to capture the richness and diversity in these different case studies we need a conceptual framework that more clearly lays out the key variables and relationships at different scales."
In the context of situation on the Indian subcontinent where the overshoot of carrying capacity by excessive human numbers is one of the most serious on the planet --- Aggarwal's call for "a conceptual framework that more clearly lays out the key variables and relationships at different scales." detracts from the need to study the feasibility of covincing populations to:
First: -- democratically choose through referenda and/or plebiscites to insist that their governments put incentives in place(cash grants, tax relief, monetary penalties etc.) to initiate the beginnings of population contraction designed to reduce the P-E imbalance.
Second: -- further investigate methods to popularize such techniques as 'voluntary quinacrine sterilization' that offer people safe and effective means to effectively choose the family size (number of children) that they wish to achieve.
Peter Salonius
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-----Original Message-----
From: Population-Environment Research Network (PERN) cyberseminars on behalf of Alex de Sherbinin
Sent: Wed 2/11/2009 7:33 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [PERNSEMINARS] Contribution by Rimjhim Aggarwal - Part 2
Rimjhim Aggarwal: Panel Statement Part 2
Exploring the links between Sustainable Livelihoods (SL) framework and SES
approach
1) I agree with Diana that CHANS or SES "represent abstractions models of
real world contexts, processes and structures" (email on PERN cyberseminar
dated February 10, 2009). However I don't think that there is necessarily a
"distinction between real world phenomena, i.e. concrete things and
processes and abstract objects." Take the case of the sustainable
livelihoods (SL) framework, for instance. Through a long period of
collaboration between academia and on-the ground development agencies it has
evolved a set of methodologies focusing on identification of key variables
and their interactions that have been very useful at the policy and praxis
level. It is true that SL framework is focussed largely on micro and meso
scale. Question is: how can we link this type of analysis to study phenomena
at other scales or to study cross-scale interactions? The suggestion I made
in my earlier panel statement is to use the concept of nesting and
decomposable systems. A very good illustration of this comes from the work
of Elinor Ostrom on using the SES approach to understand the governance of
the commons (Ostrom, 2007). She emphasizes the "importance of identifying
the conceptual tiers and linkages among variables that constitute an SES as
it affects and is affected by larger and smaller tiers." I think that SES
approach is a powerful conceptual tool but it needs more "digging into" and
more structure around it (perhaps through the conceptual tiers that Ostrom
suggests) to make the relationships and processes it alludes to more
explicit for practical use. This is also related to the Professor Krishnan's
email regarding the "apparent" lack of political and economic processes in
the SES approach. I agree with Alexandra that these processes are embedded
within the SES approach but my suggestion would be to make it more explicit
in the laying down of the framework.
2) To illustrate the above argument, let us take the Ghana case as
elaborated in Alexandra's email ( I must confess I have not read the
original paper by Janowicz so my comments are based on the summary that
Alexandra provided). One way to read what is going on is to say that
enhanced provisioning security in urban areas and reduced security in rural
areas explains the urban dynamics and the migration patterns. The other way,
which is what I think the author intends to show, is to delineate the
different conceptual tiers and how these are linked in order to lay out the
complex web of interrelated processes here. One tier could relate to the
micro aspects of livelihoods of the farmers in rural areas and how the
political imperative to keep food prices low affects their livelihood
strategies, one of which is the decision to migrate. A second horizontal
tier could similarly capture the livelihoods of urban and periurban poor. At
the next vertical tier one could capture the meso level features of food
supply, accounting for regional dynamics. A still higher level could capture
the global flows (through exports and imports, financial flows etc. - see
for example, Aggarwal 2006).
What do we gain by this detailed multi-tiered conceptual mapping? I think it
enables a richer understanding of the underlying processes. Let me
illustrate what I mean by offering the case of India as a contrast to Ghana.
In India too, there has been a strong political imperative to keep food
prices in urban areas low. But this has been accompanied by strong pressure
from farmers to keep procurement prices, for at least major cereals such as
wheat and rice, quite high. Thus, at the micro level, the livelihood
strategies here are quite different. High food procurement prices initially
led to agricultural intensification which for some time stalled the process
of rural to urban migration, relative to what has been observed in other
developing countries. Over time, however, agricultural intensification has
led to degradation of local ecosystems. This, in turn, has had led to
falling agricultural incomes leading on to greater pressure for migration.
On the urban side, mounting deficits in recent years (together with
neoliberal policies) have put pressure on government to reduce food
subsidies, thus escalating the problem of urban food security and reducing
the pull factor to urban areas. My point here is that in order to capture
the richness and diversity in these different case studies we need a
conceptual framework that more clearly lays out the key variables and
relationships at different scales.
References:
Aggarwal, R.M. 2006. "Globalization, Local Ecosystems, and the Rural Poor,"
World Development Special Issue on "The Impact of Globalization on the
World's Poor." 34 (8): 1405-1418.
Ostrom, Elinor. 2007. "A diagnostic approach for going beyond panaceas."
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America. 104(39):15181-15187.
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Alexander de Sherbinin
Deputy Manager, NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC)
Co-coordinator, Population-Environment Research Network (PERN)
Senior Staff Associate for Research
CIESIN, The Earth Institute at Columbia University Skype:
alex.desherbinin
P.O. Box 1000, Palisades, NY 10964 USA Tel. +1-845-365-8936, Fax
+1-845-365-8922
CIESIN: http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu <http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu/>
SEDAC: http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu <http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/>
The Earth Institute: http://www.earth.columbia.edu
<http://www.earth.columbia.edu/> PERN:
http://www.populationenvironmentresearch.org
<http://www.populationenvironmentresearch.org/>
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The Population-Environment Research Network (PERN) Cyberseminar Discussion List. For postings and replies send messages to [log in to unmask] Questions? Email [log in to unmask] The opinions expressed on this list are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of PERN, CIESIN, IUSSP, IHDP, their staff or sponsors.
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The Population-Environment Research Network (PERN) Cyberseminar Discussion List. For postings and replies send messages to [log in to unmask] Questions? Email [log in to unmask] The opinions expressed on this list are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of PERN, CIESIN, IUSSP, IHDP, their staff or sponsors.
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