Land conflict and Mayangna territorial rights in Nicaragua's Bosawás reserve

Abstract— This paper examines conflicts over land and resources in Nicaragua's Bosawás rainforest reserve between Mestizos and Mayangna Indian people. Mestizos are people of mixed Indian and European descent who speak Spanish and do not consider themselves to be Indians. Bosawás is one of the last refuges of the Mayangna indigenous group and is also the largest area of protected tropical rainforest in Central America. The Mayangna village of Sikilta, in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region, is used to illustrate the nature of land conflicts in the region. Such conflicts–between economic development and conservation, between livelihoods and conservation, and between peasant livelihoods and indigenous territorial rights–are symptomatic of rainforest areas in other parts of the world. Land conflicts in Bosawás are examined within the broader economic, political and institutional context. Potential solutions to land conflict in Sikilta are explored. The paper illustrates the complexities surrounding the demarcation and upholding of indigenous land rights. It highlights the institutional complexities and weaknesses which have allowed Sikilta's land problem to go unresolved. It is argued that until national problems of unequal access to land and unsustainable forms of forest use are addressed, communities like Sikilta will continue to suffer invasion of their land.     

Resource Base of Peasants in the Brazilian Amazon: Planning Solutions for Current Problems of Sustainability

Abstract — This is the second paper of a series following a study carried out in the Brazilian Amazon region of peasant livelihoods, their current character and problems of sustainability. It analyses how different people might be affected by environmental degradation in the region by looking at their social and economic activities, the degree of dependency on wild resources, land ownership and the social relations underpinning the structure of the labour force. The study covers three districts within the ecological system of terra firme. Extractivist activities generate income and contribute considerably to food supplies throughout the year. Access to these resources is not generally tied to ownership. Environmental degradation may reduce the future availability of resources or, alternatively, attack health directly. Peasants exposure to these risks is assessed and the long-term sustainability of their livelihoods examined. Possible planning solutions to problems are presented and the more recent debate on the creation of conservation units (SNUC) in Brazil is discussed.     

Making Space: Social Change, Identity and the Creation of Boundaries in the Central Ecuadorian Andes

Abstract— In rural Latin America, communities and their boundaries are changing due to government intervention, immigration, temporary migration and changing patterns of consumption. This article investigates the conflicts that arise from these changes and the impact they have on the creation of boundaries in a peasant community in the Ecuadorian Andes. It also discusses how the creation of community and household boundaries are linked to ethnic identification during rituals and daily life.     

Livelihoods in transition: changing land use strategies and ecological implications in a post-Soviet setting (Kyrgyzstan)

The sudden independence of Kyrgyzstan from the Soviet Union in 1991 led to a total rupture of industrial and agricultural production. Based on empirical data, this study seeks to identify key land use transformation processes since the late 1980s, their impact on people's livelihoods and the implication for natural resources in the communes of Tosh Bulak and Saz, located in the Sokuluk River Basin on the northern slope of the Kyrgyz Range. Using the concept of the sustainable livelihood approach as an analytical framework, three different livelihood strategies were identified: (1) An accumulation strategy applied by wealthy households where renting and/or buying of land is a key element; they are the only household category capable of venturing into rain fed agriculture. (2) A preserving strategy involving mainly intermediate households who are not able to buy or rent additional agricultural land; very often they are forced to return their land to the commune or sell it to wealthier households. (3) A coping strategy including mainly poor households consisting of elderly pensioners or headed by single mothers; due to their limited labour and economic power, agricultural production is very low and hardly covers subsistence needs; pensions and social allowances form the backbone of these livelihoods. Ecological assessments have shown that the forage productivity of remote high mountain pastures has increased from 5 to 22 per cent since 1978. At the same time forage productivity on pre-mountain and mountain pastures close to villages has generally decreased from 1 to 34 per cent. It seems that the main avenues for livelihoods to increase their wealth are to be found in the agricultural sector by controlling more and mainly irrigated land as well as by increasing livestock. The losers in this process are thus those households unable to keep or exploit their arable land or to benefit from new agricultural land. Ensuring access to land for the poor is therefore imperative in order to combat rural poverty and socio-economic disparities in rural Kyrgyzstan.     

Agrarian transition in the southern Philippines: more than poverty,dispossession, and violence

ABSTRACT

On the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, scholars have documented a precarious land tenure, livelihood, and security situation for many smallholders. Agrarian political economy studies provide insightful analyses of the underlying causes of much poverty and violence on the island. Less attention has been given to cases of smallholder success. This article proposes that conditions for smallholder farming, even among ethnic minority groups, are more varied across the island than the literature suggests. In upland villages of north-central Mindanao, agrarian transition is a multi-directional process that produces different outcomes among households, kin groups, and villages. The main case study is a thriving mixed swidden and fixed field Maranao-Muslim farming village. Almost all the households in the village have successfully claimed land as their own and diversified and improved their livelihoods in recent times. To explain these positive outcomes, the article uses a relational approach and draws on anthropological literature on kinship, land tenure, and place to assess the bargaining power of smallholders in land deals. A stronger cross-fertilization of key insights in agrarian political economy and anthropological literature on kinship enriches the debate on agrarian transition in the southern Philippines.     

Oil pollution and water conflicts in the riverine communities in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region: challenges for and elements of problem-solving strategies

ABSTRACT

In Nigeria’s Niger Delta, oil pollution has significantly harmed the natural environment on which the local people in the Niger Delta depend for their livelihood and sustenance. The direct consequence of oil pollution is that it has led to multidimensional and protracted conflicts in oil-bearing communities. Drawing on fieldwork data, this article examines the ways in which oil pollution harms water resources and fuels conflicts in the local communities. It explores the socio-economic dynamics of the conflicts and insecurity, and how they are aggravated by the ineffectiveness of the measures adopted by the state to manage the conflicts. It argues that the role of local actors in the ecological dislocation have been downplayed and not factored into the measures devised to tackle the intractable conflicts. This article demonstrates how the network of interactions among localised, national and globalised actors aggravate environmental pollution and the complex conflicts in local communities.     

Negotiating Natural Resource Conflicts: A Study of State Practices,Peasant Mobilisation and Sub‐National Government in the Peruvian Andes

This article explores the dynamics of natural resource conflicts and local government in the Peruvian Andes. Recent publications have found that efficiency and democratic accountability in local government are key variables for mitigating conflict. By focusing on the ethnographies of two conflicts and as participant observers within local government, we argue that by re‐framing the analytical focus within local histories and current practices of natural resource conflicts, we can better make sense of the dynamics of current land politics. The article presents a sequential framework that explores key moments of the relations between the state and peasant communities during natural resource conflicts. Through this framework, we argue that natural resource conflicts are negotiated in a sphere of politics that transcends the state's institutional and legal limits.     

Coastal Tourism in a Context of Neoliberal Development: Social Change in Mancora,Peru

The case of Mancora, Northern Peru, illustrates a process of neoliberalisation through which conceptions of place, local identities and the recent history of the place have been reformulated due to the rapid expansion of global tourism. In this former fishing village, tourism development altered local conceptions of place, allowing the emergence of contrasting projects for converting it into a beach resort. This process brought about a context governed by land conflicts and tension between local authorities, where local inhabitants reshaped their identities and the recent history of the place in order to gain or maintain ownership over valuable natural resources.     

DISPLACEMENT,RESETTLEMENT, AND MULTI-LOCAL LIVELIHOODS

This article examines shifting attitudes toward rural migrants in Lampung Province, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, in the context of a history of enclosure, commercial expansion, and dispossession. The author examines how contemporary multi-local livelihoods in Lampung reflect an adaptation to the vulnerabilities associated with being a migrant, as people position themselves to qualify for livelihood resources. The author's interpretation draws on Michel Foucault's analysis of the production of governable subjects and, in particular, norms of conduct that produce subjectivities and identities that “fit.” The article explores how different policy phases associated with environmental governance in Lampung have created contrasting positionings and norms of conduct for migrants, as they have been defined, on the one hand, as pioneer entrepreneurs, bringing progress to Indonesia's hinterland, and, on the other, as forest squatters, threatening the cultural and ecological integrity of the province. The author suggests that rural migrants have attempted to resolve their problematic positioning through multi-local livelihoods, which combine access to nonlocal income through temporary migration with the maintenance of a foothold that signals belonging and legitimate entitlement to state resources.     

Livestock livelihoods compromised: the dilemma of the Fast Track Land Reform and Resettlement Programme in Matabeleland South,Zimbabwe

This article attempts to unravel the rubric of livestock rearing in Southern Matabeleland in the aftermath of the Fast Track Land Reform and Resettlement Programme (FTLRRP). It also shows how livestock rearing has been placed high in livelihood rankings in this region. The article is based on a detailed ethnographic study of the impact of the FTLRRP in the decade 2000 to 2010 in Gwanda and Umzingwane districts, and is an extract of my PHD thesis entitled ‘Visible hectares, Vanishing livelihoods’. The broad argument of the thesis is that the land reform programme has achieved change of commercial land ownership patterns from ‘white’ to ‘black’ Zimbabweans. The programme however has not coupled that with the support necessary to improve the livelihoods of the majority of people in the region. One of the impediments is that the state-crafted ‘one size fits all’ resettlement model failed to take cognisance of the socio-economic and ecological conditions of different provinces in the country. Hence the argument in this article is that the FTLRRP could have improved livelihoods of people in this region if livestock rearing was given priority and support by the state.     

Democratisation and control: fast track and local government reforms in Zimbabwe

Fast track land reform in most instances has been treated as a process only entailing the redistribution of formerly white-owned land to blacks. However, there are other deeper changes that have not yet been coherently analysed, such as the nature of local power relations and the local government system; especially the manner in which it balances the interests of traditional authority and elected authorities. The local government system in fast track areas is in a state of flux. On the one hand, there is potential for a more inclusive and participatory model of local government, and on the other hand, however, official processes through legal enactments suggest that policy craftsmen are still intent on continuing with policies that promote the establishment of two competing sites of power. This paper explores the manner in which rural local government has been treated in the literature, and how it is being re-established in the aftermath of the ‘jambanja’, a period in which the ‘rule of law’ was literally suspended. Rather than depending only on official processes, the field evidence that analyses the actual practice of local government is also utilised. The paper contributes towards a more coherent understanding of the links between the colonial state's control imperative and the post-colonial's ambition to exert similar control, albeit under different political conditions.     

FORCED MIGRATION, LAND-USE CHANGE AND POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE FOREST REGION OF GUINEA

This paper examines the impact of forced migration on land usechange in Yomou prefecture in the forest region of Guinea froma broadly ‘political economy’ perspective. Focusingon the period since 1989, when over 500,000 refugees from Liberiaand Sierra Leone have been present in the region, it considersthe extent and mechanisms through which refugees have gainedaccess to land in three study villages, and seeks explanationsfor the pattern of land use change that has occurred. This isseen as reflecting both the evolution of the agricultural economyof the region, and socio-political change in local communities.Implications for both environmental change, and the livelihoodsof refugees and local communities are considered.     

Mining with a ‘Vuvuzela’: reconfiguring artisanal mining in Southern Zimbabwe and its implications to rural livelihoods

The rural landscape of Zimbabwe has dramatically changed in the last decade. Zimbabwe inherited a racially biased land ownership pattern at independence in 1980 and 20 years on efforts by the state to address the colonial land imbalances have been largely unsuccessful. In 2000 the Zimbabwe government embarked on a controversial rapid land redistribution exercise that saw vast tracts of land previously owned by white commercial farmers taken over and distributed to mostly black Zimbabweans. Some authors have argued that there is no single story of the Fast Track Land Reform and Resettlement programme because of the myths and realities spread by the media. It is important to note that what happened in one province might not be similar to the other. Rural dwellers in the countryside had for years depended on agrarian livelihoods and the fact that more land had been availed by the state meant better livelihoods. However, this article argues that in spite of a widened horizon to pursue agrarian activities many people have actually drifted away from on-farm to off-farm livelihoods. This is true in the case of southern Zimbabwe where a large number of rural dwellers have chosen artisanal gold mining as a pathway in realising a livelihood. This article therefore focuses on the expansion of artisanal gold mining in southern Zimbabwe; particularly in southern Matabeleland. Using fieldwork as a method of data gathering, the article unravels the development of artisanal mining in this region and how it has been reconfigured after the hosting of the Soccer World Cup in South Africa 2010. In particular it shows how the metal detector technology (the Vuvuzela) availed by the hosting of the Soccer World Cup has found its way to the region and changed the gold panning process. Conclusions drawn from a detailed PhD study revealed that a significant number of southern Zimbabwe gold panners have adopted the metal detector technology as a way of expanding their trade.     

Cooperatives as Sustainable Livelihood Strategies in Rural Mexico

The sustainable livelihoods perspective and cooperative movement are rooted in frameworks that value social justice in the form of participatory democracy, distributional equity, and solidarity. Unlike studies of cooperatives that focus mainly on economic efficiency and productivity, we argue that this socio‐political dimension of the cooperative projects is crucial for understanding their potential as sustainable livelihoods. This exploratory research examines the experiences of two rural Mexican communities in Guanajuato and Oaxaca, which formed cooperatives as alternative livelihood strategies. Our results show that each community used similar grassroots political culture to develop cooperatives designed to meet local needs.     

Ethnic conflicts and environmental degradation in Central Asia. The Ferghana valley and northern Kazakhstan

This work seeks to demonstrate that the combination of ecological degradation, demographic pressure, and ethnic heterogeneity in Central Asia constitute a serious threat to the future stability of the region. The predominantly rural Ferghana Valley and Northern Kazakhstan suffer from shortages of water and land and from unemployment that leads to extensive out-migration to cities suffering from decline in their Soviet-era industries. The problem in the Ferghana Valley began with Tsarist conquest of the valley in 1876 and the subsequent imposition of cotton cultivation, which was greatly expanded by the Soviet Union. The Ferghana Valley, despite being a natural unit, was divided between Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan in the 1920s and 1930s, and remains divided between the independent states. The current population of 11 million is ethnically diverse, with Uzbeks in the majority and increasing most rapidly. Immigration from the Caucasus since 1950 added to the tension. Future peace will depend on such factors as whether the neo-Communist political regime chooses to incite ethnic hostilities, the manner in which land is redistributed, and the outcome of struggles for control of the flourishing narcotics trade. The northern Kazakhstan region was designated a pioneer wheat-growing region by Soviet planners in 1954. Russian and Ukrainian migrants established between 1954 and 1956 are today the predominant population sector, but feel their privileged position threatened by nationalist policies making Kazakh the official language and giving preference in employment to Kazakhs. Resettlement of Kazakhs from Mongolia, China, and Afghanistan in the region and the high Kazakh birth rate increase tensions. Grain production initially grew rapidly, but the mediocre soil and erosion-inducing constant dry winds have caused production to stagnate or decline. Regional disputes within Kazakhstan complicate the situation. Northern Kazakhstan, with its industrial development, is integrated more with the Urals and Western Siberia than with the rest of Kazakhstan. Serious ethnic conflicts in either Kazakhstan or the Ferghana Valley are likely to spill far beyond their local boundaries, embroiling much of the area in hostilities.     

China and Environmental Security in the Age of Consequences

Global climate change is now one of the biggest challenges facing humankind in the twenty-first century. It is occurring at a time when China's economic rise is leading to substantial environmental problems combined with escalating demands on global resources. Many commentators have warned of impending economic collapse, rising social conflicts, and large-scale public health disasters. ¹ It is not only China's modernisation drive that is at stake. The spill-over effects across borders also present security concerns at the regional and global levels. From a global security perspective, the emerging environmental crisis is generally cast in highly negative terms. Limited attention has been given to the question of whether China can adapt. In the case of climate change this is now an urgent task. On the Qinghai–Tibetan plateau climate impacts pose significant security risks for China and the Asia region. The ability to adapt is of critical importance to the future sustainability of these ecosystems as well as the millions of people they serve.     

Malawi’s land problem and potential for rural conflict

Government agricultural policies which favour large-scale agriculture and rapid population growth on a limited land area have combined to create a situation of land poverty in many parts of Malawi, especially in the southern region of the country. The government’s response to land poverty has so far been focused on the creation of resettlement schemes. As such initiatives are expensive, they have tended to be piecemeal and benefit only a small fraction of land poor families. Frustrated land poor families have now resorted to land encroachment on privately held land. The emergence of movements dedicated to the restoration of estates to families with ancestral claims to the land marks a new stage in land relations which could have unwelcome consequences.     

Institutionelle Arbeit am Konflikt – ein Beitrag zur Transnationalisierung der Arbeitsbeziehungen?

Although political decisions and the mobility of capital have advanced the integration of markets at the European and the global level, durable transnational bargaining relationships between labor and capital remain rare. Drawing on case studies in two automobile companies the article explores whether and how class-based conflicts are institutionalized in the transnational social space of European industry. Concepts are borrowed from the theories of Pierre Bourdieu and neo-institutionalism to develop a relational, space-sensitive understanding of power lacking in existing perspectives, such as the power resource approach. This allows for a better grasp of the institutions shaping transnational employment relations in the two studied companies, Volkswagen and General Motors-Opel, as well as of the differing stability of these institutions.     

The monetization of social celebrations in rural Kyrgyzstan: on the uses of hashish money

This article focuses on the embeddedness of hashish production in the local economy of Toolu, a village in Kyrgyzstan. It explores how transformations in social relationships and the monetization of gift giving put constant pressure on families to find cash in a semi-subsistence agricultural economy. Although not produced on an industrial scale in the community, hashish is used as a cash crop in times of deficit. Based on a mixed-methods study combining ethnographic fieldwork with survey data, I show how the hashish economy is intertwined with different forms of reciprocal relationships based on gift-giving practices and the monetization of social relationships. In doing so, I illustrate how the hashish economy is embedded in local livelihoods and shapes emerging forms of economic morality in Kyrgyz society.     

Large-scale land deals,global capital and the politics of livelihoods: Experiences of women small-holder farmers in Chisumbanje,Zimbabwe

Abstract

Large scale land acquisitions by foreign conglomerates in Zimbabwe have been a recurrent phenomenon within the last five years. This has led to land deals being negotiated with state, individual and nongovernmental actors, leading to the production of agro fuels. This article investigates how the large scale commercial land deals have affected the livelihoods of women small holder farmers, the role of global capital in entrenching discrimination of women and how the politics of resource use and distribution has become a central force in shaping livelihoods in Zimbabwe's communal areas. The article is based on field work that was conducted in Ndowoyo communal area, in Chisumbanje village, from July 2011 until April 2012. The methods used for collecting data were in-depth interviews with the women, interviews with officials from the Platform for Youth Development, a nongovernmental organisation, Macdom Pvt Ltd and Ratings Investments, focus group discussions and personal observations that involved interactions with the women. In 2011, Macdom Pvt Ltd and Ratings Investments, both bio fuels companies owned by Billy Rautenbach started green fuel production operations in Chisumbanje and this has led to the altering of the livelihoods systems of women smallholder farmers. The argument seeks, first, to demonstrate how the company‘s green fuel production systems have led to the loss of land for women and the redefinition of tenure in a communal area. Secondly it explores how the company has been involved in political issues that have undermined the role of development for the women and, thirdly, the article investigates how the women have created livelihood alternatives in an area which has been transformed from a communal rural area into almost an urban area. It concludes by suggesting the need to give primacy to women centred notions of agency in coping with the negative implications of commercial land deals on women‘s livelihoods.