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Recent projects (2004-2006): | |
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Project title: Analysis of Vulnerability to Environmental Stresses in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers Synthesising Lessons on Effective Vulnerability Reduction Policy Identifying and Managing High Risk Regions Adaptation to Climate, Water and Health Stresses Assessment of the Impact of Genetically Modified Agriculture on the Poor and the Vulnerable Institutions and Gender-differentiated Vulnerability to Floods in Central Viet Nam Social Learning, Institutions and Vulnerability to Natural Hazards see also 'Vulnerability to Natural Hazards in Honduras' above. |
Contact: Fiona Miller Frank Thomalla Vikrom Mathur Tom Downing Ivar Virgin Fiona Miller Lisa Segnestam |
Completed projects (2002-2004): | |
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Project title: Food System Scenarios: Exploring global/local linkages Connecting Health with Vulnerability to Environmental Stress Biosafety Capacity Building in East and Southern Africa Linking Water Scarcity to Population Movements: From global models to local experiences West Africa Vulnerability Profiles Vulnerability to Natural Hazards in Honduras Vulnerability to Multiple Stresses in Dak Lak Province, Viet Nam Natural Disasters, Vulnerability and Resilience |
Contact: Tom Downing Frank Thomalla Ivar Virgin Kirstin Dow Kirstin Dow Lisa Segnestam Eva Lindskog Guoyi Han |
A key challenge in applying the lessons of vulnerability analysis to policy is developing strategies for specific local situations based on an understanding of the local context together with combinations of national level data and lessons drawn from diverse case study findings. While national data can provide an overview, general guidance on the strengths and weaknesses of particular policy options must recognise the local characteristics of environmental and social stressors and draw from the experiences of many individual vulnerability reduction efforts to determine the common elements of success and failure. This paper will present preliminary results of an evaluation of vulnerability reduction efforts and discuss lessons of policy effectiveness for poverty and vulnerability reduction. Systematic comparison of case studies will be used to uncover elements of effective vulnerability reduction policy for comparable situations. It will also report on analysis of synergies between poverty and vulnerability reduction strategies in order to identify opportunities for multiple benefits and to avoid unfavourable interactions.
This research builds on the approach developed by Geist and Lambin (2001) who conducted an evaluation of deforestation, in which a structured review of sub-national cases allowed for the identification and analysis of interactions among the dominant forces driving more localised patterns of deforestation. Vulnerability reduction efforts in recent years have established the necessary foundation for such an effort in the field of vulnerability research. Focussing on vulnerability to environmental change, this paper will address such issues as, differential gender vulnerability, the role of institutions in reducing vulnerability, and the interaction of multiple processes operating at different spatial and temporal scales.
Geist, Helmut J., and Eric F. Lambin. 2001. What Drives Tropical Deforestation? A meta-analysis of proximate and underlying causes of deforestation based on subnational case study evidence. Lovain-la-Neuve, Belgium: LUCC International Project Office.
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A suite of methodological and analytical challenges with identifying and managing HRR were also identified in the previous phase of the work. Series of consultations with regional partners and policy makers have helped narrow down and focus the research priorities for the current phase of the work. There is a strong interest to move beyond the macro and mapping related spatial delineation of these areas and to look at the linkages between regional analysis and the processes contributing to vulnerability within high risk areas, and respond to two key questions:
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Development policy needs to be better supported and it is clear there needs to be a greater focus on the needs of the poor and those already vulnerable to stresses such as climate and natural hazards as well as health hazards. Traditional intervention (such as food aid, project intervention, in the form of external credit schemes and infrastructure etc) is increasingly being questioned as to how appropriate it is and therefore what impact it might have on truly enhancing the livelihoods of those it focuses on.
Although there is a lot of emerging research that highlights the need to consider multiple threats to livelihoods, there is less research examining how response to multiple stresses unfolds. It is therefore necessary that a shift in development policy and intervention be supported by research that uncovers the nature of existing complex adaptive systems so that existing strengths can be supported rather than new ones being imposed. This project will seek to further the understanding of complex adaptive systems and the links to climate variability, water resource management and health within specific areas. The foci will be:
In order to do this, techniques are needed to solicit and evaluate adaptation strategies both from an agency perspective (at the individual/local scale) and from an institutional perspective (at the village and district level to a broad-brush national context). This will be achieved using Knowledge Elicitation Tools (KnETs) which support the fieldwork process and formalise case-study data in an iterative and reflexive manner with participatory stakeholder involvement. As another tool, scenarios also play a useful role in integrating the physical and social science and allowing for the reflexive relationship between society and environment to be captured.
The focus of the case study is to explore methods of assessing complex adaptive systems and capturing the role of multiple stresses on the ability of the poor to adapt to present and future stresses. It is acknowledged that isolating response to stresses is not an accurate way of understanding adaptation. The reality is that a multitude of stresses exist for vulnerable households and the integrated response needs to be understood. This can help to situate individual stresses within the context in which they occur for local individuals and from a policy perspective.
This project in the second phase of the Poverty and Vulnerability Programme puts into practice some of the conceptual developments produced in the first phase. This will be achieved by undertaking a case study in southern Africa that implements the developments from Phase I that assessed food security scenarios and how the existing scenarios do not do an accurate job of capturing the dynamics of local level food insecurity. In order to take this a step further, it is necessary to look at some of the key drivers of food security at the field level and see how these are being responded to and subsequently impact on food and livelihood security.
This approach can help development intervention to be grounded in the realities of existing agency and institutional strength as it will combine local agency perspectives and institutional environments with scenarios that are grounded in past histories and develop possible future pathways. The case study aims to implement an integrated assessment in one location that will examine the role of multiple stresses on the ability of the poor (with multiple vulnerabilities) to adapt to present and future environmental stresses.
The analysis will integrate exposure of livelihoods to climate, water and health with a focus on the integration of specific stresses including climate variability HIV/AIDS, food insecurity, governance and market fluctuations. The work on livelihoods will actively assess how the complex environmental stresses play out differently among different livelihood groups, which will illustrate why 'the poor' cannot be treated as a homogenous group, but need different kinds of support. A key aim is to develop an evaluation of complex adaptive systems which exist within a multiple stress and complex response environment.
In marked contrast to other regions of the developing world, poverty has increased in sub-Saharan Africa over the last few decades. A number of complex reasons (historical, political, economic, social, technological and cultural) account for this. One of them is the stagnation, and in some areas the actual decline, in the productivity of food agriculture by small-scale farmers. The so-called ÒGreen RevolutionÓ, with its 'package of inputs' of high yielding seeds, inorganic fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides, irrigation, production and market price subsidies, guaranteed purchase of output by government, etc., which led to dramatic increases in maize, rice and wheat production in the 1970s and 1980s in Asia and Latin America, did not take place in sub-Saharan Africa (with the exception of South Africa and Zimbabwe). This too is due to a host of reasons. Faced with this impasse, several African and international institutional 'actors' (including the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation) are advocating the introduction of modern agricultural biotechnology (agro-biotechnology) as a means of increasing the productivity of small-scale agriculture across the continent.
Agro-biotechnology involves the genetic modification of crops (by the insertion of genes both across and within species barriers) to resist biological stresses (pests and diseases) and to tolerate environmental stresses (drought, flooding, frost and salinity). These GM-induced traits have the potential to lead to decreases in crop losses and thus to net increases in harvests, i.e. increase in productivity per unit of land cultivated. However, agro-biotechnology has also the potential to pose risks to the environment (ecology and biodiversity), human and animal health and the livelihoods of poor farmers. This mixed bag of potential benefits and risks has generated intense and heated debate between GM protagonists and antagonists.
The central hypothesis of our policy research project is that under certain specific conditions the introduction of agro-biotechnology could result in net benefits to small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. We intend to explore what these specific conditions would be in the context of East and Southern Africa (ESA) by addressing the following four sets of questions and issues:
1. What are the prospects in ESA for the successful application of transferred GM-technology, and for the promotion of national and regional research and development (R&D) efforts, in generating genetically modified local staple food crops and cash crops (GM-local crops)?
2. What realistic policy options and strategies are available to ESA governments to ensure that technology transfer and R&D efforts are dedicated to solving the productivity problems facing small-scale farmers?
3. What would be the implications of agro-biotechnology for rural livelihoods, cash incomes and essential consumption, and for rural household labour and wage employment?
4. What institutional capacity has to be established and made operational, and what policies need to be implemented, at the national and regional levels, to ensure the environmental and health safety of GM-local crops?
The target groups will be the following main stakeholders in the arena of agricultural biotechnology in the countries of East and Southern Africa (ESA):
The collaborating partners will be a carefully selected small number of institutions, who will be truly representative of the main stakeholders mentioned above. One of the main features of the methodology that we will use in conducting the study will be close consultation with, and periodic feedbacks from, our collaborating partners, which will ensure that the study will contribute to the stakeholders' mission and strategic planning.
The methodology used will be strongly policy-oriented to ensure that the knowledge, analyses, insights and findings, together with the policy and strategy scenarios and options, that will emerge from our study, will be relevant as inputs into the policy processes in the ESA region and the international development community.
Whilst it is widely recognised that gender plays an important role in determining the distribution of the costs and benefits of development, the role gender plays in influencing patterns of vulnerability remains less well understood. Natural hazards affect men and women in different ways, in terms of exposure to impacts, and coping and recovery strategies, due to gendered patterns of access, entitlements and division of labour.
Gender inequality can undermine the resilience of communities to natural hazards as a whole, and also affect efforts to realise sustainable development. Viet Nam is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of water-related disasters, with certain regions and social groups more vulnerable than others.
The role gender plays in differentiating vulnerability to such events, and influencing coping and recovery strategies, however, remains poorly understood. To understand these differential vulnerabilities, SEI will undertake research on gender differences in vulnerability, and coping and recovery strategies to floods with a focus on the influence of different institutions' in shaping vulnerability.
Research will be conducted in Central Vietnam in Thua Thien Hue province. Fieldwork will be conducted in three communes, in the uplands, midlands, and lowlands, along a single river so as to investigate the different impacts of severe flash floods and longer-duration lowland, riverine flooding.
Hurricane Mitch struck Honduras in October 1998 with disastrous results. Lack of access to adequate land, credit or technical assistance had forced subsistence farmers and semi-urban populations into high-risk marginal areas. Deforestation and inappropriate farming practices exacerbated their vulnerability. The losses experienced by the country ranged from lost lives, to lost livelihoods, to destroyed infrastructure. The poverty rate in Honduras increased by an estimated 4% on average in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch.
During natural disasters, different groups experience distinct, widely ranging levels of harm, from minor economic damage to widespread mortality. Disasters occur through the interaction between natural events and vulnerable social and ecological systems. Most vulnerability research suggests that we should stop dealing with disasters as if the natural hazard itself is the principal cause. Instead, the underlying root causes and dynamic influences on vulnerability need to be addressed. One category of root causes, that has not been studied to any great extent in a vulnerability context and was therefore selected as a focus of this research, is formal and informal institutions. In this context, institutions are interpreted to be the formal and informal rules that shape the behaviour of organisations and individuals in a society.
Several main factors affect the vulnerability of people in the case study areas in Honduras. Some of these factors are contributing to increased vulnerability, such as poor land management and deforestation, overemphasis on preparedness versus mitigation, poor local awareness of hazard management responsibilities and procedures. Other factors are helping to alleviate vulnerability, such as the presence of strong social networks, and recent improvements in the organisation responsible for hazard management. In addition, migration was identified as actively being used in the case study areas as a coping strategy in times of natural disasters, mainly because there is no other option. Institutions influencing these factors range from formal institutions, including policies favouring conventional farming and short-term land use at the expense of forest conservation and land tenure policies, to informal institutions, including a culture of short-term thinking and of mistrust. Apart from various influencing institutions, issues such as illiteracy and lack of resources also play significant roles in sustaining people's vulnerability to natural hazards at a high level.