Adam Pain

Re-reading ‘Mountainous’, ‘Isolated’, ‘Inaccessible’ and ‘Small’: The Case of Bhutan

This study examines the theme of being ‘mountainous’ that runs through Bhutans development policy. It investigates the way in which predominantly negative connotations of the descriptive language have been used almost to the exclusion of possible positive ones. It notes the surprising absence of concerns over ‘smallness’ in the policy debate and argues that an emphasis on the positive attributes of being ‘mountainous’ and ‘small’ would lead to alternative policy options.

Reframing community forest governance for food security in Nepal

The growing challenge of food insecurity in the Global South has called for new research on the contribution of forests to food security. However, even progressive forest management institutions such as Nepals community forestry programme have failed to address this issue. We analyse Nepals community forestry programme and find that forest policies and local institutional practices have historically evolved to regulate forests either as sources of timber or as a means of biodiversity conservation, disregarding food security outcomes for local people. Disciplinary divisions between forestry and the agriculture sector have limited the prospect of strengthening forest–food security linkages. We conclude that the policy and legislative framework and formal bureaucratic practices are influenced by ‘modern forestry science’, which led to community forestry rules and practices not considering the contribution of forests to food security. Furthermore, forestry science has a particularly narrow focus on timber production and conservation. We argue for the need to recognise the importance of local knowledge and community practices of using forests for food. We propose adaptive and transformational approaches to knowledge generation and the application of such knowledge in order to support institutional change and policy reform and to enable landscape-specific innovations in forest–food linkages.

Social Relationships and Rural Livelihood Security in Afghanistan

This article examines the importance of a range of types of social relationships, characterised by differing levels of privilege, power, obligation and reciprocity, to rural Afghan livelihood security. Specifically, it explores how rural Afghan households in Kandahar and Badakhshan provinces negotiate within their diverse social environments, characterised by varied forms of institutional weakness and local power structures, to achieve some measure of physical and economic security. It draws from household case study data to assess how households are integrated into social relationships of variable quality and usefulness and under what conditions these relationships facilitate autonomous versus dependent security. In doing so, the article explores the importance of context, linking the details of household experiences to their village and provincial locations. The findings provide an understanding of the local social hierarchies and relations with which development actors must engage to successfully design and deliver poverty reduction programming, something which has been little evident to date, particularly in national policymaking processes and post-2014 transition strategies.

Village-level Behavior Under Conditions of Chronic Conflict

Abstract Drawing on a panel study of households established in 2002 and a revisit in 2008–2010 to a subsample, this paper explores the livelihood pathways of 24 households in 3 villages in Badakhshan in northeastern Afghanistan. It finds that most households were worse off than they were in 2001, although they experienced a brief period of relative prosperity based on the 1 market choice available, opium poppy. The paper draws attention to the corporate nature of villages and their variable capacity to support the provision of village-level public goods. This variability is influenced in part by the relative richness of the resource base of the village and the related degree of social differentiation. Where land inequalities are high and the elite are economically secure, they have few incentives to widen provision of public goods and can be immune from social sanctions. Where the elite are economically insecure, they are likely to have a shared interest in supporting village solidarity and a moral economy and may promote the provision of public goods. External interventions focusing on village governance need to pay much greater attention to village preconditions given the extent to which the effects of such interventions are often subject to the behavior of the elite and preexisting customary structures.