Ian Scoones

Environmental Entitlements: Dynamics and Institutions in Community-Based Natural Resource Management

Abstract While community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) now attracts widespread international attention, its practical implementation frequently falls short of expectations. This paper contributes to emerging critiques by focusing on the implications of intracommunity dynamics and ecological heterogeneity. It builds a conceptual framework highlighting the central role of institutions — regularized patterns of behavior between individuals and groups in society — in mediating environment-society relationships. Grounded in an extended form of entitlements analysis, the framework explores how differently positioned social actors command environmental goods and services that are instrumental to their well-being. Further insights are drawn from analyses of social difference; “new”, dynamic ecology; new institutional economics; structuration theory, and landscape history. The theoretical argument is illustrated with case material from India, South Africa and Ghana.

Livelihoods perspectives and rural development

Livelihoods perspectives have been central to rural development thinking and practice in the past decade. But where do such perspectives come from, what are their conceptual roots, and what influences have shaped the way they have emerged? This paper offers an historical review of key moments in debates about rural livelihoods, identifying the tensions, ambiguities and challenges of such approaches. A number of core challenges are identified, centred on the need to inject a more thorough-going political analysis into the centre of livelihoods perspectives. This will enhance the capacity of livelihoods perspectives to address key lacunae in recent discussions, including questions of knowledge, politics, scale and dynamics.

Green Grabbing: a new appropriation of nature?

Across the world, ‘green grabbing’ – the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends – is an emerging process of deep and growing significance. The vigorous debate on ‘land grabbing’ already highlights instances where ‘green’ credentials are called upon to justify appropriations of land for food or fuel – as where large tracts of land are acquired not just for ‘more efficient farming’ or ‘food security’, but also to ‘alleviate pressure on forests’. In other cases, however, environmental green agendas are the core drivers and goals of grabs – whether linked to biodiversity conservation, biocarbon sequestration, biofuels, ecosystem services, ecotourism or ‘offsets’ related to any and all of these. In some cases these involve the wholesale alienation of land, and in others the restructuring of rules and authority in the access, use and management of resources that may have profoundly alienating effects. Green grabbing builds on well-known histories of colonial and neo-colonial resource alienation in the name of the environment – whether for parks, forest reserves or to halt assumed destructive local practices. Yet it involves novel forms of valuation, commodification and markets for pieces and aspects of nature, and an extraordinary new range of actors and alliances – as pension funds and venture capitalists, commodity traders and consultants, GIS service providers and business entrepreneurs, ecotourism companies and the military, green activists and anxious consumers among others find once-unlikely common interests. This collection draws new theorisation together with cases from African, Asian and Latin American settings, and links critical studies of nature with critical agrarian studies, to ask: To what extent and in what ways do ‘green grabs’ constitute new forms of appropriation of nature? How and when do circulations of green capital become manifest in actual appropriations on the ground – through what political and discursive dynamics? What are the implications for ecologies, landscapes and livelihoods? And who is gaining and who is losing – how are agrarian social relations, rights and authority being restructured, and in whose interests?

Living with uncertainty : new directions in pastoral development in Africa

Contributors vi Preface ix Acknowledgements xiii 1 New directions in pastoral development in Africa 1 IAN SCOONES 2 Climate variability and complex ecosystem dynamics: implications for pastoral development 37 JIM ELLIS 3 New directions in range management planning in Africa 47 GREGORY PERRIER 4 Forage alternatives from range and field: pastoral forage management and improvement in the African drylands 58 WOLFGANG BAYER and ANN WATERS-BAYER 5 Livestock marketing in pastoral Africa: policies to increase competitiveness, efficiency and flexibility 79 JOHN S. HOLTZMAN and NICOLAS P. KULIBABA 6 Tracking through drought: options for destocking and restocking 95 CAMILLA TOULMIN 7 New directions in rangeland and resource tenure and policy 116 CHARLES LANE and RICHARD MOOREHEAD 8 Pastoral organizations for uncertain environments 134 DJEIDI SYLLA 9 Dynamic ecological systems and the administration of pastoral development 153 JEREMY SWIFT 10 Improving the efficiency of opportunism: new directions for pastoral development 174 STEPHEN SANDFORD References 183 Index 207

Towards a better understanding of global land grabbing: an editorial introduction

Over the past several years, the convergence of global crises in food, energy, finance, and the environment has driven a dramatic revaluation of land ownership. Powerful transnational and national economic actors from corporations to national governments and private equity funds have searched for ‘empty’ land often in distant countries that can serve as sites for fuel and food production in the event of future price spikes. This is occurring globally, but there is a clear North–South dynamic that echoes the land grabs that underwrote both colonialism and imperialism. In addition, however, there is an emerging ‘South–South’ dynamic today, with economically powerful non-Northern countries, such as Brazil and Qatar, getting significantly involved. The land— and water and labor—of the Global South are increasingly perceived as sources of alternative energy production (primarily biofuels), food crops, mineral deposits (new and old), and reservoirs of environmental services. National governments have looked inward as well, in what is often internal colonialism whereby land seen officially as marginal or empty is set aside for commodity production. The pace and extent of these land deals has been rapid and widespread (GRAIN 2008). Estimates by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) suggest that roughly 20 million hectares exchanged hands in the form of land grabs between 2005 and 2009 (von Braun and Meinzen-Dick 2009). The World Bank report on land grabs (or, as the Bank calls it, agricultural investment), released in September 2010, estimated this global phenomenon at 45 million hectares (World Bank 2010). Sub-Saharan Africa is the site of the most speculative major land deals, including one thwarted deal in Madagascar that brought down the government (Cotula et al. 2009), while major areas are being targeted for commodity crops, fuel crops, investment, and ecosystem services in South America, Central America, Southeast Asia, and the former USSR (Zoomers 2010, Visser and Spoor 2011). There are various mechanisms through which land grabbing occurs, ranging from straightforward private–private purchases and public–private leases for biofuel production to acquisition of large parcels of land for conservation arrangement, with variegated initial outcomes (Hall 2011, Wolford 2010). Some of this land has been cleared of existing inhabitants and users but not yet put into production; in many cases buyers and investors are simply preparing for the next global crisis. The Journal of Peasant Studies Vol. 38, No. 2, March 2011, 209–216

The new enclosures: critical perspectives on corporate land deals

The contributions to this collection use the tools of agrarian political economy to explore the rapid growth and complex dynamics of large-scale land deals in recent years, with a special focus on the implications of big land deals for property and labour regimes, labour processes and structures of accumulation. The first part of this introductory essay examines the implications of this agrarian political economy perspective. First we explore the continuities and contrasts between historical and contemporary land grabs, before examining the core underlying debate around large- versus small-scale farming futures. Next, we unpack the diverse contexts and causes of land grabbing today, highlighting six overlapping mechanisms. The following section turns to assessing the crisis narratives that frame the justifications for land deals, and the flaws in the argument around there being excess, empty or idle land available. Next the paper turns to an examination of the impacts of land deals, and the processes of inclusion and exclusion at play, before looking at patterns of resistance and constructions of alternatives. The final section introduces the papers in the collection.

Science and citizens : globalization and the challenge of engagement

is often ironic: a discussion of the mystical significance of numbers for numerologists seems to mock his own efforts, and when he answers “yes” to the question whether the effort of coding 15,000 articles was worth it, he reminds us of the Italian admonition against asking the wineseller if his wine is good. Advances in computer technology and applications have made it possible for researchers to accumulate and quickly analyse vast amounts of quantitative and qualitative data. Franzosi rightly draws our attention to the dangers of seductive technological fixes, and reminds us that “as the study of social relations” issues of meaning and interpretation underly all sociological work. He repeatedly uses reports brought back by pilgrims and voyagers in the age of discovery to show how our frameworks and rhetorics both enable and constrain our observations and reports, and how much ritual is involved in our scientific practice. Yet he persists in it. Consequently, the book would be suitable for an advanced graduate seminar on methodology (and the meaning of life). Weber advised that methodogical issues should be addressed in the context of problems encountered in substantive research, and this book shows a social scientist doing that. But graduate students should be discouraged from imitating his style: Uno Franzosi é abbastanza.

Dynamic Sustainabilities : Technology, Environment, Social Justice

1. Sustainability Challenges in a Dynamic World 2. Dynamic Systems: Environment and Development Challenges 3. Pathways to Sustainability: Responding to Dynamic Contexts 4. Governance in a Dynamic World 5. Opening Up, Broadening Out: Empowering Designs for Sustainability 6. An Alternative Politics for Sustainability 7. Towards Pathways to Sustainability

The politics of biofuels, land and agrarian change: editors' introduction

This introduction frames key questions on biofuels, land and agrarian change within agrarian political economy, political sociology and political ecology. It identifies and explains big questions that provide the starting point for the contributions to this collection. We lay out some of the emerging themes which define the politics of biofuels, land and agrarian change revolving around global (re)configurations; agro-ecological visions; conflicts, resistances and diverse outcomes; state, capital and society relations; mobilising opposition, creating alternatives; and change and continuity. An engaged agrarian political economy combined with global political economy, international relations and social movement theory provides an important framework for analysis and critique of the conditions, dynamics, contradictions, impacts and possibilities of the emerging global biofuels complex. Our hope is that this collection demonstrates the significance of a political economy of biofuels in capturing the complexity of the ‘biofuels revolution’ and at the same time opening up questions about its sustainability in social and environmental terms that provide pathways towards alternatives.

Resistance, acquiescence or incorporation? An introduction to land grabbing and political reactions ‘from below’

Political reactions ‘from below’ to global land grabbing have been vastly more varied and complex than is usually assumed. This essay introduces a collection of ground-breaking studies that discuss responses that range from various types of organized and everyday resistance to demands for incorporation or for better terms of incorporation into land deals. Initiatives ‘from below’ in response to land deals have involved local and transnational alliances and the use of legal and extra-legal methods, and have brought victories and defeats. The relevance of political reactions to land grabbing is discussed in light of theories of social movements and critical agrarian studies. Future research on reactions ‘from below’ to land grabbing must include greater attention to gender and generational differences in both impacts and political agency.