Yiheyis Maru

Applying the sustainable livelihoods approach in Australian desert Aboriginal development

The sustainable livelihoods approach is widely used in rural development internationally but has been little applied in Australia. It is a framework for thinking and communicating about factors that impact on the livelihoods of individuals and families including their health, well being and income and the maintenance of natural resource condition. The approach aims to promote a systemic understanding of how multiple variables impact on local people’s livelihoods. Three case studies are outlined, that highlight its potential as a tool for collaborative engagement of researchers, local people and other stakeholders, to promote sustainability of Aboriginal livelihood systems in remote desert Australia and to contribute to improved understanding of the dynamics of regional socio-ecological systems.

Australian rangelands as complex adaptive systems: A conceptual model and preliminary results

Abstract Models to support decisions on rangeland policy must address the close links between ecological, economic, and social processes, and the adaptation of participants through time. We used an agent-based modeling approach to implement a parsimonious conceptual model of rangelands that included biophysical processes central to the functioning of rangelands, commercial enterprises, and institutions. The model operated on a monthly time step, and used economic and biophysical conditions to stimulate changes in management policies and learning. Our simple model reproduced the general patterns of forage growth and livestock dynamics in north-east Australia, and results illustrate consequences of interactions between environmental heterogeneity and learning rate.

Social networks in arid Australia: a review of concepts and evidence

Arid systems are markedly different from non-arid systems. This distinctiveness extends to arid-social networks, by which we mean social networks which are influenced by the suite of factors driving arid and semi-arid regions. Neither the process of how aridity interacts with social structure, nor what happens as a result of this interaction, is adequately understood. This paper postulates three relative characteristics which make arid-social networks distinct: that they are tightly bound, are hierarchical in structure and, hence, prone to power abuses, and contain a relatively higher proportion of weak links, making them reactive to crisis. These ideas were modified from workshop discussions during 2006. Although they are neither tested nor presented as strong beliefs, they are based on the anecdotal observations of arid-system scientists with many years of experience. This paper does not test the ideas, but rather examines them in the context of five arid-social network case studies with the aim of hypotheses building. Our cases are networks related to pastoralism, Aboriginal outstations, the ‘Far West Coast Aboriginal Enterprise Network’ and natural resources in both the Lake-Eyre basin and the Murray–Darling catchment. Our cases highlight that (1) social networks do not have clear boundaries, and that how participants perceive their network boundaries may differ from what network data imply, (2) although network structures are important determinants of system behaviour, the role of participants as individuals is still pivotal, (3) and while in certain arid cases weak links are engaged in crisis, the exact structure of all weak links in terms of how they place participants in relation to other communities is what matters.

How can we identify socio-regions in the rangelands of Australia?

The Australian rangelands are divided into regions for statistical reporting, cultural identification or administrative and bioregional management purposes. However, many of these divisions do not reflect the characteristics of inland towns. In this study we used the Urban Centre/Locality (UCL) structure (for settlements with at least 200 people) as the smallest unit of analysis to build preliminary socio-regions based on demographic (e.g. Median Age and percentage of Indigenous people in UCL), socio-economic (dependency ratio and unemployment rate) and a few environmental indicators (e.g. Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Rainfall variability). A key finding of the study is that there are strong differences among UCLs in the rangelands. A threshold of around 5000 people is apparent with some indicators across all UCLs around which variability changes. There is much greater variability in the indicators among UCLs with fewer than 5000 people than there is among UCLs with over 5000 people. This confirms the need to consider statistical units smaller than those commonly used such as Statistical Local Areas (SLAs) as these and other regionalisation techniques mask the detail within areas that contain socio-economically and culturally different settlements. The high variability of indicator values observed for UCLs with smaller populations suggests that they have more diverse research, policy and investment needs than larger urban centres. We used a non-traditional approach and grouped UCLs into socio-regions based on their social characteristics instead of their geographic location. This created clusters of similar UCLs rather than contiguous regions. Some of these socio-regions cross administrative and statistical borders. The regionalisation presented in this study is likely to be valuable when selecting case-study areas for research projects and, in the long-term, when developing policy and investment initiatives.

Collapse and reorganization patterns of social knowledge representation in evolving semantic networks

This study introduces semantic network analysis of natural language processing in collective social settings. It utilizes the spreading-activation theory of human long-term memories from social psychology to extract information and graph-theoretic linguistic approximations supporting rational propositional inference and formalisms. Using an empirical case study we demonstrate the process of extracting linguistic concepts from data and training a Hopfield artificial neural network for semantic network classification. We further develop an agent-based computational model of network evolution in order to study the processes and patterns of collective semantic knowledge representation, introducing incidents of collapses in central network structures. Large ensembles of simulation replication experiments are conducted and the resulted networks are analyzed using a variety of estimation techniques. We show how collective social structure emerges from simple interactions among semantic categories. Our findings provide evidence of the significance of collapse and reorganization effects in the structure of collective social knowledge; the statistical importance of the within-factor interactions in network evolution, and; stochastic exploration of whole parameter spaces in large ensembles of simulation runs can reveal important self-organizing aspects of the systems behavior. The last session discusses the results and revisits the issues of generative semantic inference and the semantic networks as inferential formalisms in guiding self-organizing systemic complexity.

Programmes, projects and learning inquiries: institutional mediation of innovation in research for development

This paper explores innovation processes and institutional change within research for development (R4D). It draws on learning by Australian participants associated with the implementation of a three-year Australian-funded food security R4D programme in Africa, and in particular a sub-component designed to support and elicit this learning. The authors critically examine this attempt at institutional innovation via the creation of a ‘learning project’ (LP) in a larger programme. For systemic innovation to be achieved, it is concluded that the system of concern must envisage institutional innovation and change within the donor and external research organizations as well as with project recipients and collaborative partners. Institutional constraints and opportunities are explored, including how the overall approach to learning in this programme could have been reframed as an organizational innovation platform (IP), designing, managing and evaluating IPs at different systemic levels of governance – including within the collaborative programme with African partners, in the constituent in-country projects, in the collaborating Australian organizations and at the level of personal practice.

Pig traders’ networks on the Kenya-Uganda border highlight potential for mitigation of African swine fever virus transmission and improved ASF disease risk management

We applied social network analysis to pig trader networks on the Kenya-Uganda border. Social network analysis is a recently developed tool, which is useful for understanding value chains and improving disease control policies. We interviewed a sample of 33 traders about their experiences with trade and African swine fever (ASF), analyzed the networks they generated in purchasing pigs and selling pork and their potential contribution to modulating dissemination of the ASF virus (ASFV). The majority of the traders were aware of clinical signs of ASF and the risk of trade transmitting ASFV. Most said they avoided buying pigs from ASF outbreak villages or sick pigs but their experiences also indicated that inadvertent purchase was relatively common. Traders had early knowledge of outbreaks since they were contacted by farmers who had heard rumours and wanted to sell their pigs to avoid the risk of them dying. Individual traders bought pigs in up to nine villages, and up to six traders operated in a village. Although each trade typically spanned less than 5km, networks of the various traders, comprising movements of pigs from source villages to slaughter slabs/sites and retail outlets, and movement of pork to villages where it was consumed, linked up indirectly across the 100km×50km study area and revealed several trade pathways across the Kenya-Uganda border. ASF could potentially spread across this area and beyond through sequential pig and pork transactions. Regulation of the pig and pork trade was minimal in practice. The risk of ASFV being spread by traders was compounded by their use of poorly constructed slaughter slabs/sites with open drainage, ineffective or non-existent meat inspection services, lack of provision for biosecurity in the value chain, and sales of pork to customers who were unaware of the risks to their own pigs from contact with ASF infected pork. More effective regulation is warranted. However, limitations on government capacity, together with the strong self-interest that established traders have in reducing the disruption and financial losses that outbreaks cause, highlight the importance of governments and traders co-developing an approach to ASF control. Formation of trader organizations or common interest groups warrants government support as an important step in engaging traders in developing and implementing effective approaches to reduce the risk of ASF outbreaks.

Mediating boundaries between knowledge and knowing: ICT and R4D praxis

This article reflects critically on the use of a wiki as a data repository for knowledge transfer and as a mediating technical platform for social learning in the context of a multi-country programme of agricultural research for development. The wiki was designed to foster sustainable social learning and an emergent community of practice among biophysical and social researchers acting for the first time as co-researchers. Over time, the technologically mediated element of the learning system was judged to have failed. The article is based on an inquiry that asked ‘How can learning system design cultivate learning opportunities and respond to learning challenges in an online environment to support research for development practice?’ The article also considers the wider context and institutional setting in which the knowledge work took place.

Towards appropriate mainstreaming of “Theory of Change” approaches into agricultural research for development: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract Food insecurity persists in many parts of Africa and Asia, despite ongoing agricultural research for development (AR4D) interventions. This is resulting in a growing demand for alternative approaches to designing and evaluating interventions in complex systems. Theory of Change (ToC) is an approach which may be useful because it enables stakeholders to present and test their theories and assumptions about why and how impact may occur, ideally within an environment conducive to iterative reflection and learning. However, ToC is yet to be appropriately mainstreamed into development by donors, researchers and practitioners. We carried out a literature review, triangulated by interviews with 26 experts in African and Asian food security, consisting of researchers, advisors to programs, and donors. Although 17 (65%) of the experts had adopted ToC, their responses and the literature revealed four challenges to mainstreaming: (i) different interpretations of ToC; (ii) incoherence in relationships among the constituent concepts of ToC; (iii) confused relationships between ToC and project “logframes”; and (iv) limitations in necessary skills and commitment for enacting ToC. A case study of the evolution of a ToC in a West African AR4D project over 4 years which exemplified these challenges is presented. Five recommendations arise to assist the mainstreaming of ToC: (i) select a type of ToC suited to the relative complexity of the problem and focal system of interest; (ii) state a theory or hypotheses to be tested as the intervention progresses; (iii) articulate the relationship between the ToC and parallel approaches (e.g. logframe); (iv) accept that a ToC is a process, and (v) allow time and resources for implementers and researchers to develop ToC thinking within projects. Finally, we suggest that communities of practice should be established among AR4D and donor organisations to test, evaluate and improve the contribution that ToCs can make to sustainable food security and agricultural development.