Browsing by Author "Scoones, I."

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
  • Challenges to community-based sustainable development: Dynamics, entitlements, institutions
    Leach, M.; Mearns, R.; Scoones, I. (UK: Institute of Development Studies, 1997)
    For all the emphasis given to community-based approaches within recent environment and development policy debates, results in practice have often been disappointing both from the perspectives of implementing agencies, and of certain sections of the 'communities' concerned. This article suggests that among many possible reasons, key problems relate to shortcomings in the underlying assumptions about 'community', 'environment', and the relationships between them which inform current approaches. An alternative perspective, forwarded here, starts from the politics of resource access and control among diverse social actors, and sees patterns of environmental change as the outcomes of negotiation, or contestation, between social actors who may have very different priorities. As the authors go on to show, the notion of 'environmental entitlements' encapsulates this shift in perspective. Specifying people's entitlements and the ways they are shaped by diverse institutions offers a useful approach to the analysis of situations with which community-based sustainable development attempts to engage.
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    Endpiece: The politics of livelihood opportunity
    Scoones, I.; Wolmer, W. (Brighton, U.K.: Kensington Press, 2003)
    This brief article draws together some of the conclusions of the Sustainable Livelihoods in Southern Africa programme. This research has sought to move beyond simple technical/managerial "good governance" solutions to sketch the contours of a realistic, but politically sophisticated, sustainable livelihoods approach. The key policy challenges include: instituting real redistributive reforms, particularly of land; redressing imbalances in market entry and engagement; making decentralisation really work to poor people's advantage; and realising rights increasingly enshrined in progressive legislative frameworks. These face formidable obstacles - and a sustainable livelihoods approach must be rooted in an understanding of the historical legacies and contemporary political/administrative and economic contexts in southern Africa. Such an endeavour would, for example, support mobilisation, lobbying, civic organisation and new alliances around a pluralist and activist politics for livelihood improvement and create links to party-based democratic politics; build on and transform forms of patrimonialism and establish strategic linkages between elites and the poor, and abandon the artificial and misleading separation of public/private, state/non-state in both analysis and prescription.
  • Environmental entitlements: Dynamics and institutions in community-based natural resource management
    Leach, M.; Mearns, R.; Scoones, I. (Great Britain: Pergamon Press, 1999)
    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. --Elsevier Science Ltd.
  • Institutions, consensus and conflict: Implications for policy and practice
    Leach, M.; Mearns, R.; Scoones, I. (UK: Institute of Development Studies, 1997)
    This article is a summation of the sustainable development special issue of the IDS Bulletin (Vol. 28, no. 4). Sustainable development is being heralded by institutions and organizations at varied levels. Sustainable resource management cannot be achieved without recognizing that: 1) multiple institutions are involved in resource management (e.g. village elders and kinship networks both confer access to land), 2) different people rely on different institutions to support their claims to environmental goods and services, 3) the nature of many institutions is informal and are characterized by a regular instead of fixed set of norms and 4) institutions and organizations are not independent of community power and authority relations. To address these issues, it is suggested that a "learning process approach" be followed to guide and empower subordinate groups. Through the process of empowerment, conflict will arise and negotiation is suggested as a path to resolution. Negotiations will have to take into consideration differential power relations and modes of operation. In practice and policy arenas, actors need be assured of uncertainty in relation to outcomes. Policy cannot be directed at a specific outcome given the different actors, their definitions of sustainability and their access to other agents of change. It is suggested that, in certain contexts, idealization of past community relations to environment should be utilized to further the goals of the community (e.g., decentralized control of resources).
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    Introduction: Livelihoods in crisis: Challenges for rural development in southern Africa
    Scoones, I.; Wolmer, W. (Brighton, U.K.: Kensington Press, 2003)
    This is an introductory piece to a series of articles that examine how various rural development and governance initiatives, concerning wild resources, land and water, have played out in practice in a series of rural areas in three southern African countries: Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. By looking empirically and in detail at what has and has not happened on the ground, questions are raised about the nature of the current livelihoods crisis, its origins and potential solutions. What emerges, perhaps not surprisingly, is a complex story connecting livelihood change with the dynamics of politics and power, where easy technical or managerial solutions are not immediately evident.
  • Les bas-fonds des zones arides: Ressources-Clés pour la production agricole et pastorale en Afrique
    Scoones, I. (London, UK: International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), 1992)
    Although the returns to agricultural production are higher in wetlands, labor use also is much higher than in dryland. The wetlands in the savannas of Africa are a key resource for both farmers and herders. This paper describes the characteristics of wetlands and their relationship to the surrounding savanna lands. It highlights their use for increasing, diversifying and commercializing agricultural production and for livestock production. Restriction of access to wetland for livestock is very serious and leads to conflicts. Technologies, as well as policies, are examined.
  • Sustaining the soil: Indigenous soil and water conservation in Africa
    Scoones, I.; Reij, C.; Toulmin, C. (London: International Institute for Environment and Development, 1996)