Browsing by Author "Wolmer, W."

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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.
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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.
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    Wild resources management in southern Africa: Participation, partnerships, ecoregions and redistribution
    Wolmer, W.; Ashley, C. (Brighton, U.K.: Kensington Press, 2003)
    In rural southern Africa, access to wild resources is critical to livelihoods and various attempts have been made by policy-makers to increase the income derived from them by poor communities. This article examines the existing and emerging institutional arrangements in the tourism/safari hunting and forestry sectors and assesses their impact on livelihoods. Case studies of wildlife and forestry management initiatives are drawn from the Eastern Cape (South Africa), Chiredzi district (Zimbabwe) and Zambézia province (Mozambique). Four types of initiative are described: community participation; partnerships or joint ventures between communities and the private sector; ecoregional conservation and redistributive measures. A key trend is the emergence of a number of policy approaches that seek to link private sector tourism and forestry operations with community or local involvement, usually with an emphasis on "pro-poor" commercial investment. The danger is that these policies will constrain more than they enable poor people's access to resources and income and will benefit local elites, the private sector and the state more than the poor. However, where the state is willing and able to prioritise local issues when trade-offs arise and/or communities have firm legal or de facto rights over land with high commercial value, the new "pro-poor" policies for the management of wild resources do hold out some hope for improving rural livelihoods.