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Thesis (M.Env.St.) -- University of Adelaide, Mawson Graduate Centre for Environmental Studies, 1995. / Includes bibliography.

Tesis (Ingeniero Agrónomo)--Universidad de Costa Rica.

Tesis (Ingeniero Agrónomo)--Facultad de Agronomia, Universidad de Chile. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliography: leaves 138-141.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1970. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record.

This thesis aims to improve the socio-economic resilience of the riverine communities in the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB), Cambodia, through enhancing the institutional development of aspects of advantages and risks, factors of unsustainable livelihoods, engagement of external and local institutions, and external dependency. Three hypotheses are tested: (1) livelihoods are highly influenced by assets, poverty, food insecurity, hazards and local trans-boundary influences; (2) existing external and local institutions have failed to improve adaptation and resilience; and, (3) development programmes are ineffective due to insufficient funding by the central government and the short-term policies of Non-governmental Organization (NGOs). This research hinges on dependency theory, concepts of adaptation and resilience, and a sustainable livelihood framework. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were employed as the main research methods. The Upper, Middle, and Lower stretches of the Mekong River were selected as case studies. The research discovered four main findings: (1) livelihoods in the LMB have proven unsustainable in the periods 2001-10 and 2011-20, with high rates of poverty and food insecurity due to heterogeneous growth; lack of rural diversification; insufficient assets; inappropriate strategies; and the impacts of environmental and socio-economic change; (2) neither external nor local institutions were able to reify the capacity of the villagers to adapt to shock and stress resulting from floods, drought, and high food prices: nor could they improve resilience to declines in water-related resources, i.e., water, fisheries and forestry; (3) external institutional support for sustainable livelihood development has proven ineffective due to insufficient government funds,high aid dependency and fragmentation, incoherence of development agendas, and unclear Decentralization & Deconcentration (D&D) mechanisms; and, (4) as the main local institutions, Commune Councils (CoCs) have been weakly established with inadequate human and financial resources; poor private partnerships; limited authority in decision-making, and high dependency on external support. Hypothesis 1 is partially rejected but hypotheses 2 and 3 are proven. The research has also contributed to the extant academic literature, namely in the areas of sustainable livelihoods frameworks, and concepts of adaption and resilience. In the interests of realising socio-economic resilience of the riverine communities in the LMB, the future efforts of governments, international donors, NGOs and CoCs should be directed towards: (1) alleviating poverty and food insecurity; (2) strengthening the capacity of adaption and resilience; and, (3) reducing external dependency. In particular, external institutions should fully support CoCs and the communities with long-term capacity building through on-job training, agricultural extension services, and private sector participation.

This dissertation examines three case studies where rural people have engaged with national rural development policy-making processes with support from civil society organisations. The case studies are a Labour Tenant Campaign for land rights, initiated in 1991 by labour tenant communities and civil society organisations in response to increasing attempts to evict labour tenant communities by landowners in the Eastern Transvaal (later Mpumalanga) and Natal (later Kwazulu-Natal). A second case study is a Farm Dweller Security of Tenure Campaign, undertaken by farm dweller communities and NGOs, church groups, and trade unions in 1995 to lobby for legislation to promote the security of tenure of communities living on private land in rural South Africa. A third case study, the Rural Development Initiative, involves an attempt to mobilise civil society organisations to highlight rural people’s demands through a Rural People’s Charter and to raise the priority of rural development amongst policy makers. The case studies trace the emergence of each initiative, and their relative influence on policy. In each case, the politics of engagement and the outcomes of the policy processes illustrate clearly the limited ways in which policy can be influenced by those who are affected most by its enactment. The dissertation argues that the obstacles presented by conditions of poverty and the relative political weakness of rural people in South African society have frustrated their attempts to influence policy to their own benefit. Further, the dissertation contends that these conditions are a direct result of the historical legacy of capitalist development in South Africa, and that their continuation is contingent on the current neo-liberal form and ideology of the South African state. The study provides an analysis of the role of the capitalist state and its contingent ideological basis to provide an illustration of the constraints posed by the policy-making process in a corporatist state. An analysis of the post-apartheid South African state, and its rural development policy, concludes that they are unlikely to provide any relief for poor people living in rural areas due to an adherence to the economic policy of neo-liberalism. The three case studies explore the interplay of ideology and policy processes, and illustrate how the complexity of the policy process increases the dependence of rural people on NGOs in the process of engagement. / Mr. N. Malan

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