The tension between conservation objectives and local people’s need for visible livelihoods is complex and often difficult to resolve. In 2000, the Knuckles Conservation Area was established to include a protected area and a buffer zone to be used for management and restoration. Prior to this decree, small tracts of land in the buffer zone were used for vegetable cultivation by villagers to supplement production from their titled agricultural plots. An ethnographic approach was used in seven villages to explore how households have adapted their livelihoods in response to the change in land, and to examine the factors that may help understand the differences in the livelihood activities chosen. The fundamental needs of the local people in their use of natural resources were not addressed when cultivation in the buffer zones was banned in 1990, creating shortfalls in production for some households, but stimulating others to diversify and invest in higher value crops in their own plots. Physical, financial, human, and natural assets other than land were important to households as they responded to and coped with change. Long-term livelihood strategies are dependent on more than just access to assets; the variability of farm and non-farm livelihood activities observed between households is explained by social and cultural factors. Power relations within the community, personal characteristics of actors such as motivation and risk taking, and local laws and modes of governance all influence, to varying degrees and in complex and multiple ways, how households transform and utilise their assets. The ability to transform assets is also dependent on the dynamics of the household: age and gender, status, social standing, and caste. When conservation initiatives are implemented, programmes need to cater for variability among households in terms of their capacity to adapt to reductions in access to land, and in terms of their aspirations for diversifying their livelihood.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:531857 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Emeleus, Corrine Sarah Fisher |
| Publisher | University of Aberdeen |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=158298 |
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