« Previous |
1 - 10 of 16
|
Next »
Number of results to display per page
Search Results
2. When the Water Runs Dry: What is to be done with the 1.5 million settlers in the deserts of southwest Afghanistan when their livelihoods fail?
- Author:
- David Mansfield
- Publication Date:
- 06-2020
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU)
- Abstract:
- It was following the fall of the Taliban regime that people began to encroach upon the deserts of south west Afghanistan and claim it as their own. After an initial investment in shallow wells that ran dry, increasing numbers of settlers began to use percussion drills to sink wells into the ground up to 130 metres in depth. Then, with affordable diesel generators and waterpumps imported from Pakistan and China these farmers transformed what was once rocky desert soil into productive agricultural land.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Water, Rural, and Land
- Political Geography:
- Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Middle East, and Asia
3. Mapping nomad-farmer conflict in Afghanistan
- Author:
- Antonio Giustozzi
- Publication Date:
- 07-2017
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU)
- Abstract:
- In December 2016, the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) launched a European Union-funded project, ‘A three-pronged research effort into essential areas of Natural Resource Management (NRM), Food Zone policy, ground water, and the shifting interests of stakeholders in the conflict opposing sedentary and nomad populations,’ that includes a component about nomad-farmer conflict. The project will unfold over a period of three years and is organised in stages. Project fieldwork involves a total of 16 case studies spread around Afghanistan, of which seven saw a first wave of fieldwork carried out during the first stage. It also includes interviews with government officials, community leaders and other conflict observers, both in Kabul and in the provinces. This brief summarises the preliminary findings of stage one, drawn from the seven case studies. Follow-up work will include not only nine more cases studies and the bulk of interviews with conflict observers, but also additional interviews in the seven case studies that feed into this preliminary briefing.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Conflict, Rural, Farming, and Nomad
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan and Middle East
4. Briefing Note on Fieldwork in Kandahar Province, December 2015 – January 2016: Opium Poppy and Rural Livelihoods
- Author:
- Paul Fishstein
- Publication Date:
- 04-2016
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU)
- Abstract:
- This briefing note provides initial observations from fieldwork conducted between 14 December 2015 and 8 January 2016 in ten field sites within Arghandab, Panjwai, and Zharai Districts of Kandahar Province. In 2014/15, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC),farmers in Kandahar Province cultivated 21,020 hectare of opium poppy, the third largest area after Helmand and Farah, notwithstanding an estimated 38 percent decrease in cultivated area from 2013/14.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Rural, Drugs, and Farming
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan and Middle East
5. Despair or Hope: Rural Livelihoods and Opium Poppy Dynamics in Afghanistan
- Author:
- Paul Fishstein
- Publication Date:
- 08-2014
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU)
- Abstract:
- AREU conducted field research in Badakhshan, Balkh, Helmand and Nangarhar Provinces during the three agricultural years from 2010-11 to 2012-13, to explore the dynamics of opium poppy cultivation: the history of government policies and programmes and the ways in which these policies and programmes affected the ability of rural households to maintain their livelihoods.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Environment, Natural Resources, and Rural
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan and South Asia
6. Running out of Options: Tracing Rural Afghan Livelihoods
- Author:
- Paula Kantor and Adam Pain
- Publication Date:
- 01-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU)
- Abstract:
- In 2002-03, AREU documented the livelihoods of dozens of households across rural Afghanistan. When research teams revisited a selection of these families in 2008-09, they found the majority worse off than before, with many struggling to meet even the most basic of day to day needs. This paper documents the converging set of pressures that have set so many families on the path towards poverty in recent years. Faced with drought, rising food prices and a ban on lucrative opium poppy farming, many households diversified into nonfarm labour as a means to cope. In some cases, this was successful; households able to tap into urban employment opportunities or political connections improved and occasionally flourished. However, for the majority diversification was not enough. The disappearance of opium farming as an engine of growth coupled with multi-year drought left many local economies unable to absorb the flood of new workers. As wages fell and jobs grew scarce, many families grew increasingly dependent on charity, credit and food aid to make ends meet. In this precarious position, shocks such as spending on ill-health or major social events were enough to put many livelihoods in jeopardy. As costs mounted, households were forced to resort to increasingly damaging strategies to stay afloat, selling off land and marrying their daughters early to secure bride prices. In the light of these problems, the paper highlights a need for policymakers and programmers in the agriculture and rural development (ARD) sector to balance their current focus on markets with greater efforts to stabilise vulnerable livelihoods. Interventions must find ways to protect the basic livelihood security of the most poor, prevent damaging loss in the face of downturns and promote rural Afghans’ capacities to take advantage of new opportunities, all while recognising that social factors such as gender norms or local power structures pose substantial obstacles to improvement. In many cases, helping people guard against damaging losses may need to be coupled with ARD efforts that look beyond local bounds, expanding labour opportunities in urban centres both at home and abroad.
- Topic:
- Security, Agriculture, Poverty, and Rural
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan and Middle East
7. Beyond the Market: Can the AREDP transfor
- Author:
- Adam Pain and Paula Kantor
- Publication Date:
- 02-2011
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU)
- Abstract:
- The recently-launched Afghanistan Rural Enterprise Development Program (AREDP) was set up as a mechanism to promote rural employment and reduce poverty through market-led growth. However, the limitations of both agriculture and opportunities away from the farm as a path to prosperity raise serious questions about the AREDP’s ability to achieve its goals. This paper paper draws on the results of AREU's Afghanistan Livelihood Trajectories study to examine these issues. The general decline in household livelihood security it observed suggests that the vision of an agriculturally-led economic transformation has borne little fruit over the course of the past decade. In the few households that prospered, livelihood improvement was often closely tied to engagement with urban economies and links to patronage networks. For the majority that did not, rural diversification was primarily a coping strategy to mitigate agricultural failure, rising food prices and income loss from the opium ban. While the AREDP may boost market-driven agriculture in already productive areas with good access to markets, it is unlikely to achieve the kind of generalised transformation of Afghanistan’s rural economy that it hopes for. If it is to achieve its stated goal of reducing poverty, the programme must do more to test its underlying assumptions regarding community solidarity and market competition, as well as taking greater account of local and regional contexts. It must understand that poverty alleviation is not simply a secondary product of market development, but an end in itself.
- Topic:
- Security, Agriculture, Development, Rural, and Community
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan and Middle East
8. Poverty in Afghan Policy: Enhancing Solutions through Better Defining the Problem
- Author:
- Paula Kantor and Adam Pain
- Publication Date:
- 11-2010
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU)
- Abstract:
- Over the past few years, Afghan policymakers have put aside strategies encouraging pro-poor growth in favour of solutions that focus on expanding GDP. In addition, existing solutions to poverty are becoming increasingly technically-oriented and fail to take local social realities and power structures into account. This briefing paper calls for policymakers and programmers to refocus on poverty and its social causes as a way to ensure that efforts to improve the lives of rural Afghans meet with lasting success.
- Topic:
- Poverty, Inequality, Economic Growth, and Rural
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan and Middle East
9. Where Have all the Flowers Gone? Assessing the Sustainability of Current Reductions in Opium Poppy Cultivation
- Author:
- David Mansfield
- Publication Date:
- 05-2010
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU)
- Abstract:
- Levels of opium poppy cultivation have fallen in Afghanistan for two consecutive years and it now appears that cultivation will be maintained at this relatively low level for another year. This briefing paper examines the reasons behind the reductions and assesses their sustainability, with special emphasis on the key provinces of Nangarhar and Helmand. It identifies instability and drops in livelihood standards caused by coercive reductions in opium poppy cultivation, and finds that increasing levels of wheat production do not reflect a sustainable shift from opium production, but instead are a sign of market failure, growing concerns over food security, and coercion.
- Topic:
- Security, Agriculture, Food, Rural, Drugs, and Sustainability
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan and Middle East
10. From Access to Impact: Microcredit and Rural Livelihoods in Afghanistan
- Author:
- Paula Kantor
- Publication Date:
- 07-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU)
- Abstract:
- Reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan have prioritised access to and delivery of microcredit to stabilise livelihoods. Since 2003, over US$569 million in microcredit loans have been delivered to over 440,000 urban and rural clients. This paper from AREU examines the effect that the availability of microcredit has had on existing informal credit systems and on livelihoods in rural Afghanistan.
- Topic:
- Microcredit, Rural, Credit, Banking, and Loans
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan and Middle East