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281. Crossing Borders, Changing Landscapes: Land-Use Dynamics in the Golden Triangle

Author:
Jefferson Fox
Publication Date:
12-2009
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
Over the last half-century, public policy has affected land-use practices across the borders linking China, Thailand, and Laos. Political and economic reforms have facilitated labor mobility and a shift in agricultural practices away from staple grains and toward a diverse array of cash crops, rubber being one of the foremost. China has promoted the conversion of forests to rubber agroforestry in southern Yunnan--profitable for farmers, but a concern in terms of biodiversity and long-term viability. In Thailand, the response is at the other end of the spectrum as the government's concerns about land-use practices and watershed management have led to policies that dramatically constrain land-use practices and limit tenure rights. In Laos the future is not yet clear. Government policies provide weak support for both private land ownership and protected areas. In a global environment where national policy has such a dramatic effect on land use and land cover, the factors behind land-use change merit close examination.
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, Migration, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
China, Asia, Thailand, and Southeast Asia

282. Forest Communities and REDD Climate Initiatives

Author:
Mark Poffenberger and Kathryn Smith-Hanssen
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
Loss of the world's forests contributes an estimated 17 percent to all global greenhouse gas emissions, creating both a major challenge and an opportunity for international climate change agreements. In response, global policymakers have proposed that new carbon agreements include rewards for reducing forest-based emissions, an initiative known as REDD–Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. By creating financial incentives to reduce forest-sourced greenhouse gases, REDD projects could generate funding from developed countries to reduce deforestation in developing countries. In addition, some climate change specialists believe that REDD projects could benefit forest-dependent communities, whose participation is key to controlling the local forces that drive deforestation. Some communities are already learning about the new REDD carbon projects. As one villager from Cambodia explains, "We are going to sell our air to the people who are polluting in the city."
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, and Environment
Political Geography:
Cambodia

283. Are the Farmers Always Right? Rethinking Assumptions Guiding Agricultural and Environmental Research in Southeast Asia

Author:
A. Terry Rambo
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
Southeast Asia faces enormous challenges in managing its agricultural and environmental resources, from global warming to biodiversity loss. But chances for effectively addressing these issues may be hampered by the wide acceptance of four basic assumptions that guide the way we think about problems of managing agriculture and the environment. These assumptions form an interlinked system of thought that privileges the traditional and local over the modern and cosmopolitan. When taken to an extreme they lead to the view that traditional farmers are always right and that modern science is the cause, rather than a possible cure, of the serious environmental problems associated with agricultural development in Southeast Asia. Although when first proposed these assumptions were a radical alternative to the conventional thinking, in recent years they have themselves become the new conventional wisdom.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, and Environment
Political Geography:
Southeast Asia

284. The multiple paradoxes of the agriculture issue in Central Asia

Author:
Sébastien Peyrouse
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
Agriculture constitutes one of the main sectors in the economies of Central Asia: cotton production and export, mainly in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and to a lesser extent in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan; a booming grain sector in Kazakhstan; and a long tradition of vegetable cultivation throughout the region. The agrarian question is a sensitive one since the population is still predominantly rural in four of the five republics (all except Kazakhstan) and because food safety is not ensured in the two poorest states (Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan). Land reform would be a priority for the growth of investment, increased productivity, and, consequently, the reduction of rural unemployment and poverty. However, pressed by the choice of cotton versus self-sufficiency in food production, the Central Asian states remain hesitant. They must also manage many structural problems, including high levels of corruption in the agrarian administrative organs, the opacity of decisionmaking structures for the export of production, quasi-slavery in some impoverished rural areas, child labour, and serious environmental problems related to the overuse of the soil.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, and Economics
Political Geography:
Europe, Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan

285. The Impact of the Doha Round on Kenya

Author:
Eduardo Zepeda, Mohamed Chemingui, Hedi Bchir, Christopher Onyango, and Bernadette Wanjala
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
As the first decade of the twenty- first century comes to an end, Kenya's economy is being confronted with a number of challenges that call for carefully crafted, well- informed policies. After fifteen years of stagnation—when the country witnessed zero increase in its gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and investment at levels below 20 percent of GDP—it has risen to become one of Africa's fast growing economies (see Arbache and Page 2008). Between 2004 and 2007, Kenya's economy showed signs of revitalization, and the average annual growth rate climbed above 5 percent, allowing Kenyans to finally enjoy an increase in GDP per capita. However, the political turmoil of 2008 slowed growth, and the current global financial and economic crisis has made it difficult to return to high growth rates. Thus, Kenya now faces shrinking export markets, rising protectionist measures worldwide, and meager financial flows.
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa

286. The Structural Transformation as a Pathway out of Poverty: Analytics, Empirics and Politics

Author:
Peter Timmer and Selvin Akkus
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
A powerful historical pathway of structural transformation is experienced by all successful developing countries, and this Working Paper presents the results of new empirical analysis of the process. Making sure the poor are connected to both the structural transformation and to the policy initiatives designed to ameliorate the distributional consequences of rapid transformation has turned out to be a major challenge for policy makers over the past half century. There are successes and failures, and the historical record illuminates what works and what does not. Trying to stop the structural transformation does not work, at least for the poor, and in fact can lead to prolonged immiseration. Investing in the capacity of the poor to cope with change and to participate in its benefits through better education and health does seem to work. Such investments typically require significant public sector resources and policy support, and thus depend on political processes that are themselves conditioned by the pressures generated by the structural transformation itself.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Economics, and Poverty

287. Biofuels and the Food Price Crisis: A Survey of the Issues

Author:
Kimberly Elliott
Publication Date:
08-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
While the precise contribution of biofuels to surging food prices is difficult to know, policies promoting production of the current generation of biofuels are not achieving their stated objectives of increased energy independence or reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Reaching the congressionally mandated goal of blending 15 billion gallons of renewable fuels in gasoline by 2015 would consume roughly 40 percent of the corn crop (based on recent production levels) while replacing just 7 percent of current gasoline consumption. Moreover, while it has long been known that the net energy and greenhouse gas emission benefits of corn-based ethanol are relatively small because its production is energy-intensive, recent scientific studies suggest that the current generation of biofuels, including biodiesel made from palm oil, soybeans, and rapeseed, as well as corn-based ethanol, actually add to greenhouse gas emissions relative to petroleum-based fuels when land use changes are taken into account. That is, greenhouse gases are released when forests are cut down or grasslands cleared to plant biofuels, or food is planted on new acreage to replace crops diverted to fuel elsewhere. In sum, the food crisis adds urgency to the need to change these policies but does not change the basic fact that there is little justification for the current set of policies.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, Energy Policy, and Environment

288. Rethinking Food Security in Humanitarian Response

Author:
Daniel Maxwell, Patrick Webb, Jennifer Coates, and James Wirth
Publication Date:
04-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
This paper serves as a background document to help frame discussion at the Food Security Forum in Rome, April 2008. It focuses on policy and institutional reform issues centered on the links between chronic and transitory crises. The first part of the paper provides an overview of trends and future challenges. The second considers effectiveness of the “humanitarian system” in addressing food insecurity and whether the current institutional set-up is fit for service. The third part examines links between “chronic” and “transitory” food insecurity, and whether current approaches to prevention and response appropriately bridge these two forms of vulnerability. A concluding section highlights key issues, raising questions on gaps in the humanitarian system's analytical capacity, its programmatic practices, and on food security policy more broadly.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, Humanitarian Aid, and International Cooperation

289. The Time is Now: How world leaders should respond to the food price crisis

Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Global food prices are up 83 per cent compared with three years ago. The resulting food price crisis constitutes an unprecedented threat to the livelihoods and well-being of millions of rural and urban households who are net food buyers. Around the world, Oxfam International and many of its partners have seen soaring prices force people to eat less food or less nutritious food and drive poor households to cut back on health care, education, and other necessities. Women and children's nutritional levels are particularly vulnerable, as women often put men's consumption before their own.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Economics, Humanitarian Aid, and International Trade and Finance

290. Credibility crunch - Food, poverty, and climate change: an agenda for rich-country leaders

Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
The year 2008 is halfway to the deadline for reaching the Millennium Development Goals. Despite some progress, they will not be achieved if current trends continue. Aid promises are predicted to be missed by $30bn, at a potential cost of 5 million lives. Starting with the G8 meeting in Japan, rich countries must use a series of high-profile summits in 2008 to make sure the Goals are met, and to tackle both climate change and the current food crisis. Economic woes must not be used as excuses: rich countries' credibility is on the line.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Japan