Land producing economically useful crops, trees, or livestock can be managed to sustain yields. Techniques exist that protect land even in fragile ecosystems. But, almost everywhere, land is being degraded through overgrazing, overcultivation, destruction of woodland and vegetation, or poor irrigation practices. Why? It is easy to point to ignorance, overpopulation, or short-term gain. But, single explanations are always inadequate. Reasons lie in the social, political, and economic circumstances that put pressure on the land users to manage land in a non-sustainable way. So, understanding why land users degrade land means embracing the range of relations affecting land users and their intercourse with the world at large.
A Chain of Explanations. Land degradation occurs because of repeated land use decisions under specific conditions. Subtle (and not so subtle) incentives underpin each decision. Yet, they enter the picture at one point along a chain of explanations. To begin, physical changes in soil and vegetation leading to land degradation become noticeable at a site—for example, sheet and gully erosion, or bush or weed encroachment. This leads to symptoms that impact the land user, such as falling or increasingly variable yields, or increased morbidity and mortality of livestock. And, sure enough, these symptoms are brought about by specific land use practices at the site (e.g., tree felling, short fallowing periods, overstocking, plowing down slope, or planting crops that provide no ground cover or protection for the soil when it rains). Why does the land user treat the land in this way? Causes are found in his immediate circumstances, an important level of explanation and knowledge that has to do with access to resources, skills, assets, and time horizons—to name a few—but also to the nature of agricultural society (including the distribution of rights to land, laws of inheritance, and the gender division of labor). Higher still, one can examine how the state affects land management through laws on tenure, prices, or agricultural extension. Finally, one can study important international forces that act through the state to affect land management. They relate to foreign debt, oil prices, or structural adjustment programs. To sum up, the chain of explanations pulls together: (i) Recognized physical changes at a site; (ii) Symptoms affecting the land user; (iii) Specific land use practices at the site; (iv) The resources, skills, assets, time horizon, and technologies of the land user; (v) The makeup of agricultural society; (vi) The makeup of the state; and (vii) The global economy.
… and Logical Interventions. In view of that, understanding why land degradation takes place necessitates a political economy perspective locating analyses within specific social formations and explaining development processes in terms of the costs and benefits that they carry for different social classes. Interventions can then be made at all points along the chain. They would seek to address the policy, market, and institutional failures that break or pervert the necessary correlations between scarcity and prices, costs and benefits, rights and responsibilities, and actions and consequences. (March 2001)
Copyright ©2002 Olivier Serrat
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