Political settlements analysis and the study of pro-poor development: Laos and Rwanda compared

Political settlements analysis is a framework that helps us understand different development trajectories. While it has been used to study the politics of pro-poor growth, there has been little explicit engagement with the economic mechanisms that may alleviate or reproduce poverty. This article extends the political settlements approach to that effect and presents a new, integrated framework to account for pro-poor economic development by conceptualizing political conditions as well as key mechanisms – employment and social provision – linking growth and poverty. This framework is empirically applied to scrutinize two recent development ‘success stories’, those of Laos and Rwanda. Both countries have emerged from a violent past to record over two decades of fast economic growth. The paper assesses how they have done so and to what extent their development strategies have been pro-poor. We demonstrate that the combination of economic growth and of centralized and ideologically committed ruling coalitions has enabled large-scale investments in social service provision that have spearheaded significant reductions in multidimensional poverty in Laos and Rwanda. Moreover, key governance capabilities have enabled both countries to achieve a certain degree of structural change. Yet, this change has been misdirected to extractive industries and hydropower (Laos) and high-end services (Rwanda) with weak employment and limited forward and backward linkages, compounded by a relative lack of productivity growth in the historically more relevant agricultural and manufacturing sectors. This has intensified land pressures and vulnerability, leading to increased inequality in Laos and sustaining already high levels of inequality in Rwanda. Using the ambitious conception of pro-poor development that underpins our integrated framework, we problematize these growth trajectories and argue that neither of them has been pro-poor. We recommend that researchers advance political settlements analysis to examine and strengthen the possibilities for social justice-oriented and bottom-up pro-poor development strategies more systematically

Agrarian class relations in Rwanda: a labour-centred perspective

This paper explores the organization of production in Rwanda’s main coffee producing zone. Most rural households in the region have limited access to land and stable employment. Yet, while differences in property and employment appear small from afar, this paper shows why they are consequential: even when marginal, these differences interact with time and market pressures (e.g. relative dependence on household food production or need for cash) that shape the complex and gendered labour relations between and within generally land-poor households. In a context of heightened precarity, such a labour-centred approach helps chart the prevailing trajectories of accumulation and exploitation

Bittersweet fruits of ‘miracle growth’: Identifying poverty and labour dynamics in coffee heartlands

When it comes to fighting poverty, the prescription of most economists is growth. This means growth of agriculture in many low-income countries where production of food and various commodity crops remains the biggest employer. There are risks, however – especially for local populations marginalized by rising commercial activity or incorporated into it on adverse terms. Based on evidence from the coffee heartlands of Rwanda and Laos, this policy brief highlights tools for measuring the impacts of agricultural growth on poverty in rural areas. And it emphasizes the oft-overlooked importance of labour dynamics in such settings

Proletarianization and gateways to precarization in the context of land-based investments for agricultural commercialization in Lao PDR

Labor is central to the debates on global land-based investment. Proponents purport that these investments are an avenue for rural transformation from resource- to wage-based livelihoods through the generation of employment and contribution to poverty reduction. Drawing on a recent, unique national dataset on land concessions in Lao PDR, this paper uses an agrarian political economy lens to investigate how land-based investments live up to this expectation. The paper analyzes potential determinants of the degree to which different social groups engage in wage-labor within land-based investments. Results show that while land-based investments create a significant absolute number of jobs, former land users were offered predominantly low-skilled and seasonal jobs. The effects of these investments on rural employment are uneven depending on degrees of land and resource dispossession, the extent of job creation, and the availability of alternative opportunities in the region. In the majority of cases, former land users, especially women were pushed into precarious conditions through three processes: dispossession without proletarianization; limited proletarianization; and adverse proletarianization. We argue that the promotion of land-based investments as an approach for rural development, particularly along the gradient of transforming resource- to wage-labor based livelihoods, is ineffective without concurrent opportunities within and beyond the agricultural sector to absorb the labor reallocated from traditional livelihoods. Enforcing labor regulations, including restrictions on hiring of foreign labor, compliance with minimum wages, and relevant skills transfer are essential to minimize precarization and increase benefits for local people. Further, protecting peasants’ individual and common land-use rights is imperative to minimize the concurrence of precarization and increasing traditional vulnerability

Wirkungsmessung Klimagespräche

In der vorliegenden Studie untersuchte das Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) der Universität Bern die Auswirkungen der Klimagespräche in der Schweiz. Dies im Auftrag der Organisatorinnen der Klimagespräche in der Schweiz Fastenaktion und HEKS (“KlimaGespräche”) und Artisans de la Transition (“Conversations carbone”). Dabei interessierten wir uns für mögliche Wirkungen der Gespräche auf die Treibhausgasemissionen der Teilnehmenden (d.h. ihren Klimafussabdruck), ihr selbstberichtetes Umweltverhalten, ihre Verhaltensabsichten, sowie ihr emotionales Erleben und ihre klimabezogenen Einstellungen

The Role of High-Value Agriculture in Capability Expansion: Qualitative Insights into Smallholder Cash Crop Production in Nepal, Laos and Rwanda

High-value agriculture contributes to rural incomes, but does it also contribute to expanding “human capabilities” (Sen, Development as freedom, Knopf, New York, 1999) in a durable way? Through long-term qualitative fieldwork in three landlocked LDCs—Nepal, Rwanda and Laos—resulting in over 150 interviews, we found expansions of the three analysed capabilities: paid work, mobility and social relations. Yet, those improvements were characterised by precariousness: they were mostly not resilient in the face of the economic and environmental risks that high-value agriculture entails. The only example of a durable capability expansion was found in Nepal, where women claimed social spaces through collective organisation. All three study sites showed remarkable consistency in that the considerable risk involved in cash crop production was mainly borne by farmers and rural labourers. Research on mechanisms to guard against these risks at household or individual level is warranted

Agricultural cooperatives: Finding strength in numbers

Smallholder farmers grow a major share of the food consumed around the world and preserve rich, biodiverse landscapes.1 But despite their fundamental importance, many small farmers lead lives of deepening vulnerability – caught between subsistence strategies threatened by ecological degradation and commercial food systems that devalue them as cheap labour. Alternative agricultural models are urgently needed. One long-running movement still shows major untapped potential: that of agricultural cooperatives. These can enable smaller food producers to band together and access markets without losing control of their land, livelihoods, or food sovereignty. Cooperatives have been expanded in various developing countries where smallholders face diverse pressures, including from international markets. Today, about a billion people are involved in cooperatives – many of them successful agricultural businesses combining values and principles of fairness and ecological sustainability.2 But more must be done

FATE: Feminisation, Agricultural Transition and rural Employment

Project summary and description of the FATE project (Feminisation, agricultural transition and rural employment) - social and political conditions of asset building in the context of export-led agricultur

Estableciendo una interfaz ciencia-gestión-sociedad para la conservación de la biodiversidad y el bienestar humano en la Amazonia: el caso de Madre de Dios, Perú

El objetivo de esta investigación transdisciplinaria fue establecer las bases para una interfaz ciencia-gestión-sociedad para la conservación ambiental y el desarrollo sostenible en Madre de Dios, Perú mediante: (1) la identificación y la caracterización de los actores de la conservación de la biodiversidad y el bienestar humano; (2) el análisis de los puntos de vista de los actores sobre las principales tendencias del desarrollo en la región; y (3) un proceso de involucramiento de los actores desde la academia, el gobierno y la sociedad civil. Los métodos usados incluyeron visitas de campo, entrevistas a expertos, un mapeo detallado de actores, una encuesta a actores y un taller participativo multiactor. El mapeo de partes interesadas identificó a 16 categorías de actores clave dentro de los usuarios directos de los recursos de la tierra, los usuarios indirectos de los recursos de la tierra, el sector público, la sociedad civil y las organizaciones de investigación. Según los actores encuestados, la debilidad de las instituciones gubernamentales y la corrupción son unas de las causas subyacentes a los problemas ambientales y sociales en Madre de Dios, y en particular de la minería aurífera y otras actividades extractivas ilegales e informales. El estudio resaltó también el potencial innovador que existe en la región, que ha sido el hogar de varias iniciativas exitosas para la naturaleza y la gente en las últimas décadas