Population and Sustainability: Understanding Population, Environment, and Development Linkages

The triple challenge of rapid population growth, declining agricultural productivity, and natural resource degradation are not isolated from one another; they are intimately related. However, strategic planning and development programming tend to focus on individual sectors such as the environment, agriculture, and population; they do not explicitly take into account the compatibilities and inconsistencies among them. Farm households and their livelihood strategies are at the core of the intersectoral linkages approach advocated in this chapter. Three key aspects of the population-environment-development debate are discussed: first, the finding that inconsistencies between public and individual household behavior regarding childbearing and family planning constitute a veritable "demographic tragedy of the commons;" second, the tendency to conceptualize population variables as "unmanageable," and exogenous to environmental and economic change; third, the importance of land markets and land tenure as critical population-sustainability policy issues.Africa, agriculture, Rwanda, population, sustainability, environment, food security, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Consumer/Household Economics, Environmental Economics and Policy, Food Security and Poverty, International Development, Q56,

Food Aid Targeting in Ethiopia: A Study of Household Food Insecurity and Food Aid Distributions

This paper examines the efficiency of food aid targeting in rural Ethiopia based on empirical evidence from a survey of a nationally representative sample of 4,166 farm households conducted by the Grain Market Research Project (GMRP) of MEDAC in collaboration with the Central Statistical Authority (CSA). The survey was administered in June 1995 and covered the 12-month period from the beginning of the 1995 meher harvest to the beginning of the 1996 meher harvest.food security, food policy, Ethiopia, food aid, Food Security and Poverty, Q18,

POPULATION AND LAND DEGRADATION

In this paper, we argue that there exist no significant direct links between human populations and their environments and that the intervening processes create the context within which land degradation occurs. We examine some of the intermediate mechanisms through which mounting demographic pressure leads to soil erosion and the depletion of soil fertility. The focus of attention is on set of variables defined in this paper as the structure of landholding (size of holdings, fragmentation/ dispersion, fragility, tenure, etc.). How demographically-induced changes in the structure of land-holding affect land management strategies (investments and land use) is key to understanding land degradation. Traditional perspectives on population and agricultural intensification, such as those developed by Malthus and Boserup, are incomplete at best. This is because they fail to fully incorporate the intermediate linkages both to and from the changing structure of landholding. As a result, avenues for policy research and intervention have been limited. On the population side, the answer has been to control growth (mostly through family planning). On the natural resources side, the thrust has been the dissemination of resource-saving technologies. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this review for future research and policy action.Land Economics/Use,

Can Food-for-Work Programmes Reduce Vulnerability?

Famine, Food aid, Poverty, Public employment programmes, Transfers

Improving Information and Performance in Grain Marketing: an Assessment of Current Market Information Systems, and Recommendations for Developing a Public Grain MIS

This paper focuses on one dimension which is at the core of all modern economies: how to provide private and public agents with timely and accurate information regarding current and expected future market conditions. Its objective is to show the need for a public market information system for agricultural markets in Ethiopia, and to present concrete proposals that can be reviewed, debated, and modified as necessary by the relevant Ethiopian authorities in collaboration with Food Security Research Project (FSRP) personnel.food security, food policy, Crop Production/Industries, Marketing, Q18,

HETEROGENEOUS CONSTRAINTS, INCENTIVES AND INCOME DIVERSIFICATION STRATEGIES IN RURAL AFRICA

A burgeoning recent literature emphasizes "livelihood" diversification among smallholder populations (Chambers and Conway 1992, Davies 1993, Ellis 1998, Bryceson 1999, Ellis 2000, Little et al. 2001). While definitions vary within this literature, the concept of livelihoods revolves around the opportunity set afforded an individual or household by their asset endowment and their chosen allocation of those assets across various activities to generate a stream of benefits, most commonly measured as income. This holistic perspective has the potential to enhance our understanding of the strategies that farm households pursue to ensure food and income security given the natural and economic environment in which they operate. Diversification patterns reflect individuals' voluntary exchange of assets and their allocation of assets across various activities so as to achieve an optimal balance between expected returns and risk exposure conditional on the constraints they face (e.g., due to missing or incomplete markets for credit, labor, or land). Because it offers a glimpse as to what people presently consider their most attractive options, given the incentives and constraints they face, the study of diversification behavior offers important insights as to what policy or project interventions might effectively improve either the poor's asset holdings or their access to higher return or lower risk uses of the assets they already possess. Since diversification is not an end unto itself, it is essential to connect observed livelihood strategies back to resulting income distributions and poverty. Not all diversification into off-farm or non-farm income earning activities offers the same benefits and not all households have equal access to the more lucrative diversification options. Yet the livelihoods literature offers little documentation or explanation of important differences between observed diversification strategies. This paper addresses that gap by offering a comparative analysis using data from three different countries, Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya and Rwanda. Like Dercon and Krishnan (1996) and Omamo (1999), we emphasize that interhousehold heterogeneity in constraints and incentives must factor prominently in any sensible explanation of observed diversification behaviors. Indeed, section 4 demonstrates that at a very fundamental level - the choice of basic livelihood strategy - households would prefer locally available livelihood strategies other than those they choose, were they not constrained from doing so. A simple appeal to the principle of revealed preference thus suggests that heterogeneous constraints and incentives play a fundamental role in determining livelihood diversification patterns manifest in income diversification data. The plan for the remainder of this paper is as follows. The next section presents the basic conceptual foundation from which we operate. Section 3 then introduces the data sets and definitions employed in the analysis. Section 4 presents findings relating to the observed variation in income sources across the income distribution, to distinct livelihood strategies pursued by rural African households, to the determinants of strategy choice, and to the effects of alternative livelihood strategies on income dynamics. These findings point especially to significant rural markets failures - especially with respect to finance and land - that force poorer subpopulations to select strategies offering demonstrably lower returns while wealthier subpopulations are able to enjoy higher return strategies to which entry is at least partly impeded by fixed costs and lower marginal costs of participation. Section 5 concludes.Labor and Human Capital, O & Q12,

Determinants of Farm Productivity in Africa: A Synthesis of Four Case Studies

Productivity Analysis, Downloads July 2008 - July 2009: 20,

Enquete sur la Sécurité Alimentaire : Phase I; Production Agricole et Utilisation des terres Saison 2000A

REPUBLIQUE RWANDAISE MINISTERE DE L’AGRICUTURE, DE L’ELEVAGE ET DES FORETS; Food Security Research Project (FSRP) et Division des Statistiques Agricoles (DSA)food security, food policy, Rwanda, agricultural production, land use, Crop Production/Industries, Livestock Production/Industries, Q18,

Evaluating Affordable Cranial Ultrasonography in East African Neonatal Intensive Care Units

Neuroimaging is a valuable diagnostic tool for the early detection of neonatal brain injury, but equipment and radiologic staff are expensive and unavailable to most hospitals in developing countries. We evaluated an affordable, portable ultrasound machine as a quantitative and qualitative diagnostic tool and to establish whether a novice sonographer could effectively operate the equipment and obtain clinically important information. Cranial ultrasonography was performed on term healthy, pre-term and term asphyxiated neonates in Rwandan and Kenyan hospitals. To evaluate the detection of ventriculomegaly and compression injuries, we measured the size of the lateral ventricles and corpus callosum. The images were also assessed for the presence of other cerebral abnormalities. Measurements were reliable across images, and cases of clinically relevant ventriculomegaly were detected. A novice sonographer had good-to-excellent agreement with an expert. This study demonstrates that affordable equipment and cranial ultrasound protocols can be used in low-resource settings to assess the newborn brain