A generation on the move: voices of youths in the context of climate change, migration, and livelihood transition

What happens at a conference for youth about youth ? On the 28th and 29th of June 2017, Uganda hosted a youth summit as a side event to the 11th International Community Based Adaptation to Climate Change conference in Kampala, Uganda. It was focused on the theme “ Enhancing the ability of youth to build ecosystem resilience , ” . The CGIAR Research Program on Water Land and Ecosystems and the International Water Management Institute hosted a session titled “A youth agenda for sustainable agricultural transformation in an era of climate change and out - migration.” It was oriented around one key issue: a large population of rural youth today in Uganda and the wider region have limited interest in becoming farmers. Climate stress is becoming an increasingly important mediating factor in shaping the movement of youth out of the sector

The Challenges and Benefits of Employing a Mobile Research Fellow to Faciliate Team Work on a large, interdisciplinary, multi-sited Project

Over the last few years research funding has increasingly moved in favour of large, multi-partner, interdisciplinary and multi-site research projects. This article explores the benefits and challenges of employing a full-time research fellow to work across multiple field sites, with all the local research teams, on an international, interdisciplinary project. The article shows how such a ‘floating’ research fellow can play a valuable role in facilitating communication between research teams and project leaders, as well as in building capacity and introducing disciplinary specific skills. It also highlights some key challenges, including problems of language and translation, and the complex power relations within which such a researcher is inevitably embedded. This article contributes to the development of strategies for collaborative projects to facilitate coordination between research teams. It is based on a five-site, cross-cultural project, involving nine partners with a mixture of natural and social science backgrounds, researching aquatic resource use, rural livelihoods, work and education in China, Vietnam and India

Agrarian change and pre-capitalist reproduction on the Nepal Terai

Nepal occupies a unique global position as a peripheral social formation subject to decades of relative isolation from capitalism. Although the agrarian sector has long been understood to be dominated by pre-capitalist economic formations, it is important to examine whether contemporary changes underway in the country are transforming the rural economy. There has been an expansion of capitalist markets following economic liberalization and improvements in the transport infrastructure. Furthermore, neo-liberal commercialisation initiatives such as the Agriculture Perspective Plan provide the ideological justification and pre-conditions for the broader process of capitalist expansion, despite the pro-poor rhetoric. However, just as neo-liberal poverty alleviation strategy is flawed, there are also shortcomings in many Marxian understandings of the transition from pre-capitalist to capitalist agriculture in peripheral social formations. There is a tendency for political-economic theorists to assume the inevitable ‘dominance’ of capitalism, contradicting considerable evidence to the contrary from throughout the world. The central objective of this thesis is to understand how pre-capitalist economic formations have been able to ‘resist’ capitalist expansion in rural Nepal. There is a necessity to understand the mechanisms through which older ‘modes of production’ are reproduced, their articulations with other economic formations – including capitalism – and how they are situated globally. As a case study, one year’s fieldwork was completed on Nepal’s eastern Terai using both qualitative and quantitative methods. The research suggested that surplus appropriation through rent in a mode of production which can only be described as ‘semi-feudal’, has for a majority of farming households impeded accumulation and profitable commercialisation, a precondition for the emergence of capitalist relations. Semi-feudalism has been reproduced for decades internally by the political control over land and externally by Nepal’s subordinate position in the global economy. The latter process has constrained industrialization and rendered much of the peasantry dependent upon landlords who have no incentive to lower rents. The economic insecurity which has arisen in the context of semi-feudal production relations has allowed further forms of surplus appropriation in the sphere of circulation to flourish, through for example, interest on loans and price manipulation on commodity sales. This further hinders profitable commercialisation amongst both semi-feudal tenants and also owner cultivators who farm under what can be termed an ‘independent peasant’ mode of production. Even wealthier independent peasant producers who could potentially become capitalist farmers are constrained both by high cultural capital expenses, oligoposnistic activity by industry in the capitalist grain markets, and Indian rice imports which depress local prices. Furthermore, development initiatives which could potentially facilitate capitalist transition through the introduction of productivity boosting techniques have had limited success under the prevailing relations of production and the associated ideological relations of caste and gender. The above findings are of crucial significance if one is to develop policies and political strategies for equitable change in peripheral social formations such as Nepal

Tackling Change: Future-Proofing Water, Agriculture, and Food Security in an Era of Climate Uncertainty

In 1950 the global population was just over 2.5 billion. Now, in 2013, it is around 7 billion. Although population growth is slowing, the world is projected to have around 9.6 billion inhabitants by 2050. Most of the population increase will be in developing countries where food is often scarce, and land and water are under pressure. To feed the global population in 2050 the world will have to produce more food without significantly expanding the area of cultivated land and, because of competition between a greater number of water users, with less freshwater. On top of land and water constraints, food producers face climatic and other changes which will affect food production. There remains great uncertainty as to how climate change will affect any given locality, but it seems likely that it will have a profound effect on water resources. Projected rises in average temperature, more extreme temperatures, and changes in precipitation patterns are likely to alter the amounts and distribution of rainfall, ice and snow melt, soil moisture, and river and groundwater flows. Now and in the future, agriculture and food security depend on managing water—a finite resource, but variable in time and space