多种生态补偿方案下流域农户生计的响应机制

通过对不同生态补偿方式的对比分析, 可知生态补偿能够在一定程度上提升农户的生活水平, 促进农户五种生计资本的合理均衡分布. 而资金支持的补偿方式对于农户生活的提升最为有效, 技术支持的补偿方式对促进农户生计资本的合理分布更为有效. 从对农户人力资本的影响来看, 政府可以通过对农户给予资金支持, 从而有效促进农户人力资本的提高; 从对农户物质资本的影响来看, 政府可以通过对农户给予技术支持, 从而有效促进农户物质资本的提高; 从对农户金融资本的影响来看, 政府可以通过对农户给予资金和技术支持, 从而有效促进农户金融资本的提高, 弥补农户由于实施生态补偿后所损失的利益, 提高农户的生计水平.     

How do urban vulnerable groups cope with price increases of staple food? The displaced people of Mopti/Mali

As a consequence of the last two droughts in the Sahel, in 1991 still 3,850 displaced people were living in Mopti under precarious conditions. These people represent one of the most vulnerable groups within the urban food system of Mopti being directly dependent on market mechanisms and directly affected by food price increases. But they do not form a homogeneous group, some persons or households are more affected than others.The degree of being affected by food price fluctuations is to a large extent dependent on ethnicity, gender, the number of dependants to be supported by economically active household members and the degree of integration into social networks. The state-run Food-Security-Programme as well as programmes of international development cooperation are playing a very marginal role in mitigating food insecurity in the urban context. This is mainly an effect of shortfalls in the targeting process.     

Factors influencing willingness to participate in disaster reduction

This research is based on a questionnaire of 556 peasant households in the Jianghan Plain. By analyzing the rate of participation of peasant households using a participation model, this study intends to explain the peasant household’s willingness to participate in disaster reduction and factors that influence willingness to participate. The investigation of participation rate revealed that households are generally concerned about engineering measures used for disaster reduction, but the willingness to participate is not strong; the peasant household’s attention to recommendations for non-engineering disaster reduction is high, but the willingness to participate is very low. The quantitative analysis of the participation model of disaster reduction showed that the level of peasant household’s willingness to participate in engineering and non-engineering disaster reduction was dependent upon their attitude toward a variety of measures of risk and the input costs of disaster reduction. The cognition of a disaster’s impact, fertility level of farmland, condition of irrigation canals, and amount of arable land have a remarkable influence on the willingness to participate in engineering and non-engineering disaster reduction. Age of household and joining cooperating organizations do not influence the willingness to participate in engineering and non-engineering disaster reduction. On the other hand, the education level, professional skills, and family size influence on one dimension of disaster reduction, but do not influence another dimension of disaster reduction.     

Post-Cyclone Sidr nutritional status of women and children in coastal Bangladesh: an empirical study

Cyclone Sidr, a Category 4 storm, struck the southwestern coast of Bangladesh on November 15, 2007, causing 3,406 deaths, 2.51 million acres of crop damage, and aggregated damage of US$1.7 billion. It significantly damaged household food availability and increased post-cyclone nutritional insecurity. This study assesses the nutritional status of household and explores influences of various socioeconomic variables on nutritional security. More specifically, it explores the impact of the cyclone on short-term nutritional status of women of reproductive age and children under 5?years. For this study, 331 households living in three villages devastated by Cyclone Sidr were selected. The nutritional status of women of reproductive age was measured based on body mass index, and that of children aged 6?C59?months was measured based on weight-for-height (wasting), height-for-age (stunting), and weight-for-age (underweight). This study found that the nutritional status, along with other household characteristics, of the study groups was not remarkably different across the three selected villages. Findings of this study further suggest that the nutritional security situation was not much changed in the post-cyclone period compared with the pre-cyclone period primarily because of rapid and effective distribution of essential food items among cyclone survivors by the government of Bangladesh along with donor and other organizations. However, nutritional insecurity was more prevalent in the island village relative to inland and coastline villages. Similarly, fishermen were found to be the most vulnerable to nutritional insecurity in the post-cyclone period. Several recommendations are made to improve food aid distribution in the aftermath of a cyclone.     

Determinants of poverty: lessons from Kenya

Poverty and food security are twin concerns of Kenya in a manner similar to many affected developing countries. It is characterized by the inability of the affected households in the country to acquire and retain sustainable livelihoods. The picture in Kenya is bound to be complicated by the projected changes in climate, as well as by population increase and environmental degradation, all which will put pressure on the natural resource base and militate against the achievement of sustainable development. The poverty picture in Kenya has hardly changed since independence over four decades ago despite the enormous resources and efforts which have been directed at tackling it. The current national poverty level remains high at well over 70% in some pockets which remain particularly vulnerable. Following the recent post-election violence, there is now a fear that the situation could degenerate into famine conditions and further hopelessness for a sizeable proportion of the rural population. Government efforts to eradicate poverty and food insecurity spelled out in a thirty year development plan are unlikely to succeed unless underlying causes of inequality are properly addressed. The paper contains suggestions for new approaches to addressing the twin problems.     

From food security to food insecurity: The case of Iraq, 1990–91

The article explains Iraq's precipitous decline into food insecurity following its military invasion of Kuwait. Food security and insecurity are defined and then examined in the Iraqi context. Five vulnerabilities are identified that were activated by international retaliation against Iraq, including the UN Security Council's embargo on trade between Iraq and the rest of the world and the Gulf War itself. The emergence and intensification of food insecurity are analyzed step by step, followed by consideration of how food security might be restored in Iraq. An Appendix assesses whether Iraq experienced famine in 1991.     

Integrating publicly available web mapping tools for cartographic visualization of community food insecurity: a prototype

Spatial profiling of community food security data can help the targeting of geographic areas and populations most vulnerable to food insecurity. While multiple poverty mapping systems support spatial profiling, they often lack capabilities to disseminate mapping results to a wide range of audiences and to spatially link qualitative data to quantitative analysis. To address these limitations, this study presents a web mapping framework which integrates a variety of publicly available software tools to enable spatial exploration of both quantitative and qualitative data. Specifically, our framework allows online choropleth mapping and thematic data exploration through a mixture of free mapping Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and open source software tools for spatial data processing and desktop-like user interfaces. The study demonstrates this framework by developing a web prototype for informing food insecurity issues in Bogotá, Colombia. The prototype implementation reveals that the proposed framework facilitates the development of scalable and functionally-extensible mapping systems and the identification of community-specific food insecurity problems (e.g., food kitchens inaccessible from workplaces of low-income residents). This suggests that web-based cartographic visualization using publicly available software tools can be useful for spatial examination of community food insecurity as well as for cost-effective distribution of the resulting map information.     

Reaching the limits: a geographic approach for understanding food insecurity and household hunger mitigation strategies in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, USA

Research on hunger and food security in the Global South and the Global North has often emphasized different factors and scales of analyses. Unlike newer monitoring systems in the Global South, which evolved substantially following critiques by Amartya Sen, US food security research has rarely combined the two dimensions of food availability and food access. Furthermore, this research has paid scant attention to household coping strategies. This study responds to this lacuna in US hunger research by developing a spatial model for predicting risk to food insecurity based on proxy measures for access (three demographic variables) and availability (grocery store density). The study then employs qualitative methodologies (surveys and semi-structured interviews) to understand household coping strategies in two ethnically distinct areas in Minneapolis-Saint Paul at risk to food insecurity. One neighborhood is dominated by Southeast Asian and East African immigrants and the other by African-Americans. This approach should allow for better targeting of food aid and programs that help alleviate food insecurity.     

Migration and urban survival strategies in Windhoek, Namibia

Based on recent research in Windhoek, this paper demonstrates that it is the well established and widespread social linkages that persist between rural and urban households that are central to the ability of poor urban households to survive. Whereas informal coping mechanisms that include borrowing, piecework and credit are pervasive in rural areas of Namibia, intra-urban sources of food are poorly developed, and outside of kinship circles, social networks within Windhoek are used sparingly, even in times of greatest need. In addition, urban agriculture plays a very limited role at present in urban food supply. The research demonstrates that urban households that are most vulnerable to hunger are those that have limited social connections to the rural areas, and must rely on intra-urban opportunities to get food (including borrowing, begging, piecework and crime). The most vulnerable are female- and male-headed households with no access to farm income and limited/irregular urban incomes. In contrast, those with active rural-urban linkages enjoy significant transfers of food from rural areas that offset hunger and vulnerability in the urban context. Urban-rural reciprocity is therefore not only a one-way movement of people and resources from the urban to the rural areas, but also a transfer of food from rural to urban households.     

Indebted to Fair Trade? Coffee and crisis in Nicaragua

This paper explores the following general question: Why are Fair Trade coffee farmers in Nicaragua burdened by debt? Nearly five years from “the end” of the coffee crisis, peasant farming households committed to Fair Trade standards continue to struggle with a legacy of indebtedness caused by years of low farm-gate prices and declining productivity between 2000 and 2004. Through ethnographic observation and interviews with peasant farmers in Nicaragua, I explore how farmers experience a simple reproduction squeeze that hinders them from “bootstrapping” their own economic development. I argue that the effort to raise the Fair Trade minimum price and premium for coffee through Fair Trade Labelling Organizations International (FLO) in 2008 demonstrated a good first step toward improving farm-gate prices, however, these gains must be understood in the context of long-term indebtedness as well as rising production costs and household consumption costs.     

River basin management and food crisis in Nigeria

River Basin Development is one of the key agricultural programmes embarked upon by Nigeria to meet the challenges of escalating import bills on food. This paper takes a critical look at the various efforts made by the management of the River Basin Authorities in responding to the current food crisis. The rationale for the huge financial allocation made to the Authorities is questioned, and the management lapses in their key areas of operation, such as irrigation, mechanization and extension services, are discussed. It is found that despite the huge financial investments made in the river basins, their impact is hardly felt, not only in terms of food production capacity but also in the production performance of the peasant farmers. The paper argues that the problem of food crisis in Nigeria could be solved by strengthening the ability of the peasant farmers and farmers co-operatives through financial aid and extension services, and not by huge financial investments on high technology agricultural projects, characterized by centralized administration and expatriáte management.     

Agricultural diversification and dietary diversity: A feminist political ecology of the everyday experiences of landless and smallholder households in northern Ghana

There is an emerging literature suggesting that when smallholder households diversify their agriculture, a wide range of food groups will be available, and consequently, dietary diversity will be improved. The present article brings this literature into critical conversation with research in feminist political ecology. Grounded in five years of repeated fieldwork, the article weaves together 70 in-depth interviews, and dietary as well as farm production diversity data from 30 households in northern Ghana. This dataset is analyzed by considering not only the diversity of farming systems, but also household headship, including male-headed, de facto female-headed, and de jure female-headed. Among other findings, the paper suggests that dietary diversity scores are lowest for households who have lost their farmlands to on-going land grabbing in Ghana. Furthermore, the paper suggests that while agricultural diversification is essential, it is not sufficient in itself to address nutritional challenges confronting smallholder households. In the contested and political arena of the household, the gendered politics of access to food can deeply shape how agricultural diversification contributes to dietary diversity. Overall, I do not wish to conclude that there are no benefits of increasing the diversity of farm production. Rather, I wish to stress that farm production diversity might not be the best or only strategy to improving dietary diversity among rural households. Through this case study, I also contribute to emerging research in new feminist political ecologies by demonstrating how the intersection of gender, seniority, marital status, and sexual politics shapes resource access and control.     

Coping strategies and struggle against food insecurity: the case of district Banda in Bundelkhand region,India

GeoJournal - Present study examines the current situation of food insecurity in Banda district of Bundelkhand region on the basis of measures of food quality and food quantity. Coping strategy...     

Characterizing agricultural drought in the Karamoja subregion of Uganda with meteorological and satellite-based indices

Karamoja is notoriously food insecure and has been in need of food aid for most years during the last two decades. One of the main factors causing food insecurity is drought. Reliable, area-wide, long-term data for detecting and monitoring drought conditions are critical for timely, life-saving interventions and the long-term development of the region, yet such data are sparse or unavailable. Due to advances in satellite remote sensing, characterizing drought in data-sparse regions like Karamoja has become possible. This study characterizes agricultural drought in Karamoja to enable a comprehensive understanding of drought, concomitantly evaluating the suitability of NDVI-based drought monitoring. We found that in comparison with the existing data, NDVI data currently provide the best, consistent, and spatially explicit information for operational drought monitoring in Karamoja. Results indicate that the most extreme agricultural drought in recent years occurred in 2009 followed by 2004 and 2002 and suggest that in Karamoja, moderate to severe droughts (e.g., 2008) often have the same impact on crops and human needs (e.g., food aid) as extreme droughts (e.g., 2009). We present in a proof-of-concept frame, a method to estimate the number of people needing food assistance and the population likely to fall under the integrated food security phase classification (IPC) Phase 3 (crisis) due to drought severity. Our model indicates that 90.7% of the variation in the number of people needing aid can be explained by NDVI data and NDVI data can augment these estimates. We conclude that the biggest drivers of food insecurity are the cultivation of crops on marginal land with insignificant inputs, the lack of irrigation and previous systematic incapacitation of livestock (pastoral) alternatives through government programming. Further research is needed to bridge empirical results with social–economic studies on drought impacts on communities in the region to better understand additional factors that will need to be addressed to ensure livelihood resilience.     

Community strategies to promote sustainable wetland-based food security in rural areas of Zimbabwe

This article explores the various strategies rural households employ to sustain wetland use and conservation in the context of the restrictions imposed by the existing legal framework in Zimbabwe. Wetland cultivation is a common feature of the rural landscape and is mainly triggered by subsistence households endeavouring to stabilize their food security, especially in semi-arid and arid environments of the developing countries. Data was collected through a household questionnaire survey, key informant interviews, document review and direct observations. Quantitative data was analysed using ANOVA, Spearman Correlation Coefficient and Wilcoxon in Statistical Package for Social Scientists, whereas qualitative data was subjected to thematic analysis. The results revealed that most households adjacent to wetlands were food secure as wetland conditions enable the provision of a wide range of crops and natural products, contributing almost half of the food directly consumed and 48.2 % of average annual household total cash income. It was also observed that various soil and water conservation practices were adopted and local institutional arrangements were put in place to oversee their effective implementation. Thus, the general result has been increased wetland productivity, improved livelihoods and ecosystem protection. This has largely rendered the impact of legislation restricting wetland cultivation subtle in the local context. The study concluded that there is a need to promote participatory wetland management based on low-cost approaches sensitive to local conditions and the needs and practices of the local communities.     

Exile and exclusion: The legacy of soviet forestry for villages in the north of Perm oblast

This paper explores the relationship between the forestry enterprises (leskhozi) and the inhabitants of forestry villages in the northern rayony of Perm oblast, Russian Federation in the context of the `new regional geography'. These relationships are compared with those identified between peasant farmers and collective and state farms post-1991, and a theory of the cultivation of these relationships as a coping mechanism for both households and enterprises facing difficult economic circumstances is advanced. The situation in the northern rayony is contextualised through discussion of the settlement and development history of the region, which was a recipient of forced and voluntary labour migration during the Soviet period. The paper concludes that in accordance with recent theories of post-communist regional development, the experience of transition in the northern rayony of Perm oblast is determined at least in part by its social and economic context. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Coping strategies with floods in Bangladesh: an empirical study

In the time of the flooding, rural people in Bangladesh suffer from the lingering effects of labor market disruption and income deficiency. This study shows a model based analysis on the research question, ??what coping strategies are followed by the flooded households in Bangladesh and how???. Data are collected through a three stage stratified random sampling technique on 595 flooded and rural households??. Survey is carried out aftermath of the flood in the year 2005, from four different districts in Bangladesh. A major proportion of households are found to borrow money or resources from informal sources, such as nearby shops or the pharmacy, friends or relatives, or local money lenders, to buy food items and other essentials. A censored tobit model analysis shows that households initiate coping with borrowing money after the realization of floods, and gradually lead to cope with savings and selling assets as the duration of flood increases.     

Farming as a livelihood source for the urban poor of Nakuru, Kenya

Farming among urban dwellers in Sub-Saharan Africa is a common phenomenon. The present study, carried out in a medium-sized town in Kenya, not only confirmed this but also showed that farming by urban dwellers in the rural areas was even more important for these households’ livelihoods than farming in town. However, those who could benefit most from farming, i.e. the urban poor, appeared to be underrepresented among urban farming households and those urban poor who did farm, either in urban or in rural areas, performed worse than the farming non-poor. The importance of farming as a livelihood source is illustrated by the fact that in years with very little or no harvest due to drought, many of the poor farming households faced food shortages.     

The state and peasant farmers’ leverage in Kenya

Limited capitalist development has meant that social classes in independent Sub-Saharan Africa are comparatively weak and the peasant farmers are the weakest of all. Isolated and divided, imbued with ethnic as opposed to class or broad policy consciousness, the peasant farmers may be politically unruly, but they are usually at the mercy of those in power. A by-product of peasant farmers political weakness in Africa generally is their economic exploitation by the state and dominant classes in the form of low prices for agricultural goods coupled with high prices for the manufactured products and a relatively high preference for urban over rural investment. Self-help initiative in Kenya is a politically valuable as a semi-autonomous peasant farmer-based institution oriented towards state policy. But self-help initiative is not a simple instrument of any class or the state. It is a contested terrain and embraces all the contradictions of the Kenyan political economy. Self-help has been a useful development strategy for peasant farmers. The Kenyan case study points to the need to examine what peasant farmers are doing for themselves, how they unite, form coalitions and manipulate state structures to their advantage. Finally, there are important struggles taking place quietly in the rural areas, the outcomes of which are by no means certain.     

What is the relationship between food shopping and daily mobility? A relational approach to analysis of food access

Recent research on food access has increasingly focused on how individuals’ daily mobility, much of it based on activity spaces created from GPS data. In this paper, we expand this research through an analysis of a large transit survey (n = 21,298 households) from Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. We do this using relational approach focused on the topological connections found in household travel patterns rather than measures of exposure based on geographic distance. Our exploratory data analysis analyzes both grocery shopping and eating out across the metropolitan area, focusing on the position of utilized food sources relative to home and work locations, utilized modes of transit, and other daily activities often combined with food shopping. Households often used food sources located outside their residential neighborhoods, usually moving toward the central city to do so. Eating out occurred farther from home than grocery shopping, though in many cases close to work. Automobile use was most common for grocery shopping trips, but less so in the lowest income households and in the central city. Our findings show that a relational approach can identify distinctive patterns in everyday food provisioning by emphasizing the connections between food shopping and other everyday household activities.