Highlands management in a flood-prone watershed: Does reflexive reciprocity make a difference?

Poor levels of reciprocity (or “upstream/downstream” situations) are believed to discourage responsible actions and thus make sustainability harder to achieve. This paper presents a study that compares land use management resulting from concurrent reflexive reciprocal and nonreciprocal relationships in a Haitian watershed. The watershed is typically nonreciprocal in that flash floods and debris flows affecting the lowlands are thought to be initiated by upslope land management. It differs from conventional nonreciprocal cases in that the majority of people living in the lowlands own or otherwise manage upslope land. Concepts of reciprocity and self-interest indicate that downslope-residing land managers should implement more upland hazard-reduction conservation practices than upslope-residing land managers. This idea was tested using data on the number of soil conservation measures applied to upslope land parcels. The resulting multilevel model demonstrated that downslope households report employing more soil conservation measures in their upslope fields than upslope households. Additional communal actions to increase assurances of working in concert, however, are still needed to reduce disaster vulnerability.