A publication of The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth
Volume 16, Issue No. 1 • April 2019
Rural poverty reduction in the 21st century Policy in Focus is a regular publication of the International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG).
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) is a Some of the photographs used in this publication are licensed under partnership between the United Nations and the Government of Brazil to The Creative Commons license; full attribution and links to the individual promote South–South learning on social policies. The Centre specialises licenses are provided for each. in research-based policy recommendations to foster the reduction of Specialist Guest Editors: Ryan Nehring, Cornell University and Ana Paula de poverty and inequality as well as promote inclusive growth. The IPC-IG is la O Campos, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) linked to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Brazil, the Ministry of Economy (ME) and the Institute for Applied Economic In-house Editor: Manoel Salles Research (Ipea) of the Government of Brazil. Publications Manager: Roberto Astorino Director a.i.: Niky Fabiancic Copy Editor: Jon Stacey, The Write Effect Ltd. IPC-IG Research Coordinators: Diana Sawyer; Fábio Veras Soares; Rafael Guerreiro Osorio and Sergei Soares Art and Desktop Publishing: Flávia Amaral and Rosa Maria Banuth
The views expressed in IPC-IG Publications are solely those of the authors Cover art: Mosaic produced by the IPC-IG Publications Team, composed and should not be taken as representing the views of their respective of photographs by (from left to right, top to bottom) Andrea Moroni, institutions, the United Nations Development Programme, Asian Development Bank, Deanna Ramsay/CIFOR, Axel Fassio/CIFOR and or the Government of Brazil. Ollivier Girard/CIFOR (all the photographs are licensed under the Creative Commons
7 Rural poverty reduction in the 21st century
11 Labour and rural poverty
14 The puzzling persistence of rural poverty
17 Rural poverty challenges in Latin America in light of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
22 Sustainable rural livelihoods and the Sustainable Development Goals
26 A multisectoral rural poverty reduction strategy: key components
28 Resilience and rural poverty reduction
32 Land access and control: rights, reform, and restitution
36 Beyond migration for/or development
39 Removing barriers to access social protection in rural areas: a core priority to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 1.3
42 Rethinking our strategy of rural poverty reduction: empowerment through a human rights-based approach
45 The impacts of investments in agricultural and rural development on Sustainable Development Goals 1 and 2: a meta-review of evidence
49 How can poverty reduction programmes empower rural women? Considerations from social protection
52 Gender and rural poverty Editorial
While political dynamics differ greatly from one place between the two are becoming more evident. Rural to another, rural areas continue to have legitimate populations are also increasingly diversifying their grievances. Poverty in rural areas is both more prevalent livelihoods: while the agricultural sector remains the and more acute than in urban areas—about 80 per cent most important, other sectors are crucial to generate of the world’s extremely poor people live in rural areas. income for poor people in rural areas. This will certainly need to change, especially if The articles in this issue offer insights into what has been governments and development organisations are done to reduce rural poverty; they present some of the serious about achieving the Sustainable Development progress that has been made and offer suggestions for Goals. Rural populations are on the front lines of climate different ways in which further progress can be achieved. change mitigation and adaptation and will need to be Our objective is to increase the visibility of rural areas and a productive force to ensure the food security needs the centrality of its residents in meeting cross-cutting of countries and communities around the world. existential challenges in the 21st century. We hope that Political will and leadership are needed to make rural it helps contribute to the debate by communicating the development and poverty reduction a priority. Rural urgency and importance of reducing rural poverty to poverty in the 21st century presents new challenges achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and revitalise and opportunities for governments and organisations rural areas around the world. that share the goal of pro-poor development. The classic dichotomies between rural and urban environments are becoming less relevant as linkages Ryan Nehring and Ana Paula de la O Campos
6 Rural poverty reduction in the 21st century
Ryan Nehring1 and in the 21st century must consider the group, comprising fisherfolk and forest Ana Paula de la O Campos2 different levels of interconnectivity, as well communities, while other non-agricultural as the opportunities generated, between activities also constitute an important The widespread industrialisation of the the different geographical spaces. part of their incomes (De la O Campos 19th and 20th centuries was fuelled by a et al. 2018). It is up to governments, vision of development as a progressive Rural societies are as important as ever, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), modernisation of production—from including in the developed world (Scoones multilateral institutions and other actors agriculture to manufacturing. The role of et al. 2017). The Sustainable Development to establish how these populations can rural societies in that process lies at the Goals (SDGs) are now calling for the be part of building a more sustainable heart of understanding large-scale social elimination of extreme poverty for all and inclusive agricultural and and political transformations (Moore people everywhere by 2030. Development environmental transformation. Jr. 1966). Yet processes of structural efforts, social mobilisation, investment and transformation and growth have not renewed attention from States will need The authors featured in this issue come been completely inclusive and have led to focus on rural areas. Historical patterns from a wide range of institutions— to differentiated rural worlds in the 21st of poverty reduction in rural areas suggest governmental, non-governmental and century that have seen less progress that this new focus will need to be based academic—and represent different than their urban counterparts. Overall, on multisectoral approaches that target disciplines and perspectives from around global poverty has fallen over the last some of the most vulnerable populations, the world. Their collective scholarship is several decades, including in rural areas. such as women, indigenous peoples and an urgent reminder of the importance of However, despite these gains, poverty those without land, while balancing these rural development in the eradication of continues to be a persistent feature efforts with overall local development. extreme poverty (SDG 1) by the rapidly of rural areas and societies. About 80 It also needs to be based on reducing approaching deadline of 2030. per cent of the world’s extremely poor inequalities between rural and urban people3 live in rural areas, and, in many areas, including by supporting positive Following this introductory article, regions, rural areas have experienced few interactions between both environments Carlos Oya presents a critical view of the positive changes in their overall well- to stimulate inclusive growth. ‘pro-smallholder’ approach to rural poverty being (World Bank 2018). It is also in rural reduction. He reminds us that the poorest areas where poverty is most severe. The aim to reduce rural poverty in the people in rural areas typically rely on 21st century importantly intersects wages for their livelihoods. Thus, it is crucial This issue of Policy in Focus assesses with a range of other global challenges. to understand labour market dynamics the historical and current state of rural Effects from climate change will be if employment creation is to establish poverty, as well as some of the key factors pronounced in many areas around the productive linkages between urban and and approaches for poverty reduction in world, and rural populations, often rural areas. Instead of past industrialisation rural spaces that are facing both new and dependent on for their livelihoods, will processes, Oya sees ‘industries without persisting challenges. Increasingly high potentially be the most affected and will smokestacks’ as one area of hope, where levels of connectivity are making urban– also be at the forefront of mitigation and rural producers may find new income rural dichotomies much less evident. adaptation efforts. Recent calls to double generation opportunities in horticulture A study by the Food and Agriculture the global food supply also present an and fruit production (‘industrialisation of Organization of the United Nations (FAO opportunity for rural populations— freshness’). Support for such agro-industrial 2017) found that most people in the specifically those living in poverty— sectors may offer decent employment developing world—except for several to meet the world’s food demands. opportunities for many of the world’s poor countries in Latin America and the Agriculture is the primary livelihood people in developing countries. These new Caribbean—live in or around small cities source for poor people in rural areas, labour dynamics are one way in which and towns with populations of 500,000 or and their productive capacity could cycles of poverty can be overcome. less. Thus, despite ongoing urbanisation, potentially be key to expanding future the dichotomies between rural and urban food production in more sustainable and The specificities of why poverty persists environments are increasingly blurry. This nutritious ways. Such a ‘pro-smallholder’ in rural areas is discussed in the article by is complicated by the fact that most urban approach in poverty reduction has been McBride and Quiñones. At the heart of areas in developing countries tend to be put forward to focus on the productive their work is an explanation for why these sparsely populated and maintain strong potential of at least some of the poor ‘poverty traps’ exist and the dynamics linkages to agricultural activities. Rural people in rural areas, although these present in different contexts. Much like areas also contain great diversity in terms of efforts are still incomplete. Oya, the authors see hope in the closing agroecological conditions, social relations of the agricultural productivity gap as one and cultural and economic activities. Those people living in extreme poverty in way to increase rural incomes and provide Therefore, efforts to reduce rural poverty rural areas are also an extremely diverse a path out of poverty. Yet they stress the
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 7 Poverty continues to be“ a persistent feature of rural areas and societies.
Photo: Mokhamad Edliadi/CIFOR. Elderly woman working in the field in Nalma, Nepal, 2017
heterogeneity of rural poverty dynamics, is relevant for bringing power and reminding us that there is no single policy political economy into SDG planning and ‘panacea’. Effective efforts to reduce rural monitoring. He proposes six key questions poverty will depend on different dynamics as an entry point into the politics and in different contexts. policies behind the SDGs, to focus on “real transformative change”. Indeed, it is crucial to understand regional variations in the causes and responses to The question of which policies and rural poverty as policy prescriptions are strategies could best address rural poverty made. Significant gains in reducing rural in the 21st century is taken on by Maya poverty have been made in Latin America Takagi and Ana Paula de la O Campos. until recently. Carolina Trivelli’s article Their article lays out the key components analyses the recent gains in rural poverty of a multisectoral strategy for rural poverty and remaining challenges for the region reduction. It is structured in a multi-tier to meet the SDGs. She highlights some set of components that includes both recent trends of rural poverty in Latin policy and political dimensions. Concerns America. In the early 2000s, the region over broad areas or levels of development was characterised by rapid urbanisation, (i.e. participation, territorial development followed by sustained poverty reduction. and economic inclusion) provide crucial However, the most recent trend of guidance for strategy and programme increased poverty rates in rural areas development. Within these areas, specific is connected to a historical reliance policy arenas (such as social assistance and on extractive industries—from illegal value-chain development) can respond economies to a focus on commodities, and more closely to the specific needs of to the sustained neglect of gender and different rural populations and sectors. generational inequalities. A renewed focus Finally, coordination between different on rural development and improving the stakeholders and the participation of rural world more broadly could provide rural poor people themselves (and their more opportunities for those livelihoods organisations) are highlighted as necessary that have been historically neglected. political components of multisectoral strategies for poverty reduction. One proposed way to both support and measure the progress of the SDGs Marygold Walsh-Dilley gets to the worldwide is the Sustainable Rural heart of the political dynamics at Livelihoods framework. Ian Scoones, a key play in strategies for rural poverty voice for livelihoods thinking, summarises reduction by looking at the importance this framework and explains how its of thinking about resilience. The term “integrated, cross-sectoral approach” ‘resilience’ has exploded as a buzzword
8 in the development community and is migration flows as a last resort for rural particularly relevant for rural areas, as poor populations. Mohan and Flaim present people in these areas are more exposed four recommendations for harnessing to climate-related shocks and natural migration as a productive force in rural disasters. She focuses on the key traits poverty reduction: facilitate remittances of using resilience as a powerful concept and promote wealth distribution; reinstate in reducing poverty and inequality. and fund state welfare structures; reduce In particular, she focuses on ‘resilience- barriers to migration and work; and building’ as a forward-looking concept safeguard migrants’ rights and dignity. that can include participatory frameworks, Their recommendations are based on equity and political processes at the centre a historical trend of state promotion of of development. An important claim migration as a necessary precondition here is that “resilience is not objective for industrialisation: what they call or neutral”, as it depends highly on the “development-induced dispossession”. political and socio-ecological context of This process has often coerced many rural the vulnerable communities in question. populations to migrate out of necessity and limited the extent to which rural One common trait among poor people development, combined with their policy in rural areas is their structural exclusion recommendations, can be used to support from rights or from control over natural conditions of pro-poor migration and resources. Ben McKay’s article on land poverty reduction. access and control describes four forms of exclusion that poor people face in gaining Another important issue for rural access to or control over land, which is populations is access to social protection. key to sustaining rural livelihoods. He Andre Allieu, Ana Ocampo and Natalia describes three interrelated challenges to Winder Rossi outline the barriers that democratise natural resources: recognition, remain for rural populations to access redistribution and retribution. A focus social protection, which is at the heart on the structural barriers and inequities of SDG 1.3: “implement nationally present in rural areas introduces the central appropriate social protection systems role of political economy as both part and measures for all”. The authors of the problem and part of the solution understand that there are both explicit regarding poverty reduction. McKay shows and implicit barriers for rural populations how this is a persisting problem that has to access social protection, due to the historically lain at the heart of rural conflict heterogeneity of rural contexts. They and persisted into the 21st century. present five policy recommendations to address them: consider rural living and Access to and control over resources working conditions; expand and adapt can also promote more inclusive legal frameworks of social protection and
The aim to reduce rural“ poverty in the 21st century importantly intersects with a range of other global challenges.
Photo: ILO/Pradip Shakya. Local women building a cottage in Rajhena village, Nepal, 2011
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 9 include rural populations; make social protection more affordable for rural populations; enhance delivery capacity; and move rural social protection forward. Their article is an excellent outline of how such an agenda should be shaped in the future.
A human rights-based approach has allowed for many policies and programmes to be implemented in rural areas—from the right to food to the right to work. Blondeau, Garcia-Cebolla and Vidar outline the ways in which rights-based approaches can be used in rural poverty reduction strategies. They draw on numerous examples around the world to highlight the power of rights- Photo: Abbie Trayler-Smith/Panos Pictures/DFID. Solar power brings clean energy to poor rural areas, Orissa, based approaches in “enhancing access India, 2009
10 Labour and rural poverty
Carlos Oya1 Despite the continuous dominance of the poor to farm or survive on their meagre pro-smallholder narrative in much of the farm output, whether derived from crop Conventional wisdom on rural poverty has current development policy discourse, production, livestock or small-scale fishing. for a long time proposed a ‘smallholder this conventional wisdom is now being While this reality is sometimes portrayed as path’, whereby changes at the margin gradually replaced by a more nuanced a distress-driven ‘last resort’, it still implies to improve smallholders’ livelihoods are view that a productive agriculture is that trends in rural wages are critical for expected to be the main engines of rural critical for employment creation and poverty reduction in the short to medium poverty reduction.2 The narrative starts poverty reduction through various term, and indeed access to more decent from a consideration of smallholder pathways depending on the agrarian seasonal agricultural wage jobs tends to farmers as the ‘rural poor’ and land context (Christiaensen and Martin 2018). be associated with significant poverty productivity as a key policy target, Thus, growth in agricultural productivity reduction (Van Hoyweghen et al. 2018; since increased productivity can directly may have strong poverty-reducing van den Broeck and Maertens 2017). improve food security and farm income effects through different mechanisms: via direct production and farm surplus. releasing (agricultural) labour to non- Second, the need to move rural workers agricultural activities (manufacturing, (whether producers or wage workers) This view is based on a static picture mining, services), often including wage from low- to higher-productivity activities that unfortunately tends to oversimplify employment, and from less productive underscores the imperative of rural or even ignore the lessons of centuries home production into agriculture and economic transformations alongside of capitalist development. It has other rural-based economic activities. broader processes of structural change been popular, especially among non- and urbanisation. Thus, the ‘last resort’ governmental organisations (NGOs), many Agricultural output and productivity casual agricultural jobs need to give aid agencies and advocates of smallholder growth may benefit poor households via way to better-remunerated and higher- farming, also partly because it provides a farm income, lower food prices, increased productivity agricultural and non- good fit to static ‘logframe’ approaches to wage employment and rising farm and agricultural jobs, which requires the economic development, where a broad non-farm rural wages. The ‘pathways out emergence of more dynamic sectors characterisation of the ‘poor’ is taken of poverty’ described by the Food and and activities driven by more sustained as a starting point, their ‘livelihoods’ Agriculture Organization of the United capital accumulation. described as dependent on small-scale Nations (FAO 2019) now include a wider farming or other small-scale rural activities range of mechanisms such as the often- In China, where it is often argued that such as forestry, fisheries or livestock emphasised greater access to assets and poverty reduction was primarily the rearing (typical of pastoralist groups), credit, increased agricultural productivity, result of institutional changes (household and, therefore, small-scale farm (rural) and less conventional options such as responsibility system) that led to greater productivity growth is seen as the main decent employment opportunities, production incentives for small farmers mechanism for reducing poverty. stronger social protection systems or and, therefore, agricultural growth, it ‘stronger institutions’. cannot, however, be argued that poverty However, history belies this static picture reduction was mainly the result of gradual and presents an alternative view that puts Therefore, recognising the diversity of improvements in smallholder productivity. structural transformations (within and mechanisms and heterogeneity of the between sectors) and the role of labour reality of rural areas calls for rethinking The story of poverty reduction in China, markets in reducing poverty at the centre of the dominant ‘pro-smallholder’ narrative. as in many other successful development of analysis. Both in early industrialised Both social differentiation of smallholder experiences, is one of mass internal labour capitalist economies and the latecomers, farmers (engaged in crops, livestock and/ migration towards manufacturing hubs, poverty reduction has been the outcome or fishing) and the conspicuous presence increasing labour productivity within of a combination of factors that has of rural wage employment are phenomena and across sectors, and significant rural always included structural change, that cannot be ignored and have transformations that led to the mass usually in the form of industrialisation, important implications for rural poverty creation of non-farm jobs in Township and and significant modernisation and reduction strategies. Village Entreprises (TVEs). The conditions transformation of agricultural production, for the contributions of smallholder usually leading to the rise of a capitalist First, the poorest of poor people in rural agriculture to broader structural change agricultural sector, stretching to a wide areas tend to depend on casual wages, in China had of course also been built on range of rural-based activities such as not only in contexts where landless poor the legacy of a radical redistributive land forestry, livestock/cattle raising and wage workers are numerous, as in South reform in the 1950s and the public goods fisheries. This process has been historically Asia, but also in settings where working associated with large-scale investments uneven, diverse and often incomplete, poor people may also have access to some in the collectivisation of agriculture in the especially in poorer countries. land (sub-Saharan Africa) but are too Maoist era (Bramall 2004).
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 11 After the reforms of the “1980s, the contemporary agrarian landscape in China today has been significantly transformed.
Photo: Francoise Gaujour. Rural development in Guangxi, China, 2016
After the reforms of the 1980s, the are actually in sub-Saharan Africa, a task labour to other more productive and contemporary agrarian landscape that has been undermined by data technologically dynamic agricultural in China today has been significantly collection systems that render many forms of crop/livestock production. transformed and rendered much more of the footloose rural wage workers capitalist in the space of only four decades ‘invisible’ and, therefore, the extent and This is particularly true in the current (Zhang et al. 2015). Transformations like nature of farm and non-farm rural wage context of globalisation, in which the ones experienced in Europe, USA or in employment poorly understood (Oya increasingly sophisticated global value China, for example, do not, however, need 2015). Indeed, understanding labour chains coordinating the production and to (and perhaps cannot) be replicated market dynamics, within and across trade of an ever-wider range of agricultural with identical features in contemporary economic sectors, and the resulting commodities and derived products low-income countries, especially if quantity and quality of jobs is crucial continue to penetrate a growing number we consider the environmental costs to understand rural poverty dynamics. of producing countries, including many of historical examples of accelerated among the poorest in the world. transformation through fossil How can more and better jobs be created fuel-driven industrialisation. within the rural space in agrarian-based The global business revolution of the past economies? Considering the limitations of few decades, the growth in agricultural Despite the growing urbanisation in poor manufacturing development in absorbing trade and the continuous technological agrarian-based economies, especially the vast reserve army of labour present innovation impacting on agricultural in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, in rural areas of developing countries, production, processing and trade have where the bulk of the world’s poor there is now growing consensus that led to the emergence of new ‘industries people are concentrated, demographic structural change is not simply a process without smokestacks’ associated with an projections indicate significant growth of transferring surplus labour from impressive range of agricultural products, of the labour force and new rural labour smallholder farming (including livestock, especially in horticulture. market entrants in future decades. forestry and fisheries) to industries with Therefore, the imperative of job creation smokestacks in overpopulated urban The boundaries of ‘farming’ need to be and decent work in rural areas of Africa agglomerations. While that process is reconsidered in light of the emergence of and Asia cannot be ignored. Urban-based certainly under way, albeit unevenly, the ‘industrialisation of freshness’, which manufacturing and services will indeed there are many other ways of increasing is manifested in the growth of factory-like absorb an increasing share of the labour labour productivity by creating jobs farming with degrees of technological force in the near future, as they have done in a wide range of activities without sophistication that may well exceed those recently in most parts of Asia, but rural- smokestacks, even in the agricultural experienced in certain manufacturing based activities will need to generate high sector, broadly understood. sectors (Cramer et al. 2018). numbers of jobs in absolute terms. In the long term, economic history has The employment and poverty reduction The nature of the new jobs will also taught us that, apart from a sustained effects of these developments cannot matter, as poverty reduction will be an transfer of surplus labour from low- be ignored (van den Broeck and outcome of the returns to labour that productivity agriculture to higher- Maertens 2017). Indeed, the employment new activities have to offer. This requires productivity agriculture, capitalist effects—direct, indirect and induced— an understanding of what jobs there development leads to the transfer of of the growth of export-oriented
12 There are many “African countries, such as Ethiopia, where much of the rural population still tries to survive in low-technology, low-productivity small-scale farming or livestock rearing.
Photo: Stephan Bachenheimer/World Bank. A farmer sorts tomatoes, Ethiopia, 2012
technologically dynamic horticultural Christiaensen, L., and W. Martin. 2018. and fruit production are very substantial “Agriculture, structural transformation and poverty reduction–Eight new insights.” (Cramer et al. 2018). There are many World Development 109: 413–416. African countries, such as Ethiopia, where much of the rural population Cramer, C., J. Di John, and J. Sender. 2018. “Poinsettia Assembly and Selling Emotion: still tries to survive in low-technology, High Value Agricultural Exports in Ethiopia.” low-productivity small-scale farming or AFD Research Papers Series, No. 2018-78, August. livestock rearing, but where thousands of Paris: Agence Française de Développement. jobs have been created by emerging farm FAO. 2019. “Reduce Rural Poverty.” Food and industries without smokestacks. Perhaps Agriculture Organization of the United Nations these are not enough yet to absorb the website.
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 13 The puzzling persistence of rural poverty
Linden McBride1 and Esteban J. Quiñones2 Overall, the evidence most consistent labour are greater in non-agricultural than with the formal theory of poverty traps agricultural sectors and the related finding Persistent poverty in rural areas does not is that of geographic poverty traps that household expenditures are greater depend on the formal identification of a (Kraay and McKenzie 2014). Using data in urban than in rural areas has been poverty trap; embracing this empirical from 1990s Bangladesh, Ravallion and documented by many scholars (Young 2013; reality is essential for researchers and Woden (1999) find that living standards Lakagos and Waugh 2013; Gollin et al. 2013; policymakers alike. In this article we are lower in poor areas than in non-poor McCullough 2017). Known as the agricultural discuss the conundrum of persistent rural areas after controlling for observable productivity gap, these sector- and location- poverty and the extent to which the theory non-geographic household characteristics, determined returns suggest that poverty, and empirics of poverty traps can assist us suggesting significant, spatially inequality and underdevelopment could be in better understanding and fighting rural determined, structural differences in addressed by simply reallocating production poverty. We discuss the geographic nature returns to household and human capital. inputs such as technology and labour across of persistent poverty, and the relationship Jalan and Ravallion (2002) also find that sectors and locations. between rural poverty and the agricultural geographic characteristics determine productivity gap. Finally, we highlight the productivity of households’ capital. Of course, the solution is not so easy: Young some of the recent progress made in (2013) Lakagos and Waugh (2013), Gollin et understanding, and designing policy An extensive body of work by Chetty and al. (2013), and Herrendorf and Schoellman for, the multidimensional factors that Hendren (2018a; 2018b) also demonstrates (2018) find that these productivity and contribute to persistent rural poverty. the importance of geography and related expenditure gaps are not the consequence contextual factors in determining the long- of market failures and barriers to mobility The theory of multiple equilibria poverty term health, education and opportunity of but, rather, the efficient sorting of labour, traps is conceptually compelling in several individuals even in the developed world. based on skills and abilities, between respects. It suggests that there is a non- Although they do not directly test for sectors. If the skills and abilities on which poor, stable level of welfare that households the presence of poverty traps, the work labour sorts are randomly distributed, then could enjoy if they could just be pushed by Chetty and colleagues is a striking poverty traps are indeed a poor explanation over a threshold. It also suggests ready demonstration of the factors that shape for the productivity gap. However, given that policy solutions such as social safety nets to upward mobility for households that there is overwhelming evidence that human keep households from falling into poverty, are better off to begin with and those capital development is linked to parental transfers to pull households out of poverty, that result in persistent poverty resources, it is reasonable that poverty and targeted interventions, such as index for marginalised households. trap-like welfare dynamics may play a role. insurance and microcredit, to correct the sort of financial market failures that, Geographically determined returns to Additionally complicating the combined with uneven access and returns capital suggest that migration is a promising identification of poverty traps is the to technologies, can produce poverty route out of poverty; indeed, many scholars fact that, over short time scales, there trap dynamics (Barrett 2005). have found just that (for example, see is little observable difference between Clemens et al. 2008 and Bryan et al. 2014). conditional convergence and a poverty However, with the exception of studies that A related literature finds that livelihood shifts trap (Ghatak 2015). Moreover, convergence focus on remote populations for which: combined with migration to less rural areas may be so slow as to make the distinction has high returns (Beegle et al. 2011). The between conditional convergence and a yy livestock is the primary productive upfront and risky investment of migration poverty trap meaningless, as the promise asset and store of wealth (for example, gives rise to diverging welfare trajectories of convergence to a higher equilibrium see Lybbert et al. 2004); or characterised by high returns for those who is little consolation to households facing yy differences in returns to economic migrate and low returns for those who long-term poverty and inequality. activities are determined by geographic remain behind. In an analysis of seasonal For example, Arunachalam and Shenoy factors (For example, see Ravallion and internal migration in Bangladesh, Bryan et al. (2017) find no evidence of a poverty trap Woden 1999; Jalan and Ravallion 2002), (2014) identify just such poverty trap-like in India, but strong evidence for caste- the empirical evidence for this classic dynamics in which very poor households determined conditional convergence. definition of poverty traps is “elusive” must overcome a cash-on-hand threshold In similar fashion, Dillon and Quiñones (Kraay and McKenzie 2014). The lack to enjoy the significant and positive returns (2016) do not find evidence of poverty of strong evidence for poverty traps of the risky undertaking of migration. traps in northern Nigeria in communities may be due to inadequate data or the where livestock remains the dominant methodological challenges of their In part, the puzzle of rural poverty is the asset, but show that growth is slow and identification. Or the lack of strong puzzle of the productivity gap between that cultivation of additional land is a evidence may be because poverty traps agricultural and non-agricultural sectors. mechanism through which households are truly uncommon. The empirical regularity that returns to avoid falling into poverty.
14 households, as well as the heterogeneous impacts of anti-poverty programmes (Barrett et al. 2018). Athey and Imbens (2017) and Chernozhukov et al. (2018) offer promising developments in this direction in their work on estimating heterogeneous treatment effects using machine-learning methods. Along these same lines, Barrett et al. (2018) argue for an integrative model of and policy approach to poverty that encompasses assets, capabilities and shocks and accommodates not just the physical but also the psychological aspects of deprivation.
As reasoned by T.W. Schultz in his 1979 Nobel Lecture, “most of the world’s poor Photo: John Hogg/World Bank. Children studying in Ondangwa, a small town that combines rural and modern people earn their living from agriculture, life, Namibia, 2007
A recent collection of research on poverty On a micro scale, programmes such as Arunachalam, R., and A. Shenoy. 2017. “Poverty traps (Barrett et al. 2018) emphasises the microfinance, index insurance, safety traps, convergence, and the dynamics of multidimensional nature of poverty and nets and cash transfers have each shown household income.” Journal of Development Economics 126: 215–230. points out that failure to recognise the promising results, although evaluations of multiple dimensions of, and underlying such interventions are ongoing (Jensen et Athey, S., and G. W. Imbens. 2017. “The mechanisms that contribute to, poverty— al. 2017; Barrett et al. 2018). In reviewing Econometrics of Randomized Experiments.” In Handbook of Economic Field Experiments, including asset dynamics, heterogeneous the latest research on poverty traps, Barrett Vol. 1, edited by Esther Duflo and Abhijit capabilities, financial market failures, et al. (2018) point out that interventions Banerjee. Amsterdam: North Holland, 73–140. behaviour and preferences in the face of addressing the underlying structural Barrett, C. B. 2005. “Rural poverty dynamics: risk and shocks, and psychological factors mechanisms of persistent poverty development policy implications.” Agricultural such as depression and aspirations—can (e.g. resolving financial market failures) Economics 32(S1): 45–60. lead to poorly targeted programmes that, can have big, indirect and lasting impacts. Barrett, C. B., T. Garg, and L. McBride. 2016. at best, are inefficient and, at worst, In addition, they find that programmes “Well-being dynamics and poverty traps.” lead to unintended consequences. tackling multiple dimensions of poverty Annual Review of Resource Economics 8(1). head-on have had large impacts, citing Barrett, C. B., M. Carter, J.P. Chavas, and M.R. Increasingly innovative and promising integrated poverty graduation programmes Carter (eds). 2018. The economics of poverty traps. approaches—from nation- and continent- such as those developed by BRAC. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. wide policies to local, small-scale, but Baulch, B., and J. Hoddinott. 2000. “Economic hopefully scalable, interventions—suggest Because path dynamics can be shaped by mobility and poverty dynamics in developing that anti-poverty policies are moving in and vary considerably due to geographic, countries.” The Journal of Development Studies the right direction, albeit non-linearly. societal, household and psychological 36(6): 1–24. Tackling the agricultural productivity gap, characteristics, and because market failures Beegle, K., J. De Weerdt, and S. Dercon. 2011. the Comprehensive African Agricultural can be household-specific, we should not “Migration and economic mobility in Tanzania: Evidence from a tracking survey.” Review of Development Programme, initiated in seek panaceas, nor should we expect that Economics and Statistics 93(3): 1010–1033. 2003, has the intention of increasing all households will benefit in the same way agricultural productivity and decreasing from an intervention. This means we have Benin, S. 2016. “Impacts of CAADP on Africa’s Agricultural-Led Development.” IFPRI Discussion rural poverty across the African continent a great deal to learn about how welfare Paper, No. 01553. Washington, DC: International via public expenditures in the agricultural dynamics differ across individuals and Food Policy Research Institute.
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 15 We have a great deal “more to learn about the economics of agriculture, mobility and poverty, as well as the shared factors shaping them.
Photo: DFAT. Elderly woman holds up some of the vegetables she has grown in Guguletu, South Africa, 2009
Bryan, G., S. Chowdhury, and A. M. Mobarak. Herrendorf, B., and T. Schoellman. 2018. 2014. “Underinvestment in a profitable “Wages, human capital, and barriers to technology: The case of seasonal migration in structural transformation.” American Economic Bangladesh.” Econometrica 82(5): 1671–1748. Journal: Macroeconomics 10(2): 1–23.
Chernozhukov, V., M. Demirer, E. Duflo, and I. Jalan, J., and M. Ravallion. 2002. “Geographic Fernandez-Val. 2018. “Generic machine learning poverty traps? A micro model of consumption inference on heterogeneous treatment effects growth in rural China.” Journal of Applied in randomized experiments.” Working Paper, Econometrics 17(4): 329–346. No. 24678. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. Jensen, N. D., C. B. Barrett, and A. G. Mude. 2017. “Cash transfers and index insurance: Chetty, R., and N. Hendren. 2018a. “The impacts A comparative impact analysis from of neighborhoods on intergenerational mobility I: northern Kenya.” Journal of Development Childhood exposure effects.” The Quarterly Economics 129: 14–28. Journal of Economics 133(3): 1107–1162. Kraay, A., and D. McKenzie. 2014. “Do poverty Chetty, R., and N. Hendren. 2018b. “The impacts traps exist? Assessing the evidence.” Journal of neighborhoods on intergenerational mobility II: of Economic Perspectives 28(3): 127–148. County-level estimates.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 133(3): 1163–1228. Lagakos, D., and M. E. Waugh. 2013. “Selection, agriculture, and cross-country Clemens, M. A., C. E. Montenegro, and L. Pritchett. productivity differences.” American 2009. “The place premium: wage differences Economic Review 103(2): 948–980. for identical workers across the US border.” HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series, Lybbert, T. J., C. B. Barrett, S. Desta, and RWP09-004. Cambridge, MA: John F. Kennedy D. L. Coppock. 2004. “Stochastic wealth School of Government, Harvard University. dynamics and risk management among a poor population.” Economic Journal 114: 750–777. Dang, H. A., and P. Lanjouw. forthcoming. “Poverty Dynamics in India between 2004-2012: McCullough, E. B. 2017. “Labor productivity Insights from Longitudinal Analysis and employment gaps in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Using Synthetic Panel Data.” Economic Food Policy 67: 133–152. Development and Cultural Change. Mogues, T., S. Fan, and S. Benin. 2015. “Public Dillon, A., and E. J. Quiñones. 2016. “Asset Dynamics Investments in and for Agriculture.” European and Poverty Traps in Northern Nigeria.” Paper Journal of Development Research 27(3): 337–352. presented at the Centre for the Study of African Economies conference, 22–22 March, Oxford. Ravallion, M., and Q. Woden. 1999. “Poor areas, or only poor people?” Easterly, W. 2006. The White Man’s Burden: Journal of Regional Science 39(4): 689–711. Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. Young, A. 2013. “Inequality, the urban-rural New York: The Penguin Press. gap, and migration.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 128(4): 1727–1785. Ghatak, M. 2015. “Theories of poverty traps and anti-poverty policies.” The World Bank Economic Review 29: S77–S105.
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16 Rural poverty challenges in Latin America in light of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
Carolina Trivelli1 There is, therefore, an urgent need to other dimensions of well-being, they resume and renew initiatives aimed at are comparable in time and between Despite the drastic reduction in poverty reducing rural poverty globally, not only countries and are considered official rates in Latin America over the past to return to the downward trend, but in most countries in the region. 15 years (from more than 65 per cent to also because rural poverty continues less than 48.6 per cent), rural poverty— to affect practically half of the rural Countries are increasingly implementing whether monetary or multidimensional— population of Latin America. The effort measurement methods that seek to remains unacceptably high, far greater required is substantial and cannot be capture the multidimensional character than in urban areas, and strongly limited to waiting for better growth of poverty. This tendency, strongly concentrated in certain territories and rates or continuing to do what has based on efforts by the Oxford Policy vulnerable populations (ECLAC 2018). been done over recent years. These and Human Development Initiative Today, almost half of all people living will no longer suffice. (OPHI),4 has made it possible to arrive in rural areas in Latin America live in at estimates that, although requiring poverty—almost twice the average Rural poverty in Latin America better adaptation to the rural urban poverty rate for the region. According to the United Nations environment, also indicate a reduction Economic Commission for Latin America in rural poverty levels in recent years. The key issue is that rural poverty, which and the Caribbean (ECLAC 2018), However, they show that poverty remains had been falling steadily in the region, 48.6 per cent of the rural population at high levels, even higher than the rates stopped decreasing in 2014, and has in Latin America live in poverty, and registered using monetary measurements even increased since: between 2014 22.5 per cent in extreme poverty. Although (Santos et al. 2015). and 2016 the number of people living both rates are substantially lower than in poverty in rural areas increased by those of the early 1990s, they are double Comparing the two measures to better 2 million. Current levels of rural poverty the urban poverty rate and three times the understand rural poverty trends, we in Latin America make it very difficult urban extreme poverty rate.3 found that almost all countries show to achieve the goals set out in the 2030 progress in both poverty measures.5 Agenda for Sustainable Development, These poverty indicators are the monetary Some countries have been very effective particularly Sustainable Development indicators that assess the capacity at increasing rural consumption without Goal (SDG) 1 (“End poverty in all its for consumption of rural households. improving general well-being (such as forms everywhere”).2 Although they do not account for Brazil and Peru), while others have
FIGURE 1: Rural monetary poverty rates in Latin American and Caribbean countries
100% 88% 90% 83% 78% 79% 80% 73% 71% 82% 70% 64% 66% 70% 77% 61% 57% 56% 55% 60% 65% 50% 54% 51% 39% 40% 49% 46% 45% 44% 42% 41% 27% 30% 20% 29% 27% 13% 22% 10% 2% 7% 0% 1990 2013 1989 2014 1993 2009 1997 2013 1999 2014 1995 2014 1997 2014 1989 2014 2002 2014 1991 2014 2001 2014 1990 2014 2000 2014 1990 2014 1990 2013 2007 2014 Honduras GuatemalaNicaragua BoliviaParaguayEl Salvador Peru Mexico Dominican Colombia Panama Brazil EcuadorCosta Rica Chile Uruguay Republic
Note: The dates given for each country correspond to the first and last years for which ECLAC data are available. Source: Author’s elaboration based on ECLAC’s Household Database.
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 17 FIGURE 2: Percentage of people in a situation of rural multidimensional poverty in Latin American and Caribbean countries, around 2005 and 2012
99% 95% 95% 100% 91% 88% 90% 94% 78% 80% 87% 86% 86% 86% 74% 73% 68% 70% 74% 69% 62% 61% 60% 66% 59% 50% 52% 51% 43% 41% 40% 27% 30% 30% 20% 27% 21% 10% 13% 12% 0% 2005 2009 2003 2011 2003 2012 2000 2006 2006 2010 2004 2012 2005 2011 2008 2012 2004 2012 2005 2012 2005 2012 2005 2012 2005 2012 2005 2012 2003 2011 NicaraguaBoliviaPeru GuatemalaHondurasEl Salvador Paraguay Colombia Mexico EcuadorDominican BrazilCosta Rica Uruguay Chile Republic
Source: Santos et al. (2015), based on household surveys from each country.
been able to reduce both poverty This is not a new phenomenon. Rural the population now live in urban areas, measures (such as Uruguay and the poverty has historically gone hand in the face of poverty is no longer rural.9 Dominican Republic) or unable to hand with the region’s economic model, According to ECLAC (2018), 29 per cent of significantly reduce either of them based mostly on extractive industries— people living in poverty in the region and (such as Honduras and Guatemala). most rurally based but not involving the 41 per cent of those in extreme poverty poor populations—with few linkages to live in rural areas. Despite the greater Each poverty measure reflects the types other economic activities and insufficient incidence of rural poverty, its lesser of policies implemented by each country, job creation. Despite the recent period of weight in the population as a whole revealing a complex approach to achieving economic growth experienced by Latin (and in the electoral arena), combined more consumption and better living American economies, this economic with the complexities and high costs conditions. Some invest in improving model’s impact on rural poverty has of addressing it, have driven it off the services for poor people in rural areas, not been enough to overcome the priority list of public policy.10 but they have not been able to help differences between urban and rural poor households translate these better areas.8 Historically, the persistence of The second new trend is a rapid and steady conditions into more consumption. poverty in most of the region’s countries reduction in rural poverty between 2002 has been in rural areas. Evidence has and 2012. This reduction is explained Cash transfer programmes—the most also shown that certain rural territories by both the recent economic windfall prominent social programmes in the concentrate the greatest and deepest experienced by some of the region’s region6—have had a positive and poverty, and that they tend to face countries and by the implementation significant effect on consumption, but poverty traps and inequalities that limit of policies targeting the groups and without quality services or access to their opportunities for overcoming their territories suffering the greatest exclusion minimum infrastructure, such as housing current status (Bebbington et al. 2017; and poverty.11 Average growth in the and safe drinking water, they are not RIMISP 2018). Territories facing poverty region was high, and in some countries enough to ensure increased consumption, traps require structural transformations it was even higher for the poorest 40 per which can translate into better and and a complex set of public and private cent of the population (Cord et al. 2015). sustained living conditions. The use of goods and services to be able to allow However, the agricultural sector grew multiple poverty measures helps us citizens to escape the poverty trap and (except for some of the agroindustry) at a understand poverty and allows us to move sustainably out of it. slower pace than the rest of the regional better identify how to improve countries’ economy, affecting the direct benefits to efforts to reduce rural poverty.7 New developments agricultural producers, all living in rural At least three new trends related to rural areas (ECLAC, FAO, and IICA 2017). Regardless of whether monetary poverty have appeared in the early 21st measurements, multidimensional century, influencing how the challenge High and sustained economic growth has methodologies or other sets of indicators of eliminating poverty has been faced. been crucial for the reduction of poverty. are used, there is no question that rural The first stems from the rapid urbanisation However, just as important were the poverty levels are unacceptably high. of Latin America. As nearly 81 per cent of policies that leveraged and augmented
18 Rural poverty needs “to be eliminated not only due to a moral imperative or to ensure citizenship and rights to rural people, but because it is at the core of several interlinked processes affecting opportunities for development and peace Photo: Christopher Rose. Family farm in Taray, Peru, 2013
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 19 A renewed emphasis “ on the sustained reduction of rural poverty is fundamental to achieving social inclusion for all citizens.
Photo: Pedro Ventura/Agência Brasília. The programme for the purchase of agricultural production ensures the purchase of foods from smallholder farmers, Brasília, Brazil, 2015
remain. For example, there are still and are centred on the rural world, The main challenge, however, remains persistent gaps between urban and which requires leaders who work the inclusion in national agendas of rural areas, which demonstrate that rural together and have actual decision- concrete commitments to eliminate areas respond less to growth. Moreover, making power. It is both a political and rural poverty. the gaps could widen with economic an economic issue. The challenge today, growth alone.15 with higher or lower growth rates, is to create the conditions for such leaders Bebbington, A., J. Escobal, I. Soloaga, and In this scenario of moderate growth and to emerge and act, so that they may A. Tomaselli. 2016. Trampas territoriales de pobreza, desigualdad y baja movilidad social: persistent rural lag, there is an urgent carry greater weight in public debate, Los casos de Chile, México y Perú. Santiago, Chile: need for renewed debate to identify grounded in an institutional framework Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias and Centro issues and commit to new interventions that guarantees the resources— Latinoamericano para el Desarollo Rural.
20 Latin American countries“ have relevant experience from recent years on rural poverty reduction that could be unpacked to define an interlinked set of policies and interventions aiming to eliminate rural poverty.
Photo: Becky Williams. Rural school in Honduras, 2014
the Caribbean website.
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 21 Sustainable rural livelihoods and the Sustainable Development Goals1
Ian Scoones2 migration to towns and the importance did not have supremacy, and budgets, of remittance flows, while the ability to power and control were less concentrated The Sustainable Development Goals: an undertake any of these activities was related in an integrated, cross-sectoral approach. ambitious agenda for rural development to access to resources (demarcated then The Sustainable Development Goals in relation to a series of ‘capitals’) and the Of course, many continue to use (SDGs) have laid out an ambitious agenda functioning of institutions and organisations. livelihoods approaches for research, policy for all of humanity. Making them a reality and practice around the world. Complex is, however, a significant challenge. With In turn, outcomes could be assessed problems require integrated responses. 17 goals, numerous targets and indicators in relation to diverse criteria, including ‘Complexity-aware programming’, ‘adaptive and a voluntary, country-led process, the income, inequality, empowerment, ‘decent management’ and ‘resilience approaches’ danger is that a bureaucratic box-ticking work’ and environmental sustainability— are some of the labels that persist, often exercise will ensue. Yet the SDGs offer the or indeed any other criterion seen to be without incorporating the lessons learned opportunity to connect the challenges of important in any setting. Wider contexts from earlier approaches. Nevertheless, rural development in new and potentially were also seen to influence different many students and practitioners continue transformative ways. livelihood pathways, whether in relation to make use of the many variants of the to politics, terms of trade, climate change sustainable livelihoods framework, even if All goals are of course relevant, or cultural norms. In other words, the departmental labels, job descriptions and everywhere, and it is the interactions framework, starting from how people made budget line designations have changed. between them that are essential, with a living in particular places, spanned the full impacts differentiated by location and range of the SDGs, elaborating connections Connecting the SDGs: social group. Rather than focus on one from the ground up, rather than suggesting the need for an integrated approach goal or another around special interests goals and targets from above With the faddism of the development or sectoral priorities, the challenge should industry, it is of course no surprise that be to connect sustainable development Livelihoods thinking emerged in ideas, concepts and frameworks come challenges in ways that make sense for response to the problems of narrow and go. However, the emergence of the particular people and places. sectoral approaches, arguing for an SDGs as an overarching approach to interdisciplinary, holistic analysis to define development, agreed across the United This article argues that linking livelihoods responses that made sense. Since the Nations system, suggests that a grounded approaches with political economy analysis peak of enthusiasm in the late 1990s and and integrative approach is urgently is an essential step, requiring new platforms, early 2000s, the popularity of livelihoods needed if implementation is to deliver the methods, skills, people and institutions for approaches has waned. Many agencies, type of radical transformations envisaged. an integrated approach to connecting SDG including early advocates, refocused on Sustainable rural development will not be implementation in rural areas. a narrow economic agenda, where more realised if policymakers and practitioners participatory, inclusive approaches to rural proceed goal by goal, target by target, The rise, fall and new rise of development were replaced in favour of governed by elaborate monitoring and sustainable livelihoods approaches efforts to improve business or trade or evaluation (M&E) and impact protocols. How can this be accomplished? One possible to support particular groups. The skills Instead, a return to a more integrated way is to draw on and expand frameworks associated with livelihoods programming approach is required, allowing debates to that have proven helpful for generating and wider policy analysis were often lost, occur about synergies, connections and integrative development thinking and as policy agendas, institutional mandates trade-offs across the SDGs. practice in the past. One such framework and career incentives narrowed. is the ‘sustainable livelihoods framework’ Negotiating across the SDGs is inevitably a (Scoones 1998). Created many years before Despite their many successes, livelihoods political process. For example, investing in the SDGs, it became popular among donor approaches were seen to be too open- large-scale commercial farming may result agencies, international organisations, non- ended, and not suitable for an impact-led, in increased employment and a growth in governmental organisations (NGOs) and results-based agenda. Institutional and trade, but will it decrease rural inequality and national governments (Ashley and Carney professional biases reasserted themselves, protect land and water resources alongside 1999; Hussein 2002). It offered the prospect as the specialists in economic analysis— climate mitigation with long, export-based of getting out of narrow, sectoral silos and social policy or agronomy, for example— value chains and high-input fossil fuel-based connecting development challenges across reclaimed their budgets and institutional mechanisation? By contrast, small-scale fields through a bottom-up perspective. positions. It is not as if these themes were production may offer opportunities for a In relation to rural livelihoods, agriculture not present in the various livelihoods more sustainable use of resources, but it may was linked to off-farm diversification and approaches that emerged earlier; they just remain embedded in structures of power
22 that are not conducive to gender equality, all voices to be heard, and alternative so affecting outcomes; but in many of and working, health and safety conditions pathways to sustainable development to be the more operational applications, this may be less than acceptable. uncovered and realised (Leach et al. 2010). element became side-lined in favour of a rather mechanistic institutional or policy Achieving sustainability across Power and political economy: design focus, rather than attention to the environmental, economic and social extending the livelihoods approach contestations around access and control, spheres is, therefore, centrally about Some of the very legitimate critiques as originally intended. political negotiation between different of the early versions of the sustainable actors and interests. The pathways that livelihoods framework—and particularly A decade after the publication of emerge, and the directions that social and the versions that were adapted for use by a Working Paper that outlined the technical innovation takes, necessarily development agencies—focused on the sustainable livelihoods framework (of involve some people winning, while others lack of attention to politics, power and course drawing on many precedents, most lose out. What is ‘best’ for a particular place political economy. Some argued that the notably the foundational work by Robert cannot be decided through technocratic approach was too deterministic and too Chambers and Gordon Conway (1992), but diktat but must emerge through inclusive, technocratic and contestation, dispute also earlier traditions of integrative rural participatory deliberation that allows and patterns of winners and losers were analysis), I was persuaded—somewhat for dissent, disagreement and inevitable not made clear (De Haan and Zoomers reluctantly—to reflect back on the conflict. Such processes must involve 2005; Sakdapolrak 2014). Politics of course applications of the sustainable livelihoods political negotiations, and require people appeared in discussions of the ‘institutions framework in order to look forward and institutions, at local, national and and organisations’ acting as mediating (Scoones 2009). This paper was later global levels, to broker, facilitate and allow between resources and activities, and developed into a short book, Sustainable
FIGURE 1: The extended sustainable livelihoods framework
Who owns what? Who gets access? Who does what?
CONTEXTS. INSTITUTIONAL How do social classes CONDITIONS LIVELIHOOD PROCESSES & LIVELIHOOD SUSTAINABLE RESOURCES STRATEGIES LIVELIHOOD OUTCOMES and groups in society AND TRENDS ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURES and within the state interact with each other? Livelihood Policy 1. Increased numbers of working days History Agricultural Natural capital created intensificaon - Polics 2. Poverty reduced extensificaon 3. Well-being and Macro-economic Economic/financial Instuons capabilies condions capital improved and How do changes in Terms of trade organisaons Livelihood polics get shaped by Human capital diversificaon dynamic ecologies Climate 4. Livelihood and vice versa? Social capital adaptaon, Agroecology vulnerability and Migraon resilience enhanced Demography and others 5. Natural resource Social base sustainality differenaon ensured
Contextual analysis Analysis of Analysis of Analysis of Analysis of of condions and livelihood instuonal/organisaonal livelihood outcomes trends and resources: influences on access to strategy and assessment of trade-offs, livelihood resources and porolios and trade-offs policy selling combinaons, composion of livelihood pathways sequences, trends strategy porolio
What do they Who gets what? do with it?
Source: Scoones (2015).
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 23 The SDGs offer “the opportunity to connect the challenges of rural development in new and potentially transformative ways.
Photo: Tri Saputro/CIFOR. A villager taps a rubber tree, Indonesia, 2013
Livelihoods and Rural Development, which yy How do social classes and groups in aimed to link the original framework with society and within the State interact a wider concern with agrarian political with each other? This focuses on the economy, making politics, power and social relations, institutions and forms control central (Scoones 2015). The result of domination in society and between was an extended framework diagram, citizens and the State as they articulating key questions in agrarian affect livelihoods. political economy (Figure 1). yy How are changes in politics shaped Four core questions are asked (Bernstein by dynamic ecologies and vice versa? et al. 1992, 24–25; Bernstein 2010): This relates to questions of political ecology, and to how environmental yy Who owns what (or who has access dynamics influence livelihoods. to what)? This relates to questions of These in turn are shaped by livelihood property and ownership of livelihood activities through patterns of resource assets and resources. access and entitlement.
yy Who does what? This relates to Taken together, these six questions, the social divisions of labour, the all central to critical agrarian and distinctions between those employing environmental studies, provide an and employed, as well as to divisions excellent starting point for any analysis based on gender and age. across the SDGs, when seeking to link rural livelihoods with the political economy of yy Who gets what? This relates to agrarian change in any setting. questions of income and assets, and patterns of accumulation over time, Long-term, historical patterns of and so to processes of social and structurally defined relations of power economic differentiation. between social groups are central, as are processes of economic and political yy What do they do with it? This relates control by the State and other powerful to the array of livelihood strategies actors, together with differential and their consequences as reflected patterns of production, accumulation, in patterns of consumption, social investment and reproduction across reproduction, savings and investment. society. Methodologically, such an approach requires attention to the In addition to these four, we can add two tensions, contradictions and opportunities more, both focused on the social and that arise between the highly specific, ecological challenges that characterise diverse, complex and contextual settings contemporary societies: within which livelihoods are played out
24 and the wider structural, historical and Only with such an analysis can we get to relational forces that continuously shape the heart of the politics of the SDGs, and Rural livelihoods and reshape what is possible for whom. establish the platforms that are required “ Following the plea of Bridget O’Laughlin for real transformative change. This will are not isolated and (2004), this allows analysis to move require new integrative institutions, independent, amenable beyond mere empirical description of with new people with new skills of multiple cases to explanations rooted more integrative analysis and practice. to narrow development in understandings of wider structural Reinventing, revitalising and resuscitating interventions, but tied relations, patterns and processes. sustainable livelihoods approaches, but adapting and extending them for new to what is happening Taking a differentiated view of rural demands, presents an urgent challenge elsewhere, both locally livelihoods in any context, we see that for rural development and the SDGs. rural dwellers may be farmers, workers, and more broadly. traders, brokers, transporters, carers Ashley, C., and D. Carney. 1999. Sustainable and others, with links spread across the Livelihoods: Lessons from Early Experience. London: urban–rural divide. Classes are not unitary, UK Departmnt for International Development. naturalised or static. Given this diversity Bebbington, A. 1999. “Capitals and Capabilities: of hybrid livelihood strategies and class A Framework for Analysing Peasant Viability, identities, accumulation—and, therefore, Rural Livelihoods and Poverty.” World Development 27: 2012–2044. social differentiation and class formation— takes place through a complex, relational Bernstein, H. 2010. Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change. Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press. dynamic over time (Cousins 2010). Bernstein, H., B. Crow, and H. Johnson (eds). Indeed, only with a longitudinal 1992. Rural Livelihoods: Crises and Responses. Oxford: Oxford University Press. perspective, rooted in an understanding of the political economy of agrarian change, Chambers, R., and G. Conway. 1992. “Sustainable can longer-term trajectories of livelihoods Rural Livelihoods: Practical Concepts for the 21st Century.” IDS Discussion Paper 296. Brighton: be discerned. Rural livelihoods are not Institute for Development Studies. isolated and independent, amenable to narrow development interventions, but Cousins, B. 2010. “What is a ‘Smallholder’?” PLAAS Working Paper 16. Cape Town: tied to what is happening elsewhere, University of the Western Cape. both locally and more broadly. For these reasons, a wider political economy De Haan, L., and Zoomers, A. 2005. “ Exploring the frontier of livelihoods research”. perspective is essential for any effective Development and Change 36(1), 27-47. livelihoods analysis, and indeed any assessment of SDG interactions. Hussein, K. 2002. Livelihoods Approaches Compared: A Multi-Agency Review of Current Practice. London: Overseas Development Institute. Making political economy central to the SDGs Leach, M., I. Scoones, and A. Stirling. 2010. Dynamic Sustainabilities: Technology, It is essential to rescue the SDGs from a Environment, Social Justice. London: Earthscan graveyard of technocratic-bureaucratic O’Laughlin, B. 2004. “Book Reviews.” approaches, where goal-specific indicators, Development and Change 35(2): 385–403. monitoring and impact assessment take over, locked into a sectoral view of the Sakdapolrak, P. 2014. “Livelihoods as social practices–re-energising livelihoods research world, where the politics of interactions, with Bourdieu’s theory of practice.” Geographica connections and negotiations are ignored. Helvetica 69(1), 19-28.
Scoones, I. 1998. “Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: This requires new ways of thinking A Framework for Analysis.” IDS Working Paper 72. and working, and a revived livelihoods Brighton: Institute for Development Studies. approach, rooted in an understanding Scoones, I. 2009. “Livelihoods perspectives of political economy can offer a way and rural development.” The Journal of Peasant forward. By examining diverse pathways Studies 36(1): 171–196. of change in a particular area, the contests Scoones, I. 2015. Sustainable Livelihoods and Rural between SDGs come to the fore, with Development. Rugby: Practical Action Publishing. winners and losers identified. Asking the six questions highlighted earlier shows 1. This article draws on Scoones (2015). how accumulation by some affects others, 2. ESRC STEPS Centre, Institute of Development and how benefits and their distribution are Studies, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton contested over time. BN1 9RE, UK
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 25 A multisectoral rural poverty reduction strategy: key components
Maya Takagi and to assets, land, animals, labour, tools These different approaches have had Ana Paula de la O Campos1 and human capital; enhance access varying degrees of success in their to liquidity and credit; reduce the implementation. However, they all point Poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon, burden of care; and improve the ability to important elements that are necessary and as such, strategies to reduce it should to manage risk (Davis 2014). For a for addressing the multidimensional recognise and address its different successful application in Peru, see nature of rural poverty. Based on minimum manifestations.2 The following approaches, Escobal and Ponce (2016). living standards established by the conceived and evolving over time, can multidimensional poverty measures, be considered part of the developmental yy Local and territorial development: as well as different approaches of efforts to address the multidimensional Local development is a process of participatory rural development and aspects of rural poverty, recognising the role diversification and enhancement poverty reduction, the key components of of agriculture as an important sector: of economic and social activity at a multisectoral strategy for rural poverty local scale, in a specific geographical reduction could be based on the following yy Inclusive value chain development space or ‘territory’, through the components, depending on the different aims to address poverty through mobilisation and coordination of its needs and priorities of distinct countries improved linkages between businesses material and immaterial resources. and their populations: and poor households (Horton et al. A territorial approach to development 2016). These models are based on the recognises the complexity of yy Basic investments (services and integration of broader dimensions of social, political, economic and infrastructure): Ensuring the provision agricultural production and natural environmental interactions within of adequate services for education, resources management—for example, a territory and works to empower health care, roads and connectivity passing on increased shares of export local stakeholders to find sustainable to urban spaces. prices to producers, including input solutions to natural resource and provisions, storing, processing, developmental challenges, including yy Social assistance: Social protection transportation, trade and distribution. poverty reduction (FAO 2014). This instruments for poor and extremely One of the most successful examples approach has been implemented in poor people. This includes information that integrates all these elements is several countries in Latin America systems and data collection that of the cocoa sector in Ghana (Brazil, El Salvador and Colombia), as instruments, enabling governments to (see Vigneri and Kolavalli 2018). a mechanism for implementing their identify poor and vulnerable people. national development plans. This can be developed at territorial yy Income diversification and level, including community targeting employment generation: Promotion yy Participatory community development mechanisms. In addition, mechanisms of non-farm activities with the aim is a process in which communities are needed to enhance the shock- of providing additional support for define the priorities and share the responsiveness of social protection poor farmers, through infrastructure results of the policies and initiatives. programmes to crises and/or climate development, investments in small It requires active engagement of all events, including for non-poor people. industries, fostering local food markets members of the community; building and services; and investment by critical consciousness; advocating for yy Productive inclusion, which comprises public–private partnerships in rural the inclusion of women, children and initiatives that enable poor people areas for the generation of labour- illiterate, poor and excluded people; to access economic opportunities intensive sectors. The generation of opening spaces for involvement in different sectors. This entails off-farm employment was a critical in decision-making; and building agricultural development and fostering piece of China’s success in reducing political capabilities for democratic the sustainable management of poverty (see de Janvry et al. 2005). engagement (Cornwall 2002). This resources, including agro-ecological approach has been implemented zoning—which defines the suitability yy Combining social assistance with in India through the Panchayati- of areas for the production of specific economic inclusion interventions Raj, a constitutional body and crops, considering climate variability that result in an integrated and implementation mechanisms of rural and market access; analysis and sequenced package of programmes development programmes, and the articulation of market options using that target extremely poor people. Gram Sabha, a forum of participation a territorial/urban–rural linkages These interventions aim to address the of rural people that aims to provide approach; special grants for developing inequitable distribution of resources a voice to the poorest members and implementing investment plans and market failures, including access of their communities. for agricultural development and
26 environmental schemes, focused on poor small-scale producers, and forest communities; capacity development of rural organisations and the formation of associations to support their access to markets and credit; and developing public credit and insurance systems for small-scale producers. yy Pro-poor value chain development is also vital, including the identification of job-intensive value chains at territorial level, in agriculture (crop, fisheries, forestry etc.) as well as within the environmental sector, according to agro-ecological characteristics; special
grants or loans for local governments Photo: UN Women/Ryan Brown. Woman diversifies her sources of income, Aldea Campur, Guatemala, 2018 to develop and implement investment
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 27 Resilience and rural poverty reduction
Marygold Walsh-Dilley1 including ecology, psychology and disaster Redundancy, too, can contribute to risk reduction. Social-ecological systems adaptive capacity by providing back-up Poverty reduction efforts must attend to resilience, an idea that came out of ecology systems. A diversity of crops means questions of resilience because climate, in the 1970s, stood against equilibrium resilience to particular diseases or market and social volatility threatens theories by highlighting that unexpected stressors, and a diversity of livelihood to undo them. Poor people are the shocks and threats to a system often strategies, including those outside most vulnerable to such changes. This resulted in systemic change. agriculture, means resilience in the face is particularly true in rural areas, where of drought or market downturns. both the majority of the world’s poor The most successful systems, this people reside and the primary economic perspective argues, are those that are yy Education and the capacity to learn, activity—agriculture—is already highly resilient to change by adapting to threats including informal, indigenous or dependent on frequently unpredictable (Folke 2006). Psychological perspectives local knowledges: Cultivating the climate and market cycles. Thus, resilience on resilience that emerged at the same ability to learn helps create novel thinking should be an important part of time emphasised the positive strengths solutions and creative strategies for development strategies, critical to pursing and competencies that ensure adaptation coping with unexpected challenges. the development goals of reducing by individuals or populations within the A key assumption of social-ecological poverty and ending hunger. context of trauma or adversity, and, like systems theory is that we do not ecology, encourage a vision of resilience always know how threats will impact However, resilience-building itself is not that nests the individual within larger our systems on the ground; therefore, necessarily equitable or pro-poor if the systems (Masden 2001; Murray and Zautra we must remain intellectually flexible voices and needs of rural poor people are 2012). Disaster and hazards management to devise solutions once those impacts not integrated into resilience definitions perspectives emphasise the need for become apparent. The implication is and efforts (Matin et al. 2018; Béné et al. planning and preparedness to mitigate the that hierarchical systems of command- 2014). For resilience to be a truly useful negative effect of shocks (CINRHD 2012). and-control or expert-driven efforts tool for development and not just another Taking these perspectives together, we can are not always the primary or most re-enactment of existing strategies, see some of the cross-disciplinary power of important ways to build resilience, practitioners and policymakers must take resilience thinking: recognising change as because they lack site-specific, timely care to engage in resilience frameworks a central dynamic to our social-ecological knowledge and are less able to in careful and critical ways. Development reality, we can foster our human capacities nimbly and flexibly respond to shocks practitioners and policymakers who want for planning, organising and building (Scoones 1999). Blending different to use resilience thinking must consider relationships to help us cope with the forms of knowledge gives a better the politics of resilience, that equitable negative impacts of such change. chance of anticipating and managing or pro-poor resilience requires paying processes of change (Mitchell and attention to how power is distributed As practitioners and institutions turn Harris 2012). Formal education is and how vulnerabilities emerge, and that towards resilience as a key process for important, but so too are opportunities building resilience might be at odds with development, we are learning more such as farmer-to-farmer learning, growth or efficiency goals. Taking these about how to foster resilience in the opportunities to share indigenous three factors into account will go a long context of poverty and insecurity. Some knowledge, lay experimentation and way to ensuring that we foster a version of characteristics that contribute to resilience other forms of informal learning and resilience that is equitable and socially just, include (see Bahadur et al. (2014) and knowledge generation. and able to contribute to the sustainability Walsh-Dilley et al. (2013) for reviews): of development goals. yy Adaptive governance and connectivity yy Diversity and redundancy: Diversity, between institutions at different Resilience thinking is a dynamic including crop and other ecological scales: Governance institutions that framework oriented towards recognising diversity, diversity of livelihood are decentralised and adaptive foster and encouraging the capabilities and strategies and diversity of backgrounds resilience because they are more in opportunities that abound in even highly and experiences within the human touch with local realities and needs and vulnerable or constrained environments. community, encourages resilience are more flexible. Civic engagement The approach recognises not just the because it provides alternatives and and democratic participation are failures among rural poor populations, helps manage risk when strategies important; having strong institutions but that these communities possess and become compromised by quick that foster engagement means that can cultivate resources and strategies for shocks or slow-moving threats. Human people are better able to organise flexibility, adaptation and innovation to help diversity fosters a range of knowledge in the face of shocks. Resilience them cope with adversity. The resilience and learning opportunities that can may require quick reorganisation of concept in use today draws on several fields, be harnessed to respond to hazards. governance structures. And, especially
28 Resilience thinking “ is a dynamic framework oriented towards recognising and encouraging the capabilities and opportunities that abound in even highly vulnerable or constrained environments. Photo: UN Women/Gaganjit Singh. Rural women share their experiences of using technology to catalyse change
for rural areas, the oversight of natural is a dynamic framework with potential resources by local users can contribute to generate productive innovation in both to mitigating or preparing for development practice, it is also important potential threats as well as a quick to avoid the assumption that resilience ability to respond to threats. is both easily understood and necessarily good (Hornborg 2009). Resilience is yy Preparedness: Communities that work a socially constructed concept, whose together in advance of shocks, planning definition, conceptualisation and for known threats and exercising operationalisation are negotiated across creative problem-solving, are better different sets of actors (Beymer-Farris et al. able to adapt than communities that do 2012). That is, ‘resilience’ is not an objective not. This preparatory work establishes state or outcome to achieve, but is, rather, processes and pathways through which determined in good part through political adaptation and coping can take place. processes. How resilience is defined, and who gets to do so, is not straightforward. yy Equity: The equitable distribution Resilience is conceptualised and used of risk, and high levels of equity by different groups to serve a variety of in general, contribute to building interests and purposes (Cretney 2014), resilient communities (Nelson et al. but not all groups have the same access 2007). Unequal societies are more to power to have their priorities heard likely to have uneven adaptive and included in these discussions outcomes, such that the resilience of (Walsh-Dilley and Wolford 2015). some comes as the expense of others. Justice and equity are important These questions about whose knowledge considerations to make when and values matter have important developing preparedness pathways. consequences. Resilience-building efforts or outcomes may favour some yy Social cohesion and shared social parts of social-ecological systems over values and ethics: Groups that trust others, and compromises and trade-offs each other are better able to reach are necessarily part of resilience efforts agreement and distribute resources (Cote and Nightingale 2011; Coulthard equitably during a crisis. This is built by 2012). Even the scale of resilience can be stronger social networks, social capital contentious, as approaches that frame and solidarity, and fostered by civic resilience as adhering to individuals—as engagement and social interaction. is common throughout development practice (Mackinnon and Derrickson 2013; Many of these characteristics overlap, Watts 2011)—can come at the expense of providing a strong network of resources collective action and political solutions for resilience. However, while resilience to crises (Aradau 2014).
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 29 Recognising change “as a central dynamic to our social-ecological reality, we can foster our human capacities for planning, organising and building relationships to help us cope with the negative impacts of such change.
Photo: Kate Evans/CIFOR. Acai nursery - a state government initiative to assist reforestation, Acre, Brazil, 2013
Resilience theories are forward-looking, et al. 2015; Adger 2006). Access to these shocks and volatility of the future—might enjoining us to anticipate threats and resources helps minimise vulnerability and look quite different from these other ensure the capacities for future adaptation. generate opportunities for autochthonous development strategies. Yet such approaches are critiqued for and local resilience-building. failing to look backwards; they frequently Resilience-building is not necessarily pro- leave unexamined how and why particular Resilience-building makes sense and fits poor or the most efficient means of reducing groups or individuals experience greater in with other development strategies. poverty. Indeed, resilience frameworks vulnerability to shocks or changes It bears restating, however, that resilience- have been thoroughly critiqued from the (Watts 2011; Adger 2006). building is not the same as poverty social sciences for favouring the already reduction, risk management or growth. Since advantaged and privileging existing, These vulnerabilities are often directly redundancy, diversity and social-ecological frequently highly unequal, social relations linked with contemporary outcomes such relationships are central to building (MacKinnon and Derickson 2013; Watts as poverty, hunger or poor health. Thus, to resilience, efficiency concerns are external 2011; Matin 2018). Nonetheless, including be truly pro-poor, ‘equitable resilience’ must to resilience frameworks. Highly resilient resilience thinking in development strategies take into account “social vulnerability and systems will likely grow more slowly, perhaps has great potential to improve outcomes for differentiated access to power, knowledge, making slower gains at poverty reduction, poor people and ensure that they are not and resources” (Matin et al. 2018, 198). but these gains will be less vulnerable to made more vulnerable to the volatility of Without adequate access to resources, reversal when conditions inevitably change climate, market or politics. But resilience is including education, governance institutions (Folke 2006). Monocropped plantation not objective or neutral. It is both a concept and mechanisms for political inclusion, agriculture, for example, is highly efficient whose definition and measurement involves vulnerable communities are excluded from and easily integrated into market structures, political contestation and a process that is decision-making related to adaptation but it also creates vulnerability to disease constantly being worked out, with the aim and risk management, creating barriers and market volatility. of providing and protecting the resources to resilience-building (Matin et al. 2018). available to rural poor populations— Access to these resources is precisely most A rural system that emphasises diversity those who are particularly vulnerable to uncertain for rural poor populations, who in terms of crops planted and sources of environmental and social shocks. Putting are less likely to be integrated into formal livelihoods is more likely to remain viable rural communities in the driver’s seat to institutions of education and governance. when the market for a particular crop shape what resilience-building looks like will falls or a disease attacking a particular go a long way towards supporting equitable For rural people, access to land and crop spreads. Risk management is also and pro-poor resilience capacities. water—and the meaningful opportunity to synergistic with resilience but is not participate in their governance—are also equivalent, since risk management works Adger, N. 2006. “Vulnerability.” Global critical for building adaptive capacities. best to identify and mitigate the impact of Environmental Change 16(3): 268–281. Rights-based approaches emphasise that known hazards and measurable risks (see Aradau, C. 2014. “The promise of security: access to the social, political and natural Park et al. 2011; Mitchell and Harris 2012). Resilience, surprise and epistemic politics.” Resilience: International Policies, Practices and resources needed to build resilience should Discourses 2: 73–87. be protected as rights. Vulnerable people are Managing for resilience—building in Bahadur, A., M. Ibrahim, and entitled to the resources they need to build flexibility, adaptive capacity, diversity T. Tanner. 2013. “Characterising Resilience: the capacity for resilience (Walsh-Dilley and equity as strategies for the unknown Unpacking the Concept for Tackling climate
30 Including resilience thinking“ in development strategies has great potential to improve outcomes for poor people and ensure that they are not made more vulnerable to the volatility of climate, market or politics.
Photo: UN Women/Ryan Brown. Rural women diversify incomes and build resilience, Aldea Campur, Guatemala, 2018
Change and Development.” Climate Mitchell, T., and K. Harris. 2012. “Resilience: and Development 5: 55–65. A Risk Management Approach.” Background Note. London: Overseas Development Institute. Béné, C., A. Newsham, M. Davies, M. Ulrichs, and
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 31 Land access and control: rights, reform, and restitution1
Ben M. McKay2 whims of the market, it is argued that to payable credit, technical assistance, land policies need to have a pro-poor markets, infrastructure, education and Policies concerning access to and design with participation from both the capital, as well as real representation and effective control over land and other State and civil society to democratise land participation in the institutions that govern. natural resources are crucial for inclusive control and enable rural people to have growth and poverty eradication. Despite an adequate standard of living, free Gender-based exclusion global trends of migration from rural to from impoverishment and injustice. Historically, land reform programmes urban areas, poverty and hunger remain were often gender-blind, assuming that disproportionately rural problems. Recognising and addressing the household would distribute resources Over 70 per cent of the estimated 1.4 forms of exclusion equitably. Men were often identified as billion people living in extreme poverty Exclusion can take many forms, but it is the ‘heads of household’, and the land worldwide reside in the countryside, and worth highlighting four fundamental forms title was often solely under their name, the vast majority (86 per cent) depend on that are common in many rural societies: ignoring the well-being of women not agriculture—and land—for their primary only regarding intra-household relations source of livelihood (World Bank 2007; i. socio-economic or ‘productive’ exclusion; but also their lack of rights in the event of IFAD 2010). Small-scale farms provide divorce or widowhood (see Razavi 2007). a livelihood for 2.5 billion people and ii. gender-based exclusion; Presently, across many countries in Latin produce the majority of the world’s food America, land policies have changed supply, including up to 80 per cent in iii. generational-based exclusion; and to a dual-headed household system, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa (IFAD 2016). recognising and giving rights both to Their access to land and other productive iv. ethnic-based exclusion. Pro-poor men and women as the heads of resources is vital for an inclusive and land policies should recognise the household and land title owners. sustainable development model. plurality of the marginalised and most vulnerable peoples and address However, there is a crucial difference Yet in the current global context, land these principal forms of exclusion. between women’s land rights being access for small farmers—and particularly formally recognised on paper and making poor people in rural areas—is increasingly Socio-economic or ‘productive’ exclusion those rights real, meaningful and tangible. threatened by agro-extractivist3 expansion, Poor people in rural areas are often In Latin America, for example, progressive- as well as what the World Bank refers to excluded from accessing land and other left governments in Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador as the “rising global interest in farmland”, necessary productive resources due to and Venezuela incorporated gender otherwise known as ‘global land grabbing’ the very nature of their impoverishment: equality into their agrarian reform/land (Deininger and Byerlee 2011; Borras et al. they cannot afford land, do not have regularisation programmes, yet with very 2012). The extractive character of industrial sufficient access to credit and cannot different results. Deere (2017) finds that agriculture is not only environmentally make the necessary capital investments women have achieved stronger, more destructive but also excludes poor rural for production (see McKay and Colque tangible land rights in Brazil and Bolivia populations and is often controlled by 2016). In this regard, land policies need predominantly due to the role of relatively multinational market oligopolies, putting to have an explicit ‘pro-poor’ character— autonomous rural and urban women’s into question what socio-economic benefits that is, they must transfer land-based organisational alliances, their active actually remain in-country (McKay 2017). wealth and power to poor people. Rather participation in civil society in making These new dynamics are increasing the than understanding landed property demands to the State, and the role of rate of rural–urban migration and forcing rights as tradeable commodities to be women in key positions within the State. poor people in rural areas into precarious allocated most efficiently, we need to conditions of pluriactivity, as rural poverty understand that they in fact represent This is in contrast to Ecuador and is, for the first time in a decade, on the rise social relations between people (Tsing Venezuela, where “the voice of organized (Urioste 2017; FAO 2018). 2002). Redistributive land policies are rural women has been rather muted” with not simply about redistributing the land regards to gender equality in new land In this context, it is urgent and necessary title to the landless, but fundamentally policies, which has resulted in weaker, less to not only focus on redistributive land transforming the unequal land-based tangible rights to, and effective control over, policies but a more comprehensive set of social relations in rural society. This entails land (Deere 2017, 274). The participation policies which explicitly focus on the most ensuring that poor people have both and empowerment of women in decision- marginalised, vulnerable and commonly access to and control over the land and making arenas, both in civil society and excluded populations. Rather than leaving other productive resources to put that within the state apparatus, is of crucial access to and control over land to the land into production. This includes access importance for gender equality.
32 Generational-based exclusion well as training, are necessary for farming For rural youth, access to land and futures and to avoid a social crisis of employment opportunities has become expanding slums and surplus populations. increasingly difficult. In many regions throughout the world, the availability of Ethnic-based exclusion land is dwindling, as new (transnational) The rights of indigenous and tribal peoples actors have emerged eager to invest in were recognised internationally with land, leading to a concentration of the International Labour Organization’s control (Borras et al. 2011). Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (C169) in 1991,4 and many nation States For small-scale farms, land is often have since granted—to various extents— insufficient to divide among children, while territorial rights to indigenous groups. the highly mechanised trajectory of agro- industrial development has decreased the The Declaration on the Rights of need for labour. Young people cannot wait Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)5 was for many years to take over the farm, much adopted by the United Nations General less if the conditions for small-scale farmers Assembly in 2007 and is hailed as “the most remain poor. If this trajectory continues, comprehensive international instrument the majority of rural youth will be forced on the rights of indigenous peoples”. to migrate elsewhere, raising important Of course, this did not emerge out of thin questions for the future of young people, air but is the result of contentious politics rural areas and our food system (see White and ongoing forms of resistance by ethnic- 2012). Can urban areas absorb the billions of based movements around the world. smallholders threatened by agro-industrial expansion? Or will such rural populations In Latin America, for example, become surplus to the needs of capital unprecedented indigenous movements accumulation and expand the urban slums? emerged most prominently and overtly in the latter part of the 20th century to These are important questions and challenge ongoing neo-colonial injustices should be of great concern to all, given perpetuated by neoliberal regimes (Yashar that smallholder agriculture remains 2005). The positive correlation between “the world’s biggest single source of regions rich in natural resources and employment and livelihoods … and if the impoverishment and displacement given the necessary support by states of indigenous peoples stresses the can provide decent labour incomes when importance of recognition, protection things are organized properly” (Bernstein and support for indigenous communities, et al. 2018, 708). Land policies and especially in the context of extractive programmes that target rural youth, which sectors which often threaten resource include options to attain land access as access, contaminate resources and displace
It is urgent and necessary“ to not only focus on redistributive land policies but a more comprehensive set of policies which explicitly focus on the most marginalised, vulnerable and commonly excluded populations.
Photo: Juan Carlos Huayllapuma/CIFOR. Children from the La Roya indigenous community, Iparia, Peru, 2015
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 33 Many developing countries“ are plagued with a highly unequal landholding structure.
Photo: Women draw resources from agroforestry, Indonesia, 2013
the most marginalised groups in the areas Recognition 2014). In these settings, there is an urgent in which they operate. In this context, In the current context of the ‘global need to strengthen the protection of the need for real and enforceable rights, resource rush’, existing access to land for existing land rights and recognise diverse including the right to free, prior and the most marginalised and vulnerable forms of tenure, beyond private titling, to informed consent (FPIC), is crucial for the groups in society is increasingly threatened. reduce poverty and foster inclusive growth. protection of indigenous livelihoods. Agricultural and extractivist frontiers are expanding, often disproportionally Redistribution Democratising access to and threatening existing land rights of minority Many developing countries are plagued control over natural resources ethnic groups, women and rural youth. with a highly unequal landholding If land policies are to facilitate inclusive Protecting existing tenure rights refers structure. In these settings, it is crucial growth and reduce poverty, they must be not only to private property rights but to to transfer not only land titles but also democratic, designed to benefit the majority, collective/communal land rights such as effective access to and control over land and work to dismantle the unequal relations those granted to various ethnic groups and, and other natural resources. Redistributive of access to and control over land which have in some cases, peasants and smallholders. land policies which aim to alleviate poverty plagued many countries since colonialism. and facilitate inclusive growth must take In South Africa, some 2 million households into account the imbalanced relations This requires addressing three interrelated engage in agricultural production in which exist between the land-rich and the challenges in the political economy of communal areas yet remain subject to land-poor. Land reform policies which rely land control: tenure insecurity (Cousins 2017). Solely principally on the workings of the market focusing on and recognising private titling presume that ‘rational’ individuals will i. recognition, which entails respecting schemes threatens these livelihoods. As enable land markets to work efficiently and protecting existing land access Cousins (2017, 14–15) argues, “securing and thus facilitate a voluntarist ‘willing- which may be under threat; tenure rights should remain a key object of seller, willing-buyer’ competitive market land reform, in urban as well as rural areas, environment, lowering land prices and ii. redistribution, which entails and focus on legal recognition of social transaction costs through quick and non- redistributing effective formal and tenures rather than on private titling”. In contentious land transactions. political control over the land from Bolivia, despite granting a record number the landed to the land-poor; and of autonomous Native Community Lands However, in many settings these market- (Tierra Comunitaria de Origen—TCO), the led policies have only exacerbated iii. restitution, which entails State has simultaneously opened up land-based inequalities, since those democratically restoring land control protected areas for hydrocarbon extraction without access to capital, credit, technical to those who have been displaced due and infrastructure development through assistance, authority, legal aid etc. are to violent conflict, civil wars or outright Supreme Decree 2366 of 2015. often excluded or subordinated or cannot theft (Franco, Monsalve, and Borras prosper in a competitive land market 2015, 67). A comprehensive set of In Colombia, 50 per cent of the country’s and, therefore, are often forced to sell land policies must address these three 102 indigenous communities are at risk and become indebted (see Cousins 2017; interrelated challenges simultaneously, of disappearing, and the most threatened Borras 2003; Lahiff, Borras Jr., and Kay while addressing the forms of exclusion are those richest in natural resources, due 2007). Land reform policies cannot rely previously mentioned. to expanding extractivist frontiers (HCHR solely on the market or the State but will
34 be most successful when decision-making reform policy must work through a Rights website.
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 35 Beyond migration for/or development
Taneesha Mohan1 and Amanda Flaim2 overall family wealth. Moreover, this dynamics can be disentangled, when they story continues, the aggregate efforts of are, and always have been, reinforcing. In 2015 the estimated number of enterprising migrants will drive economic Rural poverty and food insecurity—both international migrants was 244 million development in both destination and outcomes of decades of agro-industrial people, or 3.3 per cent of the total global sending communities. Indeed, the development—continue to be among population (IOM 2018). Of this estimated international development discourse, the biggest drivers of rural out-migration. population, approximately 150 million exemplified in the following promotional While three decades of neoliberal were migrant workers, a significant statement for the 2018 Global Compact economic reform registered positive number of whom come from rural areas for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration economic growth trajectories at national (Ibid.). While these numbers alone are (GCM),3 reflects a persistent enthusiasm levels, market-oriented development staggering, the true exodus from rural for rural out-migration as a viable projects also resulted in the widespread places can only be appreciated when strategy for poverty reduction and dispossession of peasant farmers from they are added to the number of internal economic growth in the global South: their land, and their transformation into migrants, estimated in 2013 at 763 million “Migration provides immense opportunity a surplus labour force in both urban and people (FAO 2013). and benefits—for the migrants, host rural sectors that the market is unable communities, and communities of origin.” to absorb (Misra 2016). In countries that What do these numbers mean for rural adopted Structural Adjustment Policies development agendas? Under what While evidence suggests that rural (SAPs) under neoliberal development conditions might migration alleviate out-migration can contribute to schemes, the agricultural sector is still (or exacerbate) rural poverty and agrarian household livelihood strategies, rural reeling from the effects of withdrawal of dispossession? And, with this in mind, poverty reduction and even national state support, rising costs of production what can development practitioners development, it does not guarantee and increasing vulnerabilities to the do to ensure that migrants, their families economic mobility or rural poverty global market. Indeed, with the retreat of and communities are able to benefit from alleviation for individuals, families, state welfare supports, land privatisation the various financial, socio-cultural and communities or States. Rather, evidence schemes and market competition in familial sacrifices they make to forge suggests that rural-to-urban migration the neoliberal era, rural out-migration a new life away from home? that results in secure, formal occupations is not driving development. From its is on the decline, and is being replaced nationalistic tendencies to its climactic Migration as development agenda(?) with temporary, circular forms of externalities, development is driving Development theory has evolved migration into informal, insecure jobs rural out-migration. considerably since the end of the that are characterised by violence and Second World War, yet the centrality of human rights violations (IOM 2018). While international migration has rural-to-urban migration in the pursuit Moreover, research indicates that even reduced poverty in certain cases, it has of economic growth has remained when migrants are able to secure work, also (re)produced poverty and rural a constant. When development was their capacities to remit, and for rural inequalities in others. International defined as industrialisation in the post- family members to receive and benefit migration for rural households is war era, rural-to-urban migration was from remittances, may depend on a often carried out with the intent of viewed as necessary for the production range of demographic, cultural and improving socio-economic status of an industrial workforce and the political factors, such as legal status back home, and whether regular or elimination of ‘backwards’ or ‘traditional’ (see, for example, Amuedo-Dorantes, irregular, migration requires a huge agrarian commitments. Puttinanun, and Martinez-Donate 2013; capital investment. The recruitment Howell 2017; Massey, Durand, and Pren process into foreign employment can be More recently, departures from villages for 2014; and Wu and Treiman 2004). Against extremely tedious and expensive and ostensibly cosmopolitan industrial centres the backdrop of resource privatisation can render poor people in rural areas are cast as ‘rational’ moves out of sure projects, industrial-agricultural initiatives vulnerable to exploitation by recruiters poverty and debilitating debt traps. In this and extreme weather events—all and employers. When migrants need to development story, enterprising migrants of which disproportionately impact cross international or internal borders will participate in formal labour markets rural communities—the utility of rural but lack the requisite documents to do and diversify their income portfolios. out-migration for advancing rural so, financial costs for travel and risks of As extended household livelihood development is in question. exploitation grow further. And when strategies, remittances home will reduce migrants are trafficked, when they the labour burdens incurred by migrants’ Migration: rural poverty must flee unsafe working conditions absences, pay for the educations of their reduction or poverty reproduction? prior to payment or when places of siblings or children and health-care costs To assume that migration drives employment shut down, these costs are of their ageing parents, and improve development is to assume that these two never recovered, which drives migrants
36 While international migration“ has reduced poverty in certain cases, it has also (re)produced poverty and rural inequalities in others.
Photo: ILO/Apex Image. A migrant worker harvests dates, Bahrain, 2007
and their extended households further opportunities for communities in may emerge and grow between into indebtedness and poverty. In cases the global South, (how) can the rural communities on the basis of where entire families migrate (a growing unprecedented migration we are ethnicity, gender or other factors. trend for working in construction and witnessing worldwide be harnessed As such, inequalities that facilitate brick kilns in India, for example), they to alleviate, rather than reproduce, or preclude the capacity to migrate, may lose access to the Public Distribution rural poverty? For reasons elaborated find reliable work and remit home may System, which provides them with food above, the extent to which rural out- accelerate via remittances. With this in grains at a subsidised rate, and thus migration can actually contribute to mind, tax exemptions on remittances increasing food insecurity. Finally, as with rural poverty alleviation hinges on the among rural communities who are less other countries that rely on household broader socio-political context in which able to migrate may enable wealth registration systems, migrants cannot migrants are able to migrate freely, secure distribution and mitigate emergent elect representatives if they are not at safe jobs and fair wages and remit funds inequalities to some degree. their home village/town/city during home that contribute to true wealth elections. And, as a result of their lack production rather than meeting basic 2. Reinstate and fund of formal representation, they cannot needs or debt payments. To this end, state welfare structures mobilise labour and wage protections we propose the following: For migration to be viewed as a and are deprived of their basic successful development tool, it citizenship rights. 1. Facilitate remittances and needs to be combined with various promote wealth distribution other income-generating activities Because migration is expensive, and In terms of rural poverty reduction, undertaken by the household. It is well-paying jobs are increasingly remittances can play a pivotal role if within this context that the State difficult to secure, rural out-migration migration to fair, secure, employment needs to engage more deeply with and remittances may also reproduce is facilitated, and transaction costs welfare activities. The provision of or exacerbate rural inequalities. Sunam for remitting are reduced. Compared basic food staples in certain states in and McCarthy’s (2016) study on Nepal to other forms of capital flows or India has helped poor people in rural highlights this very point: over a period development aid, remittances are areas free up labour time and move of 22 years, only 20 per cent of Dalit generally free of political barriers out of exploitative labour contracts. (ex-untouchable caste) families were able and control and, therefore, can While such safety net programmes are to migrate and achieve a non-poor status, be an important tool of income important poverty reduction strategies, compared to 76 per cent of Chhetris redistribution among rural sending they are under constant threat from (upper caste). Moreover, the kinds of communities and countries in the neoliberal policies. jobs that are accessible to the different global South (de Haas 2005). In caste groups varied, with those lower in countries such as Nepal and Senegal, 3. Reduce barriers the hierarchy often being relegated to remittances generate 30.1 per cent to migration and work low-paying jobs (see also Howell (2017) and 10.6 per cent of the national gross Ensuring free or low-cost worker for examples in China). domestic product (GDP), respectively recruitment channels from rural (World Bank 2019). However, it should peripheries can promote safe If the path out of rural life does not be noted that as a national indicator migration and entry into decent work. necessarily lead to better economic of growth, GDP masks inequalities that For example, much of Thailand’s
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 37 migrant labour comes from Myanmar GCM, La Via Campesina (2018; 2019) Howell, A. 2017. “Impacts of Migration and and plays an important role in the issued an Agreement on an International Remittances on Ethnic Income Inequality in Rural China.” World Development 94: 200–211. global food supply. However, this Pact of Solidarity and Unity of Action labour force, brought through for the Full Rights of all Migrants and IOM. 2018. World Migration Report 2018. numerous recruitment agencies, Refugees, wherein it states: Geneva: International Organization for Migration.
38 Removing barriers to access social protection in rural areas: a core priority to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 1.31
Andre Allieu, Ana Ocampo of falling into cycles of intergenerational explicit effort made to achieve coverage in and Natalia Winder Rossi2 poverty. Enhancing their access to social rural areas, overall progress on SDG 1.3, protection and, therefore, their economic as well as on other SDGs, may be stalled. Social protection has been recognised as an and productive capacity represents an essential component of poverty reduction essential strategy for the overall objectives What are the key barriers faced by strategies, as well as being pivotal to of poverty reduction, rural transformation those living in rural areas to effectively ensuring access to basic services, managing and inclusive growth. It should be an access social protection systems? risk effectively and contributing to explicit priority and not an afterthought. Understanding the barriers that hinder rural economic development. The 2030 Agenda populations’ access to social protection for Sustainable Development has formalised Rural people in many parts of the world services and benefits is essential to this recognition and commitment across have long devised ways to cope with risks developing appropriate policy responses national priorities, with social protection and shocks through (limited) livelihood to effectively bridge the gap in terms considered a target in itself, in Sustainable diversification and informal institutions for of the population covered and the type Development Goal (SDG) 1.3: “Implement risk-sharing and risk management. But as the of vulnerabilities and risks addressed by nationally appropriate social protection frequency and severity of shocks increase, programmes. Some barriers are explicit, systems and measures for all, including the effectiveness of informal, community- and some are implicit (often financial and floors, and by 2030 achieve substantial based systems is being challenged. administrative)—thus all the more difficult coverage of the poor and the vulnerable”, to remove. This requires understanding in the context of poverty reduction, Only 45 per cent of the global population first and foremost the heterogeneity of but also as a core strategy for reducing is effectively covered by at least one the rural population, and then their inequalities (SDG 10.4).3 social benefit, while the remaining different needs and possibilities, to tailor 55 per cent—4 billion people—are or extend existing or new social protection Governments have recently made left unprotected (ILO 2017). Moreover, schemes and services. important commitments and progress the coverage of both contributory and towards SDG 1.3. In addition, many low- non-contributory social protection is Some examples include: income countries have also prioritised the often limited in rural areas, leaving poor yy Legal barriers: Social security allocation of national budgets to build households without a minimum income entitlements are usually set out in nascent systems and expand coverage of or mechanisms to effectively manage national labour legislation, but in social protection. However, designing and risks and shocks. In many countries many contexts the agricultural sector implementing effective social protection (including countries where agriculture is is not explicitly included in labour floors requires understanding the specific the main source of employment), social and social security legislation barriers of access and the needs of those protection legislation explicitly excludes currently excluded from the system. the rural population (agricultural workers, yy Low contributory capacity (including People living in rural areas continue to be fishermen, foresters and casual workers) costs of affiliation and compliance): The left behind in terms of access to effective without the provision of alternative informal nature and type of employment protection. They continue to be over- schemes (ILO 2018). For instance, can make it harder for workers to represented among poor and excluded although poorer and rural households contribute regularly to schemes populations, despite being the main are more likely to receive social drivers of the agricultural and food assistance, they receive slightly smaller yy Accessibility of services (such as systems in most developing contexts. amounts of assistance per capita than health care) in rural settings, in terms their better-off and urban counterparts of physical location, socio-cultural Across regions, family farmers face (FAO 2015). In terms of insurance, pertinence or information gaps strong constraints in terms of access 56 per cent of the population in rural to infrastructure, social and financial areas lack health coverage, compared yy Lack of trust in social security systems services and innovative technologies, to 22 per cent in urban areas (ILO 2017). or a prevailing perception that benefits and practices that prevent them from are not relevant (i.e. benefits only benefitting from important processes Even when social protection does reach cover life-cycle vulnerabilities, without of rural transformation, development rural areas, these systems rarely respond including livelihood dimensions) or urban–rural interlinkages. Their to the added and specific vulnerabilities production and consumption decisions are of rural areas effectively, including across yy The structure of social security systems interdependent, further increasing their risk agricultural subsectors. If there is no may not be compatible with the
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 39 Although poorer and “ rural households are more likely to receive social assistance, they receive slightly smaller amounts of assistance per capita than their better-off and urban counterparts.
Photo: UNDP. Child gets vaccinated at a rural health centre in Piyal Adhikary, India, 2010
instability (or seasonality) of agricultural Examples include flexible financial transfers yy Expand and adapt legal frameworks employment (i.e. time-frame to receive to address the financial barriers related of social protection to include rural benefits); and added administrative to seasonality in incomes of agricultural populations: Legal frameworks are the complexities in rural areas. workers; the introduction of employment basis of rights and entitlements. In the or income guarantee schemes to provide absence of legislation, no entitlements What options exist to some income insurance during slack may exist, and coverage simply is not remove these barriers? agriculture or fisheries seasons; the available. Legal frameworks are also Social protection systems have evolved introduction of contribution subsidisation an important underlying foundation and expanded considerably in recent for health and crop insurance; legal and for government fiscal commitments, years in many countries through different administrative reforms to increase the accountability and the long-term types of schemes and programmes, scope of coverage; and the introduction sustainability of schemes. As a first including tax-financed universal schemes, of universal schemes. step to ensuring the coverage of targeted schemes and contributory rural populations, national social schemes, supported by stronger policies On this basis, we propose several protection legislation must establish and more efficient administrative tools recommendations, which should be basic legal guarantees and enforce in the best cases. considered in the context of different rural rural entitlements. International/global populations, the state of social protection frameworks on social protection should Building social protection floors is and the barriers to access in each context. provide policy guidance and increase particularly relevant for rural populations, In addition, these recommendations have the visibility of the plight of the vast given the high levels of poverty, food policy, programming and fiscal implications, uncovered rural populations. Farmer insecurity and exclusion. In particular, which need to be better understood. registries can also support the legal social protection floors seek to ensure the visibility of farmers and farm workers, availability, accessibility and acceptability yy Consider rural living and working including information not only on of services, including health care, and conditions: Policy options for extending assets but also on socio-economic promote investments in infrastructure coverage to rural populations are never conditions, which can later be linked and qualified staff, as key to ensuring rural exhaustive. However, it is critical to with social security entitlements. people’s access to services. focus on the risks, vulnerabilities and the peculiar conditions faced by yy Make social protection more Programmes that have successfully different segments as the basis for affordable for rural populations: covered rural workers and their families programme design and intervention. The low contributory capacity of poor are cases where benefits, contribution A thorough diagnostics of barriers people in rural areas is a significant mechanisms and service delivery have to coverage for heterogeneous rural barrier to their coverage in contributory been adapted to the specificities of populations and their livelihoods schemes. This can be addressed through the rural population. In short, policies (e.g. fisheries, forestry and pastoralist the introduction of subsidised pillars or and programmes need to make social segments) and the reasons behind contributions for income-constrained protection accessible to rural people, and implementation gaps for existing workers. This approach has demonstrated actively address the barriers they face entitlements would inform an appropriate increases in uptake—for instance, through appropriate programme design policy mix (including targeted for agricultural insurance and health and implementation. interventions and special programmes). insurance. For fiscal sustainability and
40 broader risk pooling, such schemes engagement, support and advisory can be integrated into existing national services for Member States. Policies and statutory schemes. For non-contributory Allieu, A. M., and A. Ocampo. forthcoming. “ schemes, the costs (including opportunity programmes need to Extending Social Protection Coverage to Rural costs) of participation and demonstrating Populations: barriers and opportunities. Rome: make social protection compliance are usually higher for rural Food and Agriculture Organization of the populations. They can be reduced by United Nations. accessible to rural simplifying administrative processes and Béné, C., S. Devereux, and K. Roelen. 2015. “Social people, and actively ensuring that information and social protection and sustainable natural resource protection services are readily accessible, management: initial findings and good practices address the barriers they from small-scale fisheries.” FAO Fisheries and such that they do not place additional Aquaculture Circular, No. 1106. Rome: Food and face through appropriate financial stress on rural participants. Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. programme design Durán Valverde, F., J. Flores Aguilar, J. F. Ortiz yy Enhance capacity to deliver: Over that Vindas, D. Muñoz Corea, A. C. de Lima Vieira, and and implementation. last decade, social protection coverage L. Tessier. 2013. “Innovations in extending social has expanded in many countries. insurance coverage to independent workers: Experiences from Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, However, many of the poorest people Costa Rica, Ecuador, Philippines, France and (mostly in rural areas) are not reached, Uruguay.” ESS Document, No. 42. Geneva: largely because the coverage of social International Labour Organization. assistance programmes is still limited FAO. 2015. “The State of Food and Agriculture. in many low-income countries because Social protection and agriculture: breaking of limited fiscal and institutional the cycle of rural poverty”. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. capacity. Minimum essential coverage in health and old-age security for all ILO. 2009. Extending Social Security to All: A review of challenges, present practice and strategic seems to be the outlook for many options. Draft Report for the Tripartite Meeting of countries. However, financing and Experts on Strategies for the Extension of Social delivering such programmes often Security Coverage, 2-4 September 2009, Geneva. Geneva: International Labour Organization. requires difficult expenditure choices— informed by appropriate costing and ILO. 2016a. Extending Social Protection Coverage fiscal space analysis. For contributory to the Rural Economy. Decent Work in the Rural Economy. Policy Guidance Notes. Geneva: schemes, the extension of coverage International Labour Organization.
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 41 Rethinking our strategy of rural poverty reduction: empowerment through a human rights-based approach
Simon Blondeau, Juan Garcia-Cebolla justice. Over time, various laws have been funding, while devoting special attention and Margret Vidar1 adopted in all countries that aim in some to the most vulnerable populations. way to address social inequalities. Still, As countries increasingly develop their “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids these efforts have not gone far enough, capacities to implement a human rights- rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, or enjoyed sufficient support from based approach, human rights principles to beg in the streets, and to steal their national constituencies and international and tools offer guidance to contribute to bread.” (Anatole France 1894) stakeholders. Too many poor people still rights-holders effectively enjoying their lack a registered and officially recognised entitlements, which can prove key for The law has historically served as a tool identity, legal entitlements to social marginalised and vulnerable groups, for safeguarding the interests of the more protection, and labour laws that protect such as poor people in rural areas. powerful segments of society, who have their health and safety and ensure often used it for their own protection decent wages. This is especially evident Individuals and communities are and to maintain the status quo. The quote in rural areas, where too many also do fundamental actors in the realisation of from Anatole France emphasises that not have secure tenure rights to land their human rights. Thus, it is of utmost the law can disproportionally affect and other natural resources, rendering importance for policies and laws to and negatively impact poorer people. the realisation of their equal and empower vulnerable populations so In addition, even when laws by themselves inalienable rights a distant fantasy. that they can lift themselves and their are not explicitly designed to serve rich families out of poverty and enjoy basic people, a lack of access, opportunity, Despite important advances in recent human dignity. This is doubly true for rural education and information contribute years, rural poverty still threatens the lives development and rural poverty reduction to the exclusion of poor people from the of a significant proportion of the world’s measures, as some of the most vulnerable protection of the law, forcing them into population. According to the data available groups live and work in rural areas. In this extra-legality and illegality (Commission from 2015, an estimated 736 million article we have chosen to examine three on Legal Empowerment of the Poor people were living below the international distinct policy and legal considerations and UNDP 2008). poverty line of USD1.90 a day (World Bank for the empowerment of rural populations 2018), most of them in rural areas. Poverty towards enjoying their human rights in Formal equality of opportunity is often also has a direct dual relationship with dignity: reducing barriers to access to not enough to achieve social justice and hunger—from which 821 million people social services, increasing access to work equality. Achieving the promise of ‘leaving currently suffer—including various forms and functional education, and enhancing no one behind’ set out in the Sustainable of malnutrition, such as undernourishment, access to justice and recourse mechanisms. Development Goals (SDGs) requires overweight and stunting (FAO et al. 2018). taking special measures to reach the most These people are unable to enjoy some of There are several ways to address vulnerable members of society, particularly their most basic human rights on a daily barriers faced by vulnerable populations, poor people in rural areas, through specific basis, such as the right to adequate food, especially poor people in rural areas, laws, policies and financial allocations. the right to the highest attainable standard in accessing basic social services. The of health and the right to education. Brazilian government, for instance, has Using the law to achieve social justice, They are also unlikely to be effectively implemented several comprehensive protect the inherent dignity of all and enjoying their political rights or able to social security schemes, including the guarantee that everyone enjoys a set of access justice in practice. well-known Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) fundamental human rights has received strategy. Part of the strategy aimed to considerable attention since the early Under a human rights-based approach— tackle discrepancies and difficulties 20th century. The Universal Declaration as spelled out in the 2003 United Nations in accessing information about the of Human Rights of 1948, which Statement of Common Understanding different programmes and their specific recognised key civil, cultural, economic, (OHCHR 2006)—clear and specific rights eligibility criteria. The Single Registry political and social rights, strives to be and entitlements anchored in policies (Cadastro Único) was introduced to reduce a common standard of achievement and law are fundamental to guarantee information gaps, facilitate access to for all peoples and nations. Previously, basic human rights. It is also necessary information, reduce transaction costs the establishment of the International to ensure the implementation of actions and increase efficiency through easier Labour Organization in 1919 signalled aimed at ensuring those entitlements identification of rights-holders. This also an understanding that lasting peace through the establishment of programmes, required special efforts to issue birth could only be achieved through social delivery mechanisms and adequate certificates and identity documents to
42 those who did not previously have them, including indigenous people in rural areas. The Single Registry is a one-stop comprehensive portal that allows Brazilian citizens to have direct and transparent access to the available social security schemes, which proves especially relevant for vulnerable populations, since it helps them become more aware of their entitlements and the applicable criteria.
In Chile the national authorities decided to address fundamental barriers and costs faced by vulnerable groups, especially poor people in rural areas, in accessing basic social services through the provision of small cash transfers. The rationale behind Chile Solidario was to empower families Photo: Pedro Ventura/Agência Brasília. Smallholder farmer benefits from the Food Aquisition Programme (PAA), to access existing basic services. This is Brasília, Brazil, 2016
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 43 Individuals and “communities are fundamental actors in the realisation of their human rights.
Photo: sandeepachetan. Family works at a farm in Kashmir, India, 2013
As these country examples show, governance of tenure of land, fisheries some of the key elements of a human and forests in the context of national rights-based approach to rural poverty food security. reduction correlate with fundamental human rights principles, including In sum, the underlying component of a participation, accountability, non- human rights-based approach to rural discrimination, transparency, human poverty reduction is to ensure that the dignity, empowerment and the rule of most vulnerable populations in rural law. These principles guide both the areas are at the centre of policies geared elaboration of policies and their content, towards empowering them to contribute implementation and monitoring. to and enjoy their fundamental human rights in dignity. An important consideration for specific human rights-based initiatives to Commission on Legal Empowerment of the develop policy and legal processes on Poor and UNDP. 2008. Making the Law Work for everyone, Vol. 1. New York: Commission on rural poverty reduction is the promotion Legal Empowerment of the Poor and United and use of consensually adopted global Nations Development Programme. voluntary guidelines. FAO. 2016. “Non-judicial grievance mechanisms in land-related disputes in Sierra Leone.” Voluntary Guidelines are non-binding FAO Legal Papers, No. 99. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. guiding documents developed and adopted by States, offering a variety FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO. 2018. of practical ways to address specific The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018. Building climate resilience thematic issues. Under the scope of for food security and nutrition. Rome: Food the Food and Agriculture Organization and Agriculture Organization of the United of the United Nations (FAO), members Nations, International Fund for Agricultural Development, United Nations Children’s have developed and adopted many Fund, World Food Programme, and World such documents over the years, which Health Organization. translate key components of a human France, A. 1894. The Red Lily. Paris: Calmann Lévy. rights-based approach to the broader OHCHR. 2006. Frequently asked questions on a issues of poverty reduction and hunger human rights-based approach to development eradication into specific policy areas. cooperation. New York and Geneva: Office Some examples that have a direct of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. impact on rural poverty reduction are World Bank. 2018. Poverty and Shared the Voluntary Guidelines to support Prosperity 2018. Piecing Together the Poverty the progressive realisation of the Puzzle. Washington, DC: World Bank. right to adequate food in the context of national food security, and the 1. Food and Agriculture Organization of the Voluntary Guidelines on the responsible United Nations (FAO).
44 The impacts of investments in agricultural and rural development on Sustainable Development Goals 1 and 2: a meta-review of evidence 1
Jill Bernstein,2 Nancy Johnson3 about 736 million in extreme poverty, and and depend (at least partly) on agriculture and Aslihan Arslan4 about 815 million live in hunger (de la O for food and income. In sub-Saharan Africa Campos et al. 2018; FAO et al. 2018). Over alone, more than 300 million of the people The first Sustainable Development Goal the last 25 years, the number of extremely living in extreme poverty live in rural areas. (SDG 1) calls for the eradication of extreme poor and malnourished people has poverty and the reduction by half of the decreased by 58 per cent and 21 per cent, Over the next 15 years, the way in proportion of men, women and children respectively. However, poverty reduction which we manage agriculture will be a living in poverty by 2030. SDG 2 calls for has stalled due to inequality, and the major determinant of whether or not an end to hunger and ensuring access for number of hungry people has increased we reach these goals—though rural all people to safe, nutritious and sufficient recently due to climate change, conflict poverty reduction requires more than just food all year round as well as the promotion and economic slowdown. Those still living investment in agriculture. The challenges of sustainable agriculture. in poverty tend to be chronically poor, facing agriculture and the institutional facing numerous constraints to addressing environment for agricultural growth and While great progress in poverty reduction poverty and food insecurity. Further gains technological innovation are far more has been achieved over the last decades, in reducing poverty and hunger will be complex than ever before. Agricultural the poorest people are being left behind: more difficult, particularly for this group, investments must now focus not only over 2.1 billion people still live in poverty, the majority of whom live in rural areas on increasing yields but also on a more
TABLE 1: SDG targets and indicators assessed for evidence review
Targets Indicators
Goal 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere
1.1 By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, 1.1.1 Proportion of population below the international poverty line, by sex, currently measured as people living on less than USD1.25 a day age, employment status and geographical location (urban/rural) 1.2 By 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women 1.2.1 Proportion of population living below the national poverty line, and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions by sex and age according to national definitions 1.2.2 Proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions
Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
2.1 By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular 2.1.1 Prevalence of undernourishment the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to 2.1.2 Prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity in the population, safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round based on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) 2.2 By 2030, end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving, by 2.2.1 Prevalence of stunting (height for age <-2 standard deviation 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in from the median of the World Health Organization (WHO) children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of Child Growth Standards) among children under 5 years of age adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older persons 2.2.2 Prevalence of malnutrition (weight for height >+2 or <-2 standard 2.3 By 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small- deviation from the median of the WHO Child Growth Standards) scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, among children under 5 years of age, by type family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure (wasting and overweight) and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value 2.3.1 Volume of production per labour unit by classes addition and non-farm employment of farming/pastoral/forestry enterprise size* 2.3.2 Average income of small-scale food producers, by sex and indigenous status
Note: This does not include all the targets and indicators under SDGs 1 and 2 but, rather, reflects the targets and indicators chosen as focus areas for the Joint Initiative. *Productivity per land unit was also included in this meta-review. Source: UN General Assembly (2017).
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 45 TABLE 2: General intervention categories and examples
Category Sub-categories/examples
1. Promotion of improved agricultural Homestead food production/home gardens, bio-fortification, livestock interventions, technologies and practices aquaculture interventions, agricultural commercialisation, extension and advisory services, sustainable agricultural practices, irrigation, agricultural input subsidies
2. Promotion of groups/organisations Cooperatives, self-help/savings/women’s health/ farmers’ groups
3. Land tenure security Land rights, land titling
4. Improving natural resource management at Community forest management, payment for environmental services landscape scale
5. Improved access to financial products Microcredit, microsavings, formal banking services, insurance programmes
6. Job creation programmes Youth/job training programmes
7. Social protection Cash transfers, public works and employment guarantee programmes
8. Information services ICT infrastructure, digital banking, mobile phone/media information campaigns
9. Improved infrastructure Irrigation, roads, electricity, telecommunications
Graduation programmes; water, sanitation and hygiene 10. Multisectoral interventions (selected studies) (WASH) interventions
Source: Authors’ elaboration.
complex set of objectives, including to collectively as systematic reviews) to promotion of improved agricultural improving nutrition, preserving natural map and evaluate the evidence regarding technologies and practices; promotion resources and adapting to climate change. the effects of a wide range of development of groups/organisations; land tenure interventions on poverty and hunger. security; improving natural resource Research into agriculture and rural management; improved access to financial development will play a critical role in The question motivating this meta-review products; job creation programmes; meeting the ambitious targets under is the following: What evidence exists social protection; information services; SDGs 1 and 2. Careful analyses of country- regarding the impact of agriculture and improved infrastructure; and multisectoral specific contexts are needed to address the rural development interventions on interventions (see Table 2). We do not include underlying causes of poverty and hunger, hunger and poverty, and what does it observational studies but, rather, focus on but much can be learned from the available reveal about the types of interventions the results of specific interventions that were evidence on the types of interventions most that impact hunger and poverty? The expected to lead to improvements in one likely to be successful in achieving the targets goal is to bring together what is known or more SDG indicators. While not all results under SDGs 1 and 2 in rural areas. across intervention types and outcomes can be considered causal, given the methods so that it is available to researchers and used, we refer to the studies using impact In recent years there has been heightened development practitioners. Such an assessment language, recognising that in emphasis on both the rigorous evaluation of assessment is also useful for identifying many—if not most—cases the studies fall development interventions and systematic what types of future research would short in terms of methodological rigour. reviews and meta-analyses based on best complement what exists to inform such evaluations. The latter have become decisions addressing SDGs 1 and 2. Types of reviews included in the meta-review commonplace as a means to coalesce the The meta-review includes systematic existing evidence on a given topic, creating Methodology reviews of impact evaluations (IEs), resources for readers seeking to understand Outcomes and intervention types analysed comprehensive reviews that provide clear large bodies of literature, and often The outcomes of interest included in the lists and findings from each included IE, generating new insights in the process. review are based on the selected targets and and rigorous IEs that cover interventions in indicators for SDGs 1 and 2 (see Table 1), multiple countries. Meta-analyses are also This article summarises a recently as follows: extreme and moderate included if they accompany a systematic or updated mapping of the evidence on poverty; average income; food security comprehensive review of the IE literature. the relationship between investments (diet quantity); nutrition security (diet Published and grey literature studies in agriculture and rural development, quality and/or nutrition); child stunting; since 2000 are included. Only studies from and reductions in poverty and hunger child malnutrition, including wasting and low- and middle-income countries and (Bernstein, Johnson and Arslan 2019). overweight; and agricultural productivity. in English are included. Given the broad This meta-review uses existing systematic range of intervention types and outcomes reviews, meta-analyses and comparable The review focuses on evidence from a covered, this meta-review restricted comprehensive reviews (hereafter referred wide range of development interventions: the collection of evidence only to those
46 already covered by systematic reviews. For agricultural and social protection all. This lack of evidence may be because our This means that there may be IEs for an programmes, the evidence shows quite search was for reviews of overall programme intervention–outcome combination that consistently positive effects on food effectiveness, not cost-effectiveness are not covered, which should be kept in security. This wide evidence base reflects specifically. Nonetheless, the need for more mind when interpreting the findings. in part the expansive definition we research in this area was a common refrain. have adopted, including measures of The final database includes 79 unique consumption of micronutrient-rich foods, Many of the systematic reviews included systematic reviews, including 18 on poverty; dietary diversity and diet quality. here recognise the importance of 33 on food security; 36 on nutrition security; context and the challenge of making 24 on stunting; 18 on child wasting and/ Undernutrition and, especially, stunting generalisations about what types of or overweight; 31 on productivity; and 48 are, similarly to poverty, difficult outcomes interventions will be effective. There are on income. Given that many reviews cover to influence directly through agricultural some contextual issues that are common more than one outcome type, the sum of investments. However, in contrast to many of the reviews, including the state the reviews per outcome exceeds the total to poverty, many reviews have been of existing institutions, infrastructure and number of reviews. conducted on the evidence for the effects markets. The fact that context matters of agriculture on nutrition and stunting. came through clearly in the process of this SDG outcomes Recent recognition of the importance of meta-review, indicating a need to more What is most striking about the evidence combating stunting as a development comprehensively study contextual factors base regarding poverty (SDG 1) is that for priority and the need for nutrition-sensitive in future research and better integrate most intervention types it is very limited. and nutrition-specific interventions has led qualitative and quantitative methods. This is partly due to the restrictive criteria to interest in the potential of agriculture used to identify the impact on poverty, to make a greater contribution. This helps Interventions which included only measures of poverty explain the relatively large number of Agricultural and social protection headcount, severity and depth, to best reviews, and the focus on the production programmes have the strongest evidence capture progress as measured by SDG 1. of nutritious foods such as vegetables, base for SDGs 1 and 2. Results are also Many reviews that stated they assessed animal products and biofortified staples. promising for other interventions types: poverty impacts used indicators related to However, many are inconclusive due to for only one—strengthening organisations health, education and other areas, rather weak study design and the difficulty of and groups—is there no evidence of even than the poverty measures explicitly used influencing complex nutritional outcomes. potentially positive impacts on any of the by the SDGs. outcomes. Evidence on input subsidies is Had all studies that seek to assess poverty the next thinnest, with just two reviews It is interesting to juxtapose the small impacts used the poverty measures used for that present only limited evidence on evidence base of the effects of agricultural SDG 1, the evidence base would have been productivity improvements. For all but one productivity improvements on poverty larger and more comparable. Nonetheless, intervention type—sustainable agricultural with that of the effect of agricultural growth the reality is that impact pathways from practices—reviews looked at multiple on poverty using cross-country data and agricultural and rural development outcomes. Even where they did not find computerised general equilibrium models interventions to poverty and nutrition impacts, the fact that no negative results showing robust evidence (De Janvry and are complex and difficult to document. were found suggests that there are no Sadoulet 2010). Demonstrating the impacts Ensuring that IEs also include intermediate trade-offs, at least among the interventions of agricultural research and development outcomes along the pathway is important assessed in these studies. This finding on poverty is inherently challenging due to for expanding the evidence base. Differently could result from cherry-picking the long and complex casual chain between from SDG 1, the indicators chosen for SDG 2 (conducting studies where impacts are changes in agricultural practices and poverty do reflect outcomes along a pathway. Some expected) or publication bias, but evidence outcomes (Gollin et al. 2018); however, it is SDG 2 indicators, such as productivity and of what does not work is also important to still surprising how few studies have tried. income, are also relevant for SDG 1, hence inform investment decisions, which should investments that address them can harness be considered by the research community. The evidence base is stronger for the synergies between both SDGs. food and nutrition security (SDG 2). The review focuses on single intervention As might be expected, the evidence Despite its importance, cost-effectiveness is types; however, many projects or base for impacts of agricultural and commonly noted in many of the systematic programmes include multiple types. rural development interventions on reviews covered by this report as an area With the exception of a small number income and productivity—both of which of research that seriously needs more of interventions specifically targeted at are much more proximate outcomes to attention. Only a few include substantial nutrition and health, limited evidence an agricultural intervention—are well analysis of cost-effectiveness. Others had was identified regarding the effects of documented and largely positive. some mention of cost-effectiveness, but it multisectoral interventions on the outcomes was either not a major focus or there was of interest. This could be an important area Food security is covered for most limited evidence based on the IEs they for future research, with careful attention intervention types, although not always examined. Finally, a substantial number of paid to underlying impact pathways to with a large volume of relevant IEs. reviews did not address cost-effectiveness at enhance the generalisability of the results.
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 47 Recent recognition “of the importance of combating stunting as a development priority and the need for nutrition- sensitive and nutrition- specific interventions has led to interest in the potential of agriculture to make a greater contribution. Photo: Maria Hennies. Family farm in Petrópolis, Brazil, 2014
Next steps to expand the evidence base impacts of a wide range of interventions on IFAD Research Series. Rome: International Most studies reviewed call for greater a large set of outcome indicators for SDGs Fund for Agricultural Development. attention to quality in both measurement 1 and 2. It might generate more questions de Janvry, A., and E. Sadoulet. 2010. and analytical rigour. Given the length and than answers for each type of intervention— “Agricultural Growth and Poverty Reduction: Additional Evidence.” World Bank Research complexity of the impact pathways, this regarding, for example, the geographic and Observer, Vol. 25, No. 1, 1-20. does not just mean more experimental and time scales of the interventions evaluated, De La O Campos, A.P., C. Villani, B. Davis., quasi-experimental studies. Good-quality and the sustainability of their results. It is M. Takagi. 2018. Ending extreme poverty in studies of all kinds are needed, as are ways intended to serve as a resource for deeper rural areas – Sustaining livelihoods to leave of synthesising findings and extracting investigation into the various types of no one behind. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization for the United Nations. operational implications. interventions, to provide a broad perspective on the research landscape relevant to SDGs 1 Gollin, D., L. T. Probst, and E. Brower. 2018. Assessing Poverty Impacts of Agricultural Research: Methods Investment is also needed in the kinds of and 2, and to contribute to the development and Challenges for CGIAR. Rome: Independent data and data collections systems that will of meta-review methodology that can Science and Partnership Council.
48 How can poverty reduction programmes empower rural women? Considerations from social protection
Raquel Tebaldi1 and completion of specific activities, usually (and more valuable) assets than women Ana Paula de la O Campos2 under the responsibility of women. (Johnson et al. 2016), and in some institutional contexts women’s property Social protection policies play an Social assistance’s programmatic focus rights are non-existent or badly enforced. important role in alleviating extreme on women as mothers and carers also Though not as popular as cash transfers in poverty. These policies and programmes seems to crowd out concerns for their own terms of scale, asset transfers are becoming can be understood as those which economic security (especially in old age) more prominent in social protection. support people via transfers of income and their access to the labour market and Johnson et al. (2016) argue that these and resources that enable them to deal economic advancement (Cook and Razavi types of transfers can play an important with vulnerabilities throughout their 2012). Indeed, the transformative potential role in changing gendered patterns lifecycle, including social insurance, social of social protection programmes is very of asset distribution. Looking at eight assistance, public works and sustainable limited if they are not linked to other different projects being implemented in livelihood programmes. The purpose of policies seeking to expand opportunities Africa and Asia, they found that women’s this article is to present a reflection on for women beyond childrearing and asset control is positively related to how gender inequalities and rural precarious, underpaid work relations. development outcomes for themselves women’s empowerment are affected by In such scenarios, these programmes can and their households. However, it is worth social protection programmes, and why be interpreted as a way of reinforcing noting that even when transfers were and how social protection policy should traditional gendered labour divisions designed to be delivered to women, their become more gender-sensitive. to cover for the State’s shortcomings in retention of control over the asset was not actually providing child-care services a given: most projects did not succeed Cash transfers and promoting decent jobs (Patel and in narrowing the gender gap in asset Cash transfer programmes are often Hochfeld 2011; Sweetman 2011). ownership, and some may even increase assumed to be empowering to women, this inequality when not designed and presuming a straightforward nexus to Nevertheless, cash transfers provide implemented in a gender-sensitive way. women’s empowerment or a reduction in much-needed financial support to people gender inequalities; however, the existing living in poverty, and these programmes Public works programmes are another evidence supporting this claim is still mixed are achieving very important results in a common type of social protection (De la O Campos 2015; Bonilla et al. 2017), range of areas which matter for women’s intervention, meant to create infrastructure which can be partly explained by the fact empowerment and for gender equality. in remote areas or fill in gaps where that cash transfers do not have women’s The Overseas Development Institute certain service provision is needed. empowerment as an explicit objective. (ODI 2016a) found that there is relatively These programmes are typically For instance, the preference for transferring strong evidence pointing to an increase in deployed as temporary measures during the money to women is usually a design women’s decision-making power related to emergencies—such as natural disasters— feature of cash transfers targeting children, expenditure decisions. There is compelling and can be more gender-sensitive when and when this is clearly expressed in a evidence from sub-Saharan Africa that cash they focus on developing infrastructure programme’s design, it is generally based transfers can lead to more investments which benefits rural women (for instance, on the assumptions that women are the in productive activities (including those by diminishing the time they take to primary caregivers within households and performed by women) and access to credit perform daily tasks such as fetching water), that they will spend the money in a more (De la O Campos 2015b). Regarding other by ensuring that their participation is ‘family-responsive’ way (as opposed to empowerment indicators, cash transfers equally encouraged by providing child-care men), focusing on children’s well-being. were found to delay marriage and reduce and breastfeeding facilities, equal wages The main critiques focus on the privatisation the probability of women and men engaging and flexible working hours, including of care and the instrumentalisation of in unsafe sex. Women that are recipients in rural areas. If they enable women’s women, which are implied in many of these of cash transfers therefore need to access participation in non-traditional productive programmes, while the absence of basic the additional social services and livelihood roles and leadership positions, public works child-care services and reproductive health interventions that will complement and programmes can also generate changes are not resolved. reinforce their pathway out of poverty (Ibid.). in attitudes regarding what is considered suitable as women’s work. However, these This criticism is particularly accentuated Asset transfer and gender-sensitive considerations are not in the case of conditional cash transfers, public work programmes commonly found in these programmes’ which link the receipt of benefits to the Worldwide, men continue to own more design and implementation.
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 49 Past evaluations of the world’s largest on donor funding); (ii) benefit levels are public works programmes find that lower; and (iii) access is means-tested there is still a long way to go in terms and (in the case of conditional cash of ensuring that they are promoting transfers) subject to compliance with women’s empowerment. India’s Mahatma conditionalities which may accentuate Gandhi National Rural Employment their time poverty. Guarantee Act (MNREGA) has been found to have a lot of potential for women’s Though women’s labour force empowerment by augmenting the participation has been growing number of choices available to women worldwide over the last decades, and reducing their dependence on significant barriers persist in women’s men, though transformative impacts in access to decent jobs and social insurance gender relations still face considerable schemes, particularly in rural areas. obstacles in the country (Pellissery and Most of these programmes—precisely Jalan 2011). Ethiopia’s Productive Safety due to their contributory nature and Net Programme found that women’s their strict connection to formal labour participation is severely compromised by relations—largely ignore women’s limited other demands on their time for care and contributory capacity (due to their mostly domestic activities (Berhane et al. 2011) informally-earned, scant and sporadic and that a lot of the gender-sensitive income), particularly in the family farm. provisions found in programme design Additionally, a lot of schemes fail to were not actually implemented or were take into account women’s particular simply deprioritised (ODI 2016b). lifecycle experience, which may include pregnancies—and, therefore, the need Social insurance to be covered by maternity leave and Lund and Alfers (2016, 3) argue that specific health services—and a longer life the emphasis on cash transfers has led span—which often means that women’s to the term being used as a synonym pension benefits are ‘eroded’ over time for social protection, though they were (Holmes and Scott 2016; “never meant to be the whole answer UN Women 2015). to addressing poverty and inequality”. Cook and Razavi (2012) point out that Nonetheless, there are examples of the continuing division between social social insurance systems that have been assistance and social insurance and reformed, seeking to expand their coverage their differentiated relations to the to informal workers—including highly labour market mean that women are feminised work sectors such as in the cases overrepresented as beneficiaries of the of Brazil and South Africa, where domestic former, whose: (i) financial sustainability workers have seen an improvement in their is less stable (in countries that depend labour rights; cases of increased flexibility
Cash transfer “programmes are often assumed to be empowering to women, presuming a straightforward nexus to Foto women’s empowerment or a reduction in gender inequalities.
Photo: Ollivier Girard/CIFOR. Women carrying cotton, Sissili, Burkina Faso, 2013
50 in eligibility requirements, such as in China, De la O Campos, A. P. 2015a. “Empowering where informal workers can contribute rural women through social protection.” Rural Transformations Technical Papers Series, No. 2. Social protection voluntarily to participate in formal social Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the “ insurance schemes; cases of pension United Nations.
ODI. 2016b. Women’s work—Mothers, children and the global childcare crisis. London: Overseas Berhane, G., J. F. Hoddinott, N. Kumar, A. Seyoum Development Institute.
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 51 Gender and rural poverty
Youjin B. Chung1 Rethinking land poverty reproduction is unattainable without land In the wake of the global land rush—the and land-based resources. These include, Much has been debated and written about rapid growth in the acquisition of farmland inter alia, forests and tree resources for gender and rural poverty over the past half and other land-based resources in the last accessing fuelwood, timber and medicine a century. Decades of feminist scholarship decade—land titling has re-emerged as and for performing cultural and religious and activism on gender, the environment a popular response among governments rituals; grasses for thatching roofs and and development have contributed and donors alike. With regards to gender, weaving mats and baskets; meadows and to the recognition of gender equality it has been argued that women who pastures for grazing livestock; and wetlands today as both a standalone goal and a enjoy tenure security, whether through and rivers for fetching water, catching fish, guiding principle of the 2030 Agenda for individual or joint titles, are likely to use and collecting clay and sand for making Sustainable Development. Despite this their land more efficiently and productively cooking utensils (Ibid.). achievement, what has received far less than those who do not, and as a result, analytical attention are the enduring ways enjoy overall improvements in their social In other words, the daily sustenance, in which rural women continue to be status, household bargaining power and material well-being, cultural vitality characterised by a series of ‘lacks’ in the decision-making authority (Agarwal 1994). and intergenerational resilience of rural development policy discourse, and how However, others have suggested that land communities do not simply depend on ‘fixing’ these deficiencies are assumed to titling does not immediately guarantee access to individual farm plots and titles contribute to solving rural poverty. or translate into productivity gains, thereof, but to a wide range of common although it can be one of many efforts property resources that give life purpose For instance, Sustainable Development aimed at securing women’s land rights and meaning. Access to these resources Goal (SDG) 5 sets out to eradicate various (Doss, Meinzen-Dick, and Bomuhangi is shaped not only by gendered property forms of resource poverty among rural 2014). Some have shown that efforts to relations at the household level, but also women, namely with respect to their land privatise and formalise land can perversely by a wider range of social relationships and time. The conventional wisdom on exacerbate insecurity among marginalised and institutions at the community and rural development proposes that if women individuals and groups, including rural state levels that affect people’s ability to are given equal access to land and other women, by delegitimising pre-existing benefit from them (see Ribot and Peluso material resources, they have a chance resource users and increasing rent-seeking 2003). Reframing land as a source of of becoming as productive as their male activities and land concentration among social reproduction would then require a counterparts; the Food and Agriculture elites (Meinzen-Dick and Mwangi 2009). reconsideration of current policy debates Organization of the United Nations (FAO Such findings lead Doss, Summerfield, from securing individual or joint titles to 2011) estimates that closing this ‘gender and Tsikata (2014, 12) to argue that “there land for rural women and men, to thinking gap’ in agriculture can improve overall is little or no evidence that titles to land more broadly about the institutional yields in so-called developing countries protect anyone, men or women” from arrangements and power relations that by anywhere from 2.5 per cent to 4 per dispossession and impoverishment. The shape people’s access to a broader range cent. In relation to time poverty, it is evidence that abounds, to the contrary, of common property resources. assumed that if women were ‘freed’ from is how the effects of land ownership their unpaid care work responsibilities and on gender equality and rural poverty Rethinking time poverty participated in the economy as equally reduction are ambiguous and inconclusive. Beyond promoting women’s increased as men, they would add up to USD38 ownership and control over land, SDG million—or roughly 26 per cent—to global Continuing to assess the gendered effects 5 also targets the recognition and gross domestic product (GDP) by 2025 of land titling and other formalisation valuation of unpaid care work, an essential (McKinsey Global Institute 2015). measures will be important, given the component of social reproduction often multitude of ongoing interventions in performed by women and girls the world While these narratives and figures are different geographical contexts. However, over. The goal is to reduce women’s relative attractive, there are limits to these a more transformative approach would ‘time poverty’ which can negatively impact productivist approaches to understanding require a rethinking of the conventional their earning capacity and income poverty the relationship between gender and rural definition of land: from purely an economic vis-à-vis men (Blackden and Wodon 2006). poverty—that is, the tendency to equate or productive asset, to a source of social Beyond the provision of a wide range of efficiency gains and economic growth reproduction. Social reproduction refers policy interventions to assist caregivers, as overriding and normative metrics of to an assemblage of diverse gendered progress towards this target is to be development. This article proposes a activities—both paid and unpaid, material measured through national time-use critical re-evaluation of ideas that are and symbolic—which are necessary for the surveys, by quantifying the total amount taken for granted about gender and rural sustenance, resilience and flourishing of of time people spend on unpaid care work poverty, particularly as they relate to land human life on a daily and generational basis and disaggregating these data by sex, age access and unpaid care work. (Chung 2017). For rural households, social and location (rural/urban). It is argued that
52 Conclusion What knowledge do governments, development agencies and civil society actors need to achieve transformative gender justice and agrarian revitalisation in the global South? This article has argued that there needs to be a conscientious effort on the part of all stakeholders involved to rethink and contest the received wisdom that more private property and discretionary time for women result in increased agricultural productivity and rural economic growth. A more fruitful way to understand the relationship between gender and rural poverty would Photo: Youjin Chung. A woman farmer holds out a handful of local bean varieties in Swayimana Distrit, require collaborative research and analysis Kwa-Zulu Natal Province, South Africa, 2013. that begins from the everyday lived experiences and knowledges of women and men who work the land. this quantification would allow researchers presumed in survey instruments may not and policymakers to evaluate the register well with agrarian communities Agarwal, B. 1994. A Field of One’s Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia. Cambridge: productivity of household production and whose mode of time-reckoning often Cambridge University Press. gauge its economic value and contribution depends on the position of the sun Blackden, C. M., and Q. Wodon. 2006. “Gender, Time to national GDP (Elson 2017). and moon and the seasonal variations Use, and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa.” World Bank and fluidity of agricultural work tasks Working Paper. Washington, DC: World Bank. While intended to render visible the (Ibid.). The synchronous or simultaneous Cameron, J., and J. K. Gibson-Graham. 2003. indispensable role of unpaid care work, rhythms of care work and farm work (e.g. “Feminising the Economy: Metaphors, Strategies, this kind of monetary valuation has been how women often perform agricultural Politics.” Gender, Place & Culture 10(2): 145–157. critiqued for reducing all social processes tasks while carrying their babies on their Chung, Y. B. 2017. “Engendering the New and relationships to abstract dollar backs) are also difficult to represent and Enclosures: Development, Involuntary Resettlement estimates (Cameron and Gibson-Graham analyse quantitatively, without leading and the Struggles for Social Reproduction in Coastal Tanzania.” Development and Change 48(1): 98–120. 2003). This productivist approach to to simplification or underestimation of understanding unpaid care work also fails women’s overall labour contribution. Chung, Y. B., S. L. Young, and R. Bezner Kerr. forthcoming. “Rethinking the Value of Unpaid Care to recognise historical processes, such as Work: Lessons from Participatory Visual Research the legacies of slavery and female domestic Last but not least, examining unpaid care in Central Tanzania.” Gender, Place & Culture. servitude, and colonial migrant labour and work through the lens of time poverty Doss, C., R. Meinzen-Dick, and A. Bomuhangi. 2014. taxation systems, which have deeply shaped leaves little room for exploring not only “Who Owns the Land? Perspectives from Rural the unequal gender division of labour in the structural inequalities that shape Ugandans and Implications for Large-Scale Land Acquisitions.” Feminist Economics 20(1): 76–100. different geographical locations. At the the distribution of social reproductive same time, attributing monetary value to labour, but also the subjective meanings Doss, C., G. Summerfield, and D. Tsikata. 2014. “Land, Gender, and Food Security.” Feminist unpaid care work has the effect of devaluing that caregivers might attribute to their Economics 20(1): 1–23. other important human values, such as labour, such as positive emotions of nurturance, love, empathy and compassion joy, satisfaction and fulfilment, beyond Elson, D. 2017. “Recognize, Reduce, and Redistribute Unpaid Care Work: How to Close for human and non-human others which the feelings of burden, drudgery and the Gender Gap.” New Labor Forum 26(2): 52–61. are transferred daily and generationally oppression often generalised in the FAO. 2011. State of Food and Agriculture through the act of caregiving (Chung, development literature (Ibid.). Given 2010-2011. Women in Agriculture: Closing the Young, and Bezner Kerr, forthcoming). these challenges to implementing and Gender Gap for Development. Rome: Food and interpreting time-use surveys in rural Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The current design of national time-use contexts, policymakers and researchers McKinsey Global Institute. 2015. The Power of surveys also poses several challenges might consider collecting qualitative data Parity: How Advancing Women’s Equality Can Add $12 Trillion to Global Growth. New York: for understanding the lived realities and alongside quantitative data, to better McKinsey & Company. perceptions of care work for rural women understand caregivers’ perceptions, Meinzen-Dick, R., and E. Mwangi. 2009. “Cutting and men. Time-use surveys assume a rigid attitudes and behaviours towards unpaid the Web of Interests: Pitfalls of Formalizing boundary between the so-called public care work. Such study should pay attention Property Rights.” Land Use Policy 26(1): 36–43. and private spheres (e.g. places of work to social differentiations among rural Ribot, J. C., and N. Peluso. 2003. “A Theory of and places of family), which does not caregivers, not only across gender, age and Access.” Rural Sociology 68(2): 153–181. always resonate with rural households location (as it currently stands under SDG 5), involved in subsistence or semi-subsistence but also across race, ethnicity, sexuality, livelihoods. Moreover, the 24-hour clock religion and other intersecting inequalities. 1. Clark University.
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth | Policy in Focus 53
The aim to reduce rural poverty in the 21st century importantly intersects with a range of other global challenges.
Ryan Nehring and Ana Paula de la O Campos
We have a great deal more to learn about the economics of agriculture, mobility and poverty, as well as the shared factors shaping them.
Linden McBride and Esteban J. Quiñones
Rural livelihoods are not isolated and independent, amenable to narrow development interventions, but tied to what is happening elsewhere, both locally and more broadly.
Ian Scoones
Recognising the diversity of mechanisms and heterogeneity of the reality of rural areas calls for rethinking of the dominant ‘pro-smallholder’ narrative.
Carlos Oya
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