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Insights into agency and social interactions in natural resource management. Extended case studies from northern Ethiopia

Book - Dissertation

This dissertation explores natural resource management in northern Ethiopia from an actor-oriented perspective. It is the outcome of a PhD project funded by the University of Leuven and hosted by the MU-IUC programme (the Institutional University Cooperation with Mekelle University in Ethiopia) of VLIR (the Flemish Interuniversity Council). To gain insights into actors, institutions and interactions regarding natural resource management, data were collected during 22 months of fieldwork in northern Ethiopia using the extended case method, which is an ethnographic method that combines participant observation and interviews. This dissertation starts with a theoretical introduction, followed by four chapters based on the empirical data, and ends with a conclusion on the implications of the research findings for natural resource management in northern Ethiopia.The introduction first describes how the research emerged and then the research process itself. The description of the research process elaborates upon the research area, approach, questions and techniques. Next, the theoretical framework of political ecology is explored. Its origin and anthropological strand are clarified. Finally, the difficulty encountered in political ecology in interweaving actor-oriented and systems thinking is touched upon. Chapter one examines how local people gain access to and get control over water, based on a theoretical framework that combines development discourses, social interfaces and relations of property. The extended case of a governmental water supply intervention unravels relations of property over hand dug wells and how these are challenged within the governmental intervention in which pumps are placed on the wells. As such, it turns out that relations of property continue to be based on former private land holding systems in spite of socialist land reforms and that hybrids of development discourses are deployed at three levels of institutionalisation, policy making and implementation. All the more, because these three levels are disconnected from each other, discrepancies between policy discourse and practice prevail, as becomes clear in the analysis of interactions at the local-state social interface.Chapter two investigates discrepancies between policy discourse and practice diachronically with a focus on multiple interpretations of the concept of participation. The extended case study of a single natural resource rehabilitation programme (the zero-grazing programme) over four years time reveals continuities and changes in programme implementation through time and their effects on farmers lives. Three continuities seem to surface in these interactions at the local-state social interface: non-democratic participation, the TPLF-development nexus, and the intertwinement of development programmes. A major change exists in why and how farmers incorporate strategies that governmental officials deploy to make them participate. Chapter three explores conflicts over pastures along the Afar-Tigray regional boundary based on the analytical concepts of ethnicity, boundaries and borderlands. The extended case study of several conflicts over different pastures in the Afar-Tigray borderlands demonstrates the interplay of social, political and geographical space when people make place out of space and gain access to and get control over pastures. In addition to that, the extended case indicates the ambivalent role of the state in resource management, especially in boundary-making and conflict mediation, and how that influences local processes of identification and appropriation of place.Chapter four examines the concept of social resilience and recapitulates on the actor-oriented approach in political ecology. The origin and multiple definitions of social resilience are described and it is pointed out that the concepts underlying dynamics are poorly understood. Participation and social capital two central concepts in the social resilience debate are untangled along with the critique they received in the field of development studies. Then, based on the extended case study of the management of a national forest priority area in northern Ethiopia, an actor-oriented approach is proposed as a substantial contribution to the analyses of social resilience in natural resource management.The conclusion reflects upon the research results, summarizing the implications of the research findings for natural resource management in northern Ethiopia from a political ecological perspective and recapitulates about the possibility to interweave actor-oriented and systems thinking.
Number of pages: 126
Publication year:2013
Accessibility:Open