Suchergebnisse

This article explores a contradiction at the heart of the environmental security–development nexus by bringing conceptual and political logics of environmental security into critical dialogue with vernaculars of security and insecurity in the 'margins' of rural southwestern Madagascar. The analysis presented here highlights important ways in which state–society relations are transformed as development intersects with historical patterns of resource access and alienation, and legacies of disenfranchisement and violence. Analyses of secondary literature, national policy and results of ethnographic research conducted in southwestern Madagascar since 2007 reveal a stark disjuncture between dominant logics of environmental security that guide exclusionary conservation and resource developments and situated understandings and experiences on the ground. Understanding contemporary resource conflicts and building peace requires a broadening of the notion of conflict, methodological deepening as well as a shift in institutional cultures to expand types of knowledge and actors' perspectives that are privileged and legitimised in both scholarship and policy-making.

Researchers studying health, adaptability, and political economy have long been concerned with human health as a reflection of interpenetrating sociopolitical, economic, ecological, and bodily processes. However, understanding the production of health in the context of changing political ecologies remains underexplored and undertheorized. This article proposes a 'landscape framework' for understanding variation in health across social and geographic space in contexts characterized by sociopolitical, economic, and environmental change. The proposed framework draws on scholarship from political ecology, medical anthropology, and research on livelihoods vulnerability, and is applied to understand variation in nutritional status, a locally and analytically salient manifestation of livelihood vulnerability, observed among Mikea people living in three communities in rural southwestern Madagascar in 2009. Because of the conjunctural nature of livelihoods vulnerability during the research period, which residents of the region widely described in idiomatic terms as the baintao lava, or 'the long wounded year,' no particular variable, interaction, or local capability is sufficient to explain variation in experienced insecurities and associated nutritional patterns, nor to explain why changes in bodily manifestations of livelihoods vulnerability were observed across seasons of data collection. Rather than focusing on factors of linear causation, the proposed framework focuses attention on articulations among processes that are associated with long-term adaptability, exposure to acute stressors, and the capabilities of people to take action in response to perceived social and environmental challenges. By emphasizing process and articulation, the landscape framework allows the analytic integration of scales of socio-ecological interaction, facilitates comparative analyses of vulnerability within regions, and demonstrates how the integration of ecological and social dimensions of experience can help to unmask processes that produce vulnerability and may contribute to resilience in a regional context.Key words: Political ecology, health, vulnerability, food security, nutrition, adaptability, Madagascar, conservation, development

Researchers studying health, adaptability, and political economy have long been concerned with human health as a reflection of interpenetrating sociopolitical, economic, ecological, and bodily processes. However, understanding the production of health in the context of changing political ecologies remains underexplored and undertheorized. This article proposes a 'landscape framework' for understanding variation in health across social and geographic space in contexts characterized by sociopolitical, economic, and environmental change. The proposed framework draws on scholarship from political ecology, medical anthropology, and research on livelihoods vulnerability, and is applied to understand variation in nutritional status, a locally and analytically salient manifestation of livelihood vulnerability, observed among Mikea people living in three communities in rural southwestern Madagascar in 2009. Because of the conjunctural nature of livelihoods vulnerability during the research period, which residents of the region widely described in idiomatic terms as the baintao lava, or 'the long wounded year,' no particular variable, interaction, or local capability is sufficient to explain variation in experienced insecurities and associated nutritional patterns, nor to explain why changes in bodily manifestations of livelihoods vulnerability were observed across seasons of data collection. Rather than focusing on factors of linear causation, the proposed framework focuses attention on articulations among processes that are associated with long-term adaptability, exposure to acute stressors, and the capabilities of people to take action in response to perceived social and environmental challenges. By emphasizing process and articulation, the landscape framework allows the analytic integration of scales of socio-ecological interaction, facilitates comparative analyses of vulnerability within regions, and demonstrates how the integration of ecological and social dimensions of experience can help to unmask processes that produce vulnerability and may contribute to resilience in a regional context.

Researchers studying health, adaptability, and political economy have long been concerned with human health as a reflection of interpenetrating sociopolitical, economic, ecological, and bodily processes. However, understanding the production of health in the context of changing political ecologies remains underexplored and undertheorized. This article proposes a 'landscape framework' for understanding variation in health across social and geographic space in contexts characterized by sociopolitical, economic, and environmental change. The proposed framework draws on scholarship from political ecology, medical anthropology, and research on livelihoods vulnerability, and is applied to understand variation in nutritional status, a locally and analytically salient manifestation of livelihood vulnerability, observed among Mikea people living in three communities in rural southwestern Madagascar in 2009. Because of the conjunctural nature of livelihoods vulnerability during the research period, which residents of the region widely described in idiomatic terms as the baintao lava, or 'the long wounded year,' no particular variable, interaction, or local capability is sufficient to explain variation in experienced insecurities and associated nutritional patterns, nor to explain why changes in bodily manifestations of livelihoods vulnerability were observed across seasons of data collection. Rather than focusing on factors of linear causation, the proposed framework focuses attention on articulations among processes that are associated with long-term adaptability, exposure to acute stressors, and the capabilities of people to take action in response to perceived social and environmental challenges. By emphasizing process and articulation, the landscape framework allows the analytic integration of scales of socio-ecological interaction, facilitates comparative analyses of vulnerability within regions, and demonstrates how the integration of ecological and social dimensions of experience can help to unmask processes that produce vulnerability and may contribute to resilience in a regional context.Key words: Political ecology, health, vulnerability, food security, nutrition, adaptability, Madagascar, conservation, development

ABSTRACT This article examines discourses of indigeneity and rurality that define and classify different categories of resource users in the context of Mikea Forest environmental governance. Many Malagasy peoples live in, have deep cultural ties with, and directly depend on the island's forests, but Mikea people are the only to be legally recognized as 'indigenous peoples' as defined by Operational Directive 4.20 of the World Bank. In policy documents, scholarship, and media productions, Mikea people are represented as a small, culturally distinct population of primitive forest foragers. In contrast, other subsistence producers living in the region are represented as invasive and harmful to Mikea people and the Mikea Forest environment. However, there are significant incongruities between these representations and local history, cultural norms, and social-environmental realities. While the intent of international norms for indigenous rights in conservation and development contexts is to mitigate risk of harm and improve democratic participation among historically underrepresented peoples, this case highlights how imposed notions of indigeneity can in some cases actually increase local vulnerabilities. Mikea Forest environmental policies should be amended to mitigate risk of insecurities faced by a broad range of forest residents, Mikea and non-Mikea, due to socio-political exclusions, restricted livelihoods, and reduced territorial rights. RÉSUMÉ L'objectif de cet article est d'examiner comment dans le cadre de la mise en place de politiques publiques à l'échelle de la forêt des Mikea, et dans les discours sur l'indigénisme et la ruralité qui y sont associés, sont définies et classifiées les différentes catégories d'utilisateurs des ressources. De nombreux malgaches vivent, ont des attaches culturelles et dépendent directement des îlots forestiers pour leur subsistance ; néanmoins seuls les Mikea sont légalement reconnus comme des « peuples autochtones » tels que définis par la directive opérationnelle 4.20 de la Banque Mondiale et auraient dés lors des droits particulier sur le territoire et les forêts. Dans les textes des politiques environnementales ou dans les médias, les Mikea sont présentés comme une population autochtone au mode de vie originel et détentrice d'une culture inédite tandis que les populations voisines sont perçues comme des envahisseurs perturbant l'organisation sociale et les forêts des Mikea. Toutefois, il existe des décalages importants entre ces représentations et les réalités du terrain : les fondements de l'identité locale ne correspondent pas aux définitions officielles de l'autochtonie présentée dans les documents du développement. Les Mikea et les populations voisines sont en fait largement interdépendants et tous pratiquent un éventail d'activités économiques fondées sur les facteurs de saisonnalité, les compétences ou les demandes du marché. Contrairement aux représentations officielles présentant la culture des Mikea comme unique et autonome, ceux-ci appartiennent aux mêmes clans et partagent les mêmes pratiques que leurs voisins jugés illégitimes au regard de la gestion des territoires. L'histoire montre en outre une longue participation des peuples Mikea aux échanges commerciaux régionaux et mondiaux et des échanges constants avec les missionnaires. L'objectif des normes internationales pour les droits des peuples autochtones est de réduire les risques de vulnérabilité et d'améliorer la participation démocratique des peuples sous-représentés dans les instances officielles ; notre recherche montre au contraire que les notions imposées de l'autochtonie peuvent dans certaines situations accentuer les vulnérabilités des peuples à l'échelle locale. Les politiques environnementales concernant la forêt Mikea devraient être améliorées pour prendre en compte les insécurités rencontrées par une grande partie des résidents de la forêt, Mikea et non Mikea. Les acteurs de la conservation et du développement pourraient parvenir à mettre en place des politiques plus justes et plus démocratiques, et devraient chercher à atténuer les conséquences négatives des politiques déjà en place.

Bringing political ecology's concern with the critical politics of nature and resource violence into dialogue with key debates in political geography, critical security studies and research on the geographies and phenomenology of violence and warfare, this paper explores strategies 'from above' in relation to the establishment and operation of the Rio Tinto QIT-Madagascar Minerals (QMM) ilmenite mine in southeast Madagascar. While QMM claims to be a responsible 'green' self-regulator and sustainable development actor, it has triggered serious social, environmental and legal conflicts since its inception, including allegations of a 'double land grab' to accommodate mining activities and compensatory biodiversity offsetting. We argue that 'pacification', theorised as a productive form of violence that works through the re-ordering of socio-nature, underwrites the forms of 'security', 'stability' and even 'sustainability' that facilitate multiple and overlapping strategies of value extraction in the territorial and extra-territorial spaces occupied by the QMM mine partnership. By situating these dynamics historically, we identify ways in which pacification draws upon sedimented and evolving logics of racialised violence to facilitate operations and silence opposition.

This is the notes on contributors for IDS Bulletin 53.4: Reframing Climate and Environmental Justice.

This issue of the IDS Bulletin brings together a range of empirically grounded studies that add to – and challenge – contemporary debates on climate and environmental justice. Despite a growing focus on justice dimensions of climate and environmental change, we argue that there are still 'blind spots' in mainstream debates that warrant increased attention. In this brief introduction, we point to three in particular: first, a persistent failure to recognise diverse contexts and knowledges; second, a continuing failure to sufficiently appreciate the deep-seated contestations around climate and environmental justice; and third, the risks associated with 'recovery' and 'emergency' mindsets driving climate and environmental policy agendas. The articles in this collection illustrate and exemplify these issues in different ways and from a variety of methodological, philosophical, and interdisciplinary approaches and positionalities. We argue for a reframing of climate and environmental justice debates and suggest some key principles to make these 'hidden' aspects more visible in policy and practice.

This is the glossary for IDS Bulletin 53.4: Reframing Climate and Environmental Justice.

ABSTRACT To reduce poverty, one must understand what poverty means in local contexts. We used focus groups to elicit a "folk model" of poverty from Masikoro, Vezo, and Mikea people in rural southwestern Madagascar and then placed this model in dialogue with four social science models: economic growth, substantivism, mode of production, and livelihoods. The folk model emphasizes household continuity, production of people, and exploitative expropriation by the wealthy. Absent from the folk model is scarcity of natural and social resources, the core of economic growth and livelihoods explanations. Consistent with substantivism, poverty and wealth are states one may occupy simultaneously, not maximizable quantities. Compatible with mode of production, the root cause of poverty is the rules regarding control over property. Poverty interventions based on profit, competition, intensification, or devolution of control to traditional social institutions would likely be culturally foreign to rural Malagasy and could further the gap between rich and poor.