Doctoral Dissertation Research: Farmer-Herder Conflict, Environmental Change, and Institutional Response in Mali

博士论文研究：马里的农牧冲突、环境变化和制度应对

• 批准号: 1130081
• 负责人: Matthew Turner
• 金额: $ 1.19万
• 依托单位: University of Wisconsin-Madison
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-08-01 至 2012-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1130081&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Farmer; Herder

In dryland sub-Saharan Africa, local institutions will play a critical role in climate change adaptation yet little is known about how they mediate issues relating to resource access, competition, and conflict in vulnerable areas. A crucial climate change adaptation strategy in these areas is agropastoral mobility, which demands sophisticated institutions that function across spatial scales. The premise of this project is that the Republic of Mali, as a model of democratic decentralization, provides an excellent case for addressing these and other critical issues relating to resource-dependent livelihoods in rural dryland areas. The research objective of this project is to examine the connections between changing systems of local governance, resource access, conflict, and environmental change in Mali by answering three interrelated questions. These questions focus on three specific areas of change: 1) the influence of decentralization on shared resource access arrangements between settled farmers and mobile herders; 2) the impact of land cover and vegetation change on livestock movements; and 3) how these institutional and environmental changes are affecting farmer-herder relations. In order to answer these questions, this project integrates three components of multi-temporal institutional and biophysical analyses of dryland resource access. First, it utilizes longitudinal comparative analysis of four Malian municipalities that are following divergent institutional trajectories vis-a-vis resource access. The second is a multi-scale participatory land use and cover change (LUCC) analysis that focuses on broad scale agricultural expansion linked to village-scale changes in the spatial patterning of cropped fields. The last component focuses on the measurement and interpretation of inter-annual trends in vegetation phenology. This activity includes a participatory exercise with livestock herders designed to understand the implications of changing phenology patterns for their livelihoods.The trans-disciplinary and place-based approach of this project not only contributes to the scholarship on dryland agrarian livelihoods; it also opens new theoretical avenues for the study of coupled social-ecological systems more generally. This enables the project to critically engage with the hypothesis that changing environmental conditions are a potential driver of political conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. Engagement with the scholarship on resource conflict will also produce relevant insights for the study of decentralized governance and common property resource management. The project outcomes will have direct relevance for the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and herders through its investigation of how equitably local institutions provide resource access to competing user groups. A related impact comes through its study of how effectively these institutions manage everyday disputes over resource access and prevent them from escalating into larger social conflicts. These are two of the most pressing challenges facing local authorities across dryland sub-Saharan Africa.

在瓦兰以外的撒哈拉以南非洲，当地机构将在适应气候变化中发挥关键作用，但对于它们如何调解与资源获取，竞争和脆弱地区冲突有关的问题知之甚少。这些领域的至关重要的气候变化适应策略是农业流动性，该机动性要求跨空间尺度运作的复杂机构。 该项目的前提是，马里共和国作为民主权力下放的典范，为解决与依赖资源依赖资源依赖的农村革命陆地地区的这些和其他关键问题的好案例提供了一个很好的案例。该项目的研究目标是通过回答三个相互关联的问题来研究不断变化的地方治理，资源访问，冲突和环境变化的系统之间的联系。 这些问题集中在三个特定的变化领域：1）权力下放对定居农民和流动牧民之间共享资源访问安排的影响； 2）土地覆盖和植被变化对牲畜运动的影响； 3）这些制度和环境变化如何影响农民的关系。 为了回答这些问题，该项目集成了旱地资源访问的多阶段机构和生物物理分析的三个组成部分。 首先，它利用纵向比较分析对遵循机构轨迹不同的资源访问的四个马里市。 第二个是多尺度的参与式土地使用和覆盖变化（LUCC）分析，该分析的重点是大规模的农业扩张，该扩展与作物领域的空间图案的村庄规模变化有关。 最后一个组成部分着重于对植被物候期的青年际趋势的测量和解释。这项活动包括与牲畜牧民的参与性练习，旨在了解不断变化的物候模式对生计的影响。该项目的跨学科和基于地点的方法不仅有助于在旱地农业农业生计上的奖学金；它还为研究耦合社会生态系统的研究开辟了新的理论途径。 这使该项目能够批判性地与撒哈拉以南非洲政治冲突的潜在驱动力的潜在驱动力相关假设。 与资源冲突有关的奖学金的参与还将为研究分散治理和共同财产资源管理的研究提供相关的见解。 该项目成果将通过调查公平的当地机构如何为竞争用户群体提供资源访问权限，与小农户和牧民的生计有直接相关性。 通过研究这些机构如何在资源获取方面管理日常纠纷，并阻止它们升级为更大的社会冲突，从而产生了相关的影响。 这是瓦兰以南非洲地区当地当局面临的两个最紧迫的挑战。