Browsing by Author "Clement, Floriane"

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Conceptualising Context in Institutional Reforms of Land and Natural Resource Management: The Case of Vietnam
(2013) Clement, Floriane; Amezaga, Jaime M.
"Research and policy debates over natural resource management in developing countries have largely focused on identifying the set of institutions that best supports resource sustainability and poverty alleviation. We argue that beyond finding the right institutional fit for a social-ecological system, it is equally important to understand how context affects the design and outcomes of institutional reforms. We propose a refined conceptualisation of context, based on a revision of the Institutional Analysis and Development framework. We defend a systematic analysis of context, distinguishing between contextual factors affecting the fitness to local socio-ecological conditions and contextual factors that mobilise power such as political-economic interests and prevailing discourses. We illustrate our argument with empirical research on land-tenure reforms that have been implemented since the 1980s in northern Vietnam. The proposed analytical framework and conceptualisation of context allows a more pervasive understanding of contextual factors, enabling the incorporation of the forms of power that give meaning and legitimacy to institutional change."
The Impact of Government Policies on Land Use in Northern Vietnam: An Institutional Approach for Understanding Farmer Decisions
(2007) Clement, Floriane; Amezaga, Jaime M.; Orange, Didier; Toan, Tran Duc
"This report identifies the driving forces for reforestation in three villages of Northern Vietnam. Using an institutional analysis focused on the rules governing upland access and use, the authors assess the relative impact of state policies (reforestation programs and forestland allocation) on land use change. Findings show that the latter are indirectly responsible for reforestation, but not because of the incentives they provided. Instead, they disrupted the local rules governing annual crop cultivation and grazing activities leading to the end of annual cropping. Tree plantation was chosen by farmers as a last resort option. Lessons learned highlight the importance of local level studies and collective rules for land management."
An Institutional Approach for Understanding Farmer Strategies and Land Management in Northern Vietnam
(2006) Clement, Floriane
"Through the lens of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, the paper analyses how the combination of reforestation programs and households uplands allocation has significantly altered land management in a commune of Northern Vietnam. "It is based on a three villages' case study where has traditionally been living the ethnic Muong minority. Due to government policies, land management has dramatically shifted from forested land community-based management and shifting cultivation practices to private land management. In a first stage, land-use has evolved from annual cropping to secondary forest plantation and fallow. Furthermore, the collapse of common areas has led to conflicts for grazing land and fuel wood. Very recently, urbanization and a liberalization of market economy have resulted in further changes both in land management and in land-use. "We argue that the government policies implemented in the end of the 1990s have not only impacted on individual farmer land-use, but has also induced the collapse of existing informal institutional arrangements governing uplands management. In turn this has had repercussions on farmers' strategies and households' resilience. For instance, important changes in land access and land-use rights broke up the subtle collective rules that enabled grazing and cropping systems co- existence. "Further to the analysis of policies' impacts on land use and farmers livelihoods, this study presents how, and under what conditions for a three decade period, farmers have been able to adopt new strategies, new land management systems and new institutional arrangements. "Finally, we make recommendations for decision-making: on the one hand, directions for new policies development and on the other, advice to champion policies which match impacts to pursued objectives. "We adopt a political ecology perspective by focusing on institutions and policies as driving forces for environmental change, and propose a comprehensive approach for analyzing change in land management in mountainous areas. Methodology for data analysis combines the use of the IAD, a rigorous institutional framework that has been widely used in the field of the commons studies, with an historical perspective. The approach integrates environmental, social, and economic factors - from the micro to the macro level - to explain how uniform national policies have lead to different farmers' strategies and distinct upland management systems."
Intersecting Productivity and Poverty: Lessons from the Ganga Basin
(2011) Clement, Floriane; Haileslassie, Amare; Ishaq, Saba
"Increasing water productivity appears at the top of most agricultural water policy agendas around the world. It is usually assumed that gains in water productivity will always directly or indirectly improve livelihoods and reduce poverty through increased water availability, higher food security and agricultural incomes. Whereas many economics studies have established a strong correlation between agricultural growth and poverty, numerous activists in India and elsewhere have increasingly questioned the productivity paradigm. This paper adopts a qualitative approach to investigate some of the links between productivity and poverty through an institutional analysis of livestock water productivity interventions across three districts of the Ganga Basin, North India. We do not pretend giving a comprehensive review of the water productivity/poverty nexus but rather discuss a few prominent issues: the differentiated forms of capitals required to access to water, equity and democratic decentralisation."
Linking Reforestation with Forest Policies: A Multi-Scale and Interdisciplinary Methodology Applied to Vietnam
(2008) Clement, Floriane; Amezaga, Jaime M.; Orange, Didier; Calder, Ian R.; Large, A. R. G.
"A large number of countries have initiated similar sets of policies aiming to increase forest cover. These have usually included large- scale afforestation campaigns and the devolution of land property rights to households. Most of the research works that have analysed the link between state policies and land-use change have hitherto been restricted either to qualitative local level studies or to quantitative macro-scale analyses. The former have offered an in-depth understanding of the drivers for farmers decisions but their applicability to different local contexts is questionable. The latter have identified general trends and proximate causes for reforestation but often without being able to explicitly separate the effect of a particular policy or to ascertain the causal mechanisms that link policy and land-use change. Using the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework as a unifying canvass, our assessment of the impact of forest policies on reforestation in Vietnam investigates several governance levels and uses both quantitative and qualitative approaches. We started from the analysis of farmers land use decisions at the local level relying on ethnographical methods and institutional analysis. Then, we used these findings to build models of forest cover change, which were tested at the meso-scale level using remotely-sensed data and spatial regression analysis. This quantitative study was complemented by an institutional and political economy approach that explored the underlying drivers for reforestation and policy implementation at the provincial level. Finally, a discursive and political ecology perspective allowed us to analyse the role of the prevailing narratives and beliefs in policy design at the national level. We discuss in this paper why this multi-level and holistic methodology is particularly effective for identifying the links between policies and forest cover change and for understanding the discrepancies that exist between policy intentions and observed outcomes. Lastly, we argue that this approach is also particularly well suited for designing and effectively disseminating appropriate policy recommendations."