Browsing by Author "Mearns, Robin"

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Commons and Collectives: The Role of Social Capital in Central Asia's Land Reforms
(1996) Mearns, Robin
"The economies of the former Soviet Central Asia (Kazakhastan, Kyrghyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan) are undergoing profound changes in agrarian institutions and land tenure policy. The character of reforms varies not just between the newly independent republics, but also within them. In principle, economic and political transition opens up space for the implementation of policies less strait-jacketed by ideology or assumed models of historical development. In practice, the embedded social and political context of public policy reforms will be as rapid or as certain in their effects as some observers would like. This preliminary paper begins to frame some research questions arising from the insights of new institutional economics and social capital theory in order to shed light on this challenging issue. Empirical illustrations are drawn from the experiences of land tenure reforms in Uzbekistan and Kyrghyzstan"
Community, Collective Action and Common Grazing: The Case of Post-Socialist Mongolia
(1995) Mearns, Robin
"This paper applies collective-action and transaction-cost theory to the theoretical debate around the management of common property regimes (CPRs), with supporting evidence from recent empirical research in Mongolian pastoralism. Rather than treating CPR management as an activity in isolation, as much of the existing literature tends to do, this study examines the use of common grazing in the context of other aspects of pastoral livelihoods. The more a given group of herders find reason to cooperate with each other across a range of activities, it is argued, the more likely it is that they will also overcome the transaction costs involved in controlling the use of the commons. The empirical analysis finds that incentives for cooperation were weakened under agricultural collectivisation (1950s-80s), with possible adverse consequences for the commons. Decollectivisation from the early 1990s has seen the re-emergence of autonomous cooperation among herders, accompanied by changes in intra-community dynamics, which together suggest contradictory trends for the future management of common grazing."
Community, Collective Action and Common Grazing: The Case of Post-Socialist Mongolia
(1996) Mearns, Robin
"This article applies collective-action and transaction-cost theory to the theoretical debate around the management of common property regimes (CPRs), with supporting evidence from recent empirical research in Mongolian pastoralism. Rather than treating CPR management as an activity in isolation, as much of the existing literature tends to do, this study examines the use of common grazing in the context of other aspects of pastoral livelihoods. The more a given group of herders find reason to cooperate with each other across a range of activities, it is argued, the more likely it is that they will also overcome the transaction costs involved in controlling the use of the commons. The empirical analysis finds that incentives for cooperation were weakened under agricultural collectivisation (1950s-80s), with possible adverse consequences for the commons. Decollectivisation from the early 1990s has seen the re-emergence of autonomous cooperation among herders, accompanied by changes in intra-community dynamics, which together suggest contradictory trends for the future management of common grazing."
Community-Based Management of Renewable Natural Resources: The Case of Pastoral Ecosystems Under Post-Socialist Transition in Mongolia
(1994) Mearns, Robin
"Sustainable development theory is rather weak on the institutional dimensions of natural resource management. The 'theory' attempts to span a wide ideological and philosophical guff between preservationist or 'ecocentric' and managerialist or 'technocentric' positions with regard to the relations between society and environment (Pepper 1984; O'Riordan 1988; Redciift and Benton 1994). However, much environment-and-development literature continues to be more or less fixated with population increase and natural resource degradation and scarcity. Very little of it adequately conveys the extent to which the uses of renewable natural resources (RNRs), and their consequences for sustainability, are mediated in intended and unintended ways by institutional arrangements. This is not to deny that there are serious and growing problems of natural-resource degradation in many parts of the developing world. But in search of pragmatic solutions to such problems, attention should be shifted away from natural resources themselves and towards the humanly devised institutions that - for better or for worse - surround their management."
Decentralisation, Rural Livelihoods and Pasture-Land Management in Post-Socialist Mongolia
(2004) Mearns, Robin
"Mongolia's post-socialist transition since 1990 has included, among other changes, reforms toward democratic decentralisation. For natural resource governance, and pasture-land management in particular, decentralisation has been at best incomplete and at worst 'empty.' It has created an institutional vacuum that herders and others have sought to fill with recourse to formal and informal, new and old arrangements. Herding households are also rapidly increasing against a background of economic hardship and vulnerability. The effects include an altered distribution of grazing pressure, with discernibly adverse impacts on the pastoral environment, and the acceleration of already rising inequality. Democratic decentralisation could help to restore environmental and social justice."
Environment and Land Tenure in a Transitional Pastoral Economy: The Case of Mongolia
(1992) Mearns, Robin
"Global environmental change and the problems of transition in formerly socialist economies are two of the most pressing concerns in contemporary world development. These twin concerns are more closely related than it might appear. In both cases, successful management of the process of change turns on the design, implementation and sequencing of policies appropriately tailored to suit the circumstances in question, rather than the adoption of simple blueprints. But there are also important lessons to be learnt from experience gained in different geographical contexts. For example, the lessons of 'structural adjustment' in low income African economies during the 1980s have much to offer Mongolia, the central Asian states of the CIS, and other formerly socialist developing countries. Similarly, better understanding of the role of customary institutional mechanisms in African dryland management, and of the ways development policies operate either to support or constrain them with more or less destructive social and environmental consequences, offers insights that are no less relevant to central Asian pastoral societies. This chapter examines a case in which the twin concerns of economic transition and environmental change are brought together, and focuses on the role of formal and informal institutional mechanisms that mediate between them in the domain of land tenure."
Environmental Entitlements: A Framework for Understanding the Institutional Dynamics of Environmental Change
(1997) Leach, Melissa; Mearns, Robin; Scoones, Ian
"While there is now widespread consensus within international development circles that 'sustainable development' should be based on local-level solutions derived from community initiatives, there is also a growing perception that the practical implementation of what is termed 'community-based sustainable development' often falls short of expectations. This overview paper seeks to complement and add to this emerging critique, with a particular focus on the implications of intra-community dynamics and ecological heterogeneity. It offers a conceptual framework that highlights the central role of institutions in mediating the relationships between environment and society, where institutions are understood as regularised patterns of behaviour between individuals and groups in society. This framework is grounded in an extended form of entitlements analysis used to explore the ways differently positioned social actors command environmental goods and services that are instrumental to their wellbeing. Further insights are drawn from areas of scholarship including analyses of social difference and social agency; 'new', dynamic ecology; new institutional economics; structuration theory; and landscape history. The theoretical argument is illustrated with reference to recent empirical research in India, South Africa and Ghana."
Environmental Entitlements: Dynamics and Institutions in Community-Based Natural Resource Management
(1999) Leach, Melissa; Mearns, Robin; Scoones, Ian
"While community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) now attracts widespread international attention, its practical implementation frequently falls short of expectations. This paper contributes to emerging critiques by focusing on the implications of intracommunity dynamics and ecological heterogeneity. It builds a conceptual framework highlighting the central role of institutions -- regularized patterns of behavior between individuals and groups in society -- in mediating environment-society relationships. Grounded in an extended form of entitlements analysis, the framework explores how differently positioned social actors command environmental goods and services that are instrumental to their well-being. Further insights are drawn from analyses of social difference; 'new,' dynamic ecology; new institutional economics; structuration theory, and landscape history. The theoretical argument is illustrated with case material from India, South Africa and Ghana."
Environmental Entitlements: Pastoral Natural Resource Management in Mongolia
(1996) Mearns, Robin
From p. 106-107: "This paper draws on new and existing bodies of ecological, social and economic theory that have much to offer in strengthening the analysis of environment-society interactions. Interdisciplinary research in the social sciences (especially anthropology, political science and economies), history and ecology, shows how macro and micro constraints and potentials combine to shape the ways different groups of people gain access to and control over resources, and in doing so manipulate their local environments in ways that may in turn alter those constraints and potentials. This perspective draws on and is influenced by various intellectual traditions, including the entitlements approach of Amartya Sen, extended to encompass the question of effective legitimate command over RNRs; other approaches in the new institutional economics; structuration theory; new thinking on ecology at disequilibrium; and political ecology."
The Institutional Dynamics of Community-Based Natural Resource Management: An Entitlements Approach
(1998) Mearns, Robin; Leach, Melissa; Scoones, Ian
Authors' Introduction: "For all the emphasis given to community-based approaches within recent environment and development policy debates, results in practice have often been disappointing. Among many possible reasons, this paper highlights shortcomings in implicit theoretical assumptions about 'community', 'environment', and the relationships between them. Malthusian perspectives dominate conventional debate, and tend to frame problems in terms of an imbalance between social needs and aggregate resource availability. An alternative perspective starts from the politics of resource access and control among diverse social actors, and regards processes of environmental change as the outcome of negotiation or contestation between social actors who may have very different priorities in natural resource use and management. The notion of 'environmental entitlements' encapsulates this shift in perspective. In turn, specifying the natural-resource endowments and entitlements of differentiated groups of people, and the ways they are shaped by diverse institutions, offers operational clues for the practice of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM)."
Local Institutions and Common-Pool Grazing Management in Post-Socialist Mongolia
(1993) Mearns, Robin
"This paper offers a preliminary analysis of the institutional matrix at local level for managing common-pool grazing in Mongolia, and how this has been critically influenced by macro-level political and economic transitions at several key historical moments. The principal concern is with the contemporary context. In order to understand this however, it is necessary to examine the historical evolution of pastoral institutions under previous state formations: from feudalism (late 17th century to 1921) through socialism (1921-89), and now (just to frustrate Marxist theory) to capitalism."
Natural Resource Management and Land Policy in Developing Countries: Lessons Learned and New Challenges for the World Bank
(2001) Bruce, John W.; Mearns, Robin
"The World Bank's concept of its development mission has deepened in recent years with greater weight given to poverty eradication and environmental stewardship. Natural resource management has thus taken its place alongside agriculture as a major rural development concern. New insights have emerged, which include a more integrated picture of rural livelihoods, and the understanding that they depend to a significant extent on forest and animal products extracted from beyond the farm. There is also growing appreciation of the viability of production systems that make extensive but sustainable use of fragile resources, such as those of pastoralists."
Natural Resource Mapping and Seasonal Variations and Stresses in Mongolia
(1994) Mearns, Robin; Shombodon, D.; Narangerel, G.; Tuul, U.; Enkhamgalan, A.; Myagmarzhav, B.; Bayanjargal, A.; Bekhsuren, B.
"This paper documents fieldwork carried out in 1991 during the initial stages of a collaborative policy research and training project in Mongolia. The Policy Alternatives for Livestock Development (PALD) project aims to facilitate the transition from a centrally planned to a market economy in the extensive livestock sector which dominates the Mongolian rural economy."
Pastoral Institutions, Land Tenure and Land Policy Reform in Post-Socialist Mongolia
(1993) Mearns, Robin
"In Mongolia, as in most other pastoral societies, customary land tenure arrangements have evolved at the local level to regulate herders1 access to pasture land. These institutional arrangements are secured through neighbourhood-level groups known generically as neg nutgiinhan ('people of one place'). There are regional variants, differing in scale and usually bounded by topography or limiting ecological factors, including neg jalgynhan ('people of one valley') in the Hangai forest/ mountain steppe zone, or neg usniihan ('people using one water source') in the Gobi desert-steppe zone. Group members are often, but not necessarily, consanguineal or affinal relatives. Like the khot ail (the basic herding camp of several cooperating households), neighbourhood-level customary institutions appear to be re-emerging in contemporary Mongolia in response to the break-up of the pastoral collectives and other economic reforms. This report analyses the characteristics of a sample of local pastoral institutions in two districts representing contrasting ecological zones (Hangai forest/mountain steppe zone, Gobi desert-steppe zone), in terms of size, age composition, membership, wealth differentiation and patterns of pastoral mobility and land tenure."
Social Exclusion and Land Administration in Orissa, India
(1998) Mearns, Robin; Sinha, Saurabh
"This report presents an exploratory, state-level analysis in Orissa of the factors that constrain access to land by the rural poor and other socially excluded groups. It is the first empirical study of its kind, at least in India, which examines access to land from a transaction costs perspective. It is based on an institutional analysis of land administration in policy and practice, and considers the consequences for particular groups of stakeholders. The intention of this pilot study was to field-test an approach that could be replicated in other states of India, with a view to identifying incremental reforms in land administration and policy that could help to improve access to land for the rural poor. The findings should be regarded as preliminary, since the study was intended to scope the broad framework for analysis, rather than to produce systematic results. Nonetheless, the findings do suggest a set of broad policy implications worthy of more detailed consideration, following systematic analysis in other states."
Sustainability and Pastoral Livelihoods: Lessons from East African Maasai and Mongolia
(2003) Fratkin, Elliot; Mearns, Robin
"'Sustainable development' currently has a firm grip on the lexicon of development agencies from the World Bank to small nongovernmental organizations, but it offers little practical guidance for tackling diverse problems in specific places. The concept is of particular importance to pastoral populations throughout the world-those people dependent on livestock raising in and or semiarid lands whose survival depends on their ability physically and politically to maintain access to their pastures. This paper compares two pastoralist populations-East African Maasai and pastoralists of Mongolia-to discuss recent changes in the pastoral way of life and to describe what sustainability has meant in the past and what sustainability needs to mean in the future for pastoralist populations."
Sustaining Livelihoods on Mongolia's Pastoral Commons
(2000) Mearns, Robin; Dulamdary, E.
"Under the socialist regime that prevailed until the start of the 1990s, Mongolia made great progress in improving human development indicators, and poverty was virtually unknown. Through innovative service delivery mechanisms to nomadic pastoralists, almost universal coverage of primary health care services was achieved and adult literacy reached 97%. Political and economic transition in the 1990s ushered in a rapid rise in asset and income inequality, and a third of the population have been defined as living below the poverty line since 1995. The dramatic shake-out of labor from uneconomic state-owned enterprises has been absorbed largely by the extensive livestock sector in rural areas and the growing informal economy in urban areas. A dramatic reversal in net rural to urban migration led to a doubling in the number of herding households between 1992 and 1997, which now account for around half the population, herding more livestock on Mongolia's pastoral commons than ever before in recorded history. In such a context, sustainable management of the pastoral commons is central to the mainstream challenge of national economic development. This paper presents preliminary results from a country- wide participatory poverty assessment, which seeks to elicit peoples own experiences of poverty, well-being and deprivation in a rapidly changing economic environment. Drawing on a blend of quantitative and qualitative data, it describes the main elements of an integrated approach to building secure and sustainable livelihoods both on and off the pastoral commons. Adoption of the sustainable livelihoods lens draws attention to the full range of assets and capabilities that the poor may potentially command (including human, social and natural capital as well as physical and financial capital), and to the importance of strategies to reduce or manage the risks and vulnerabilities that poor households face."
Sustaining Livelihoods on Mongolia's Pastoral Commons: Insights from a Participatory Poverty Assessment
(2004) Mearns, Robin
"Under the socialist regime that prevailed until the start of the 1990s, Mongolia made great progress in improving human development indicators, and poverty was virtually unknown. Political and economic transition in the 1990s ushered in a rapid rise in asset and income inequality, and at least a third of the population has been living in poverty since 1995. Many workers made redundant from uneconomic state-owned enterprises were absorbed into the extensive livestock sector in rural areas and by the growing informal economy in urban areas. The livestock sector grew dramatically, with herders accounting for over a third of the total population and half of the active labour force by the late 1990s. Three consecutive years of drought and harsh winters in 1999-2002 then drastically reduced the national herd. These trends are viewed against a backdrop of relative neglect of the livestock sector in development priorities and a concomitant decline in agricultural productivity. Pressures on common pasture have mounted, and conflict over grazing is becoming endemic. In such a context, sustainable management of Mongolia's pastoral commons should be central to the country's economic development agenda in general, and to its poverty reduction strategy in particular. This article draws on the findings of a country-wide participatory poverty assessment conducted in 2000. Blending quantitative and qualitative data, these findings help to bring into sharper relief the broad outlines of an integrated approach to building secure and sustainable livelihoods both on and off the pastoral commons."
Training Course in RRA Field Research Methods for Analysis of the Mongolian Herding Economy
(1996) Mearns, Robin
"RRA methods were conceived a decade or so ago in response to the perception of formal surveys as time consuming and data-hungry, often producing results too late to have an impact that justifies their high cost. More recently, RRA methods are being developed not only to provide cost-effective and timely results, but also as research tools that give us better insights into the ways people living in marginal environments make their livelihoods. "The ways people earn a living in marginal or risky environments like Mongolia's, are usually complex and diverse. Rural people make a living doing a number of different things, not just one job. They may do different activities at different times of year. Women may have different productive activities from men. All these differences are important to understand how the rural economy as a whole works, and to identify particular problems and possible solutions to those problems."
When Livestock are Good for the Environment: Benefit Sharing of Environmental Goods and Services
(1996) Mearns, Robin
"The environments in which most pastoral grazing systems and integrated crop-livestock systems are to be found are characterised by multiple uses and multiple users, all with legitimate claims on environmental goods and services, but not all of which can be compatible all of the time. The paper addresses ways of enhancing, through policy instruments, the sharing of environmental benefits between multiple users of the environment including livestock producers. It argues that the task of policy makers should be to expose these multiple, contested claims on the environment, to make explicit the political choices involved in the design of benefit-sharing mechanisms, and to seek out those that offer most promise of 'win-win' or at least 'win-no regret' solutions."