Of Global Concern: Rural Livelihood Dynamics and Natural Resource Governance (review)

This edited collection by Havnevik, Negash, and Beyene should be read as halfway between an academic book and a donor-commissioned research report. Published in the Swedish International Development Agency's "SIDAstudies" series, it attempts the hard job of putting research content in policy advice with a style that is meant to captivate both policymakers and academics engaged "on the ground." Having attempted on occasion such "compromise" writing myself, I am sympathetic toward the difficulties in achieving results that can please both communities. Fortunately, the book does not read as a policy document with simplistic recommendations, but attempts in a fairly honest way to address the complexities of rural livelihoods and natural resource governance to highlight the limitations and contradictions of policymaking and donor support in Africa and elsewhere.

The volume consists of a well-structured introduction providing a background, an overview of the chapters and of cross-cutting issues, and some broad policy implications. The background takes the reader historically from the agricultural and rural policies of the 1980s and 1990s to the current "sustainable livelihoods" approach via the emergence of the concept of "governance." The chapters cover a variety of topics and of geographical settings (with case studies covering Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Chile, Colombia, India, and—in a refreshingly introspective way—Sweden). Although the introduction attempts to develop some unifying themes (complexity of rural livelihoods, access to land, global governance creating space for action "from below"), unfortunately the chapters do not follow an explicit logic. This leaves the reader at a loss about the merits of each chapter in relation to the overall argument and how the chapters relate to one another.

But the ultimate tests to judge the book are posed by the editors themselves. One is to "show that a deeper understanding of rural dynamics and natural resource governance... [requires] an improved approach that connects economic, political, social and cultural dimensions and as well the linkages between micro and macro levels" (18). And another is to widen "the scope of analysis so... [as to cover] vertical and horizontal interconnections." To a large extent, the book fails to achieve these objectives. When cultural norms are unpacked at all, this happens in normative and modernist ways: "norms... constitute hindrances to both economic dynamism and to income diversification" (99). Also, the chapters do not adequately explore the vertical linkages that influence the dynamics of rural livelihoods—in any case not beyond local and national institutions and policies. There is no analysis of market access, trade, or value chains that link rural producers in the South with consumers in the North.

Finally, the book advocates "genuine research partnerships" (30) between Southern and Northern research institutions that go beyond "capacity building." More information on how the research project(s) that were behind the various chapters came about, how they were funded, and who set the priorities would have been a genuine test of the good intentions of the authors. Perhaps it would have even justified the otherwise haphazard way in which the chapters were assembled.