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Wasteland 96
Figure 3.0 Wastelands & Incidence of Poverty linkages at
District level - Andhra Pradesh
At district level, the relationship between incidence of poverty
and wastelands has increased significantly for almost all the
States. In case of Andhra Pradesh, for example, it is depicted in
Figure 3.0 and Table 2. It is important to note that regression
coefficient (R square) between incidence of poverty and
wastelands increased from 0.0167 at State levels to as good as
around 0.5 for quite a few States at the district level. It is
expected that regression coefficient may increase further if it is
derived at village level. It brings out clearly that a meaningful
relationship between incidence of poverty and wastelands exists
at much higher level, may be at village level. The direct links
between poverty and resource degradation requires further
ground-level research and thus calling for dis-aggregated
wasteland mapping to establish closer linkages with incidence
of poverty.
4.0 ROLE OF PUBLIC POLICY AND INSTITUTIONAL
INTERVENTIONS
The linkages between poverty and environmental degradation
are, however, not just governed by the physical limits of
ecosystems, but rather, by the income strategies of the poor.
Driven by public policies and institutional interventions,
economic and spatial integration of markets occur and several
new marginal income-earning opportunities become available
in the informal sector of the economy. Consequently, the
dependence of the poor on the natural resource base for
livelihoods may actually get reduced. It is in this context that
linkage between poverty and renewable natural resource
degradation got altered. In view of this, it is required to
evaluate the role of economic and institutional policies in
altering labor and capital flows between and within regions
(Figure 4).
„Natural
Resources
*Labour & Capital Flow/
Mobility
Spatial Integration of
\ Economic activities |
Institutional/
Social Factor
Interventions-
Program, Techno
dogy-,
*New Lively hood opportunities
: : Incidence of :
Poverty
Figure 4. Poverty, Natural Resources, Institutional
Interventions and Societal Dynamics - Linkages
Yet another aspect is, production and exchange through
impersonal markets is strongly preferred to subsistence
activities by poor producers and consumers alike. Although
family decisions and mutual responsibilities may continue
defining some aspects of household economic behavior, market
exchange irreversibly supplants reciprocity and redistribution as
the means of acquiring income and wealth (Dalton 1981).
Under these circumstances, except for a small group of the ultra
poor, most individuals and groups could be expected to strive
for income security rather than just food security; cash being
necessary to purchase non-traditional food and consumption
items that reflect changing utility functions. A desire for
income security has lead to creative income earning efforts
through a myriad of highly divisible, labor intensive, low skill
vocations involving wage labor and self-employment in rural
India (Jagannathan 1987, Pean 1989). All these altered the
relationship between poverty and natural resources degradation.
The availability of these (often unrecorded) income-earning
opportunities reduces the necessity of the poor to mine land and
water resources close to their homes for survival. Equally
important is whether the poor have the power to gain access or
to use available natural resources. Poverty is very often visible
as unequal access to land and capital because asset ownership is
inequitable (Table 1). Moreover, monetization also appreciates
land and water values to society, and what were common
property rights begin to get privatized or retain de facto access
to productive and water resources because of social and
institutional factors, such as changing tenurial relations, laws
and regulations, social and political relations both within and
outside villages. Jodha (1986), for example, has documented
how common values, leaving the poor de facto access to only
marginally productive wastelands. :
Apart from market incentive structures and institutional
constraints, India has attempted to improve the welfare of the
rural poor through social and economic policies. Before
drawing any policy conclusions on poverty-environment
linkages, one has to look beyond just the immediate physical
environment, and correlate the largely individualistic survival
strategies pursued by the poor to generate income and food
security with:
Public policies designed to provide basic needs services to poor
citizens, because of which economic expectations of the poor
begin improving;
Natural resource utilization by poor communities, taking into
account spatial choices that are available for earning livelihood
between farming, off-farm activities and non-farm activities.
The issue for research becomes disentangling complex casual
processes, and explaining whether poverty, public policies,
