Social Resilience in African Dryland Livelihoods Deriving…非洲干旱地区生计的社会复原能力.pdfVIP

Social Resilience in African Dryland Livelihoods: Deriving Lessons for Policy Michael Mortimore 1 Three narratives There are three narratives linking rural poverty, natural resources and social change in Africa. The first reflects a pessimistic, or neo-Malthusian ideology; the second a cautious anti-Malthusian (or ‘Boserupian’) optimism; and the third is agnostic, denying the value of grand models. 1. Failing Africa. This narrative is driven by macro-scale data and analyses. In terms of food sufficiency, Africa imports increasing amounts of food. Since the 1970s, large quantities of foreign exchange have been used for this, and some countries have become ‘food aid-dependent’(Clay and Stokke, 2000; Somer- ville, 1986). With a population doubling-time of 30 to 35 years and many agro-ecological constraints, the classic ingredients of a Malthusian diagnosis appear to be present. Recurring famines – at the time of writing, in southern Africa and Ethiopia – remind the world that food insecurity and starvation are nowhere near to being abolished. Environmental indicators appear to show degradation on a huge scale (Middleton and Thomas, 1997; Oldeman and Hakkeling, 1990; UNEP, 1992), as the result of productive activities, with the implication that population growth is unsustainable. Conflict and HIV/AIDS threaten to destroy the institutional and economic basis of agriculture and to decimate labour and skills. While some regions of the world are reported to be ‘on target’ towards the Millenium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing the proportion of their population who are living in ‘dollar poverty’ by a half by 2015, Africa is get- ting worse (White and Killick, 2001). 2. Adapting Africa. This narrative is driven primarily by empirical and local stud- ies. It documents the rapid pace of