A6 - Poverty, gender, and vulnerability at regional and intra-household level

Abstract
This project analyses the role of non-agricultural incomes and household and intrahousehold dynamics on the use of forest resources by poor households at the rainforest margins. The project will use panel data and appropriate techniques to understand: the role of non-farm incomes in affecting poverty and resource use; the role of demographic and other shocks on poverty, vulnerability and resource-using coping strategies; the impact of gender dynamics on resource use; and the relationship between the analytical findings and resulting policy issues from the project area and regional and national policies and developments.

Summary
The interaction between households and resource use (and thus sustainability) at the rainforest margin critically depends on their poverty and vulnerability, which is in turn related to their private asset base (land, livestock, farm capital, human capital, financial wealth), as well as the size and predictability of returns from the rainforest and the private asset base. Both are in turn heavily influenced by policies and developments at national and regional levels, migration policies, anti-poverty programmes, pricing policies and trends, and environmental policies. Within households they also depend greatly on household dynamics and shocks (e.g. household formation, fertility, mortality, re-shaping of household boundaries) as well as intra-household dynamics, including particularly gender differentials in access and control over resources.

Hence, the key question of project A6 is how improved natural resource management and poverty reduction can be achieved simultaneously. To answer this question we will, jointly with our Indonesian counterparts, focus on three aspects of the interaction between households and resource use:

1. The relationship between total income, non-farm income and resource use and resource exploitation among the poor at the rainforest margin. In cooperation with A4, this project will investigate to what extent non-farm incomes for the poor are a way out of poverty and help to stabilize the rainforest margin by reducing resource destruction at the forest boundary. A particular focus will be on modelling the determinants of non-farm incomes over time as well as the influence of government policies and shocks on the potential and limits for non-farm incomes. The main hypothesis to be investigated is that appropriate government policies (e.g. infrastructure policies, policies to increase agricultural productivity, education policies, and migration policies) can help stabilize rainforest margins through promoting sustainable non-farm income opportunities to poor households.

2. The impact of household and intra-household dynamics on poverty and resource use and destruction at the rainforest margin. The goal will be to understand the dynamics of household formation and structure as well as how intra-household dynamics alter the resource use at the rainforest margin. Particular attention will be given to panel data analyses on the role of demographic shocks (births, deaths), migration and gender differentials in the generation and distribution of household income. The main hypotheses to be verified are that (a) a more equitable distribution of productive factors within households would increase the total household?s productivity and thus reduce the pressure on rainforest resources and (b) that formal, informal, private, and publicly supported safety-nets that help households insure against and cope with shocks (including particularly ENSO drought phenomena) can stabilise incomes and reduce the overuse and destruction of rainforest resources.