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Land, Livelihoods, Agriculture and Natural Resources

Despite a decade of buoyant economic growth in developing countries, the World Development Report for 2008 emphasises that three out of four poor people in developing countries continue to live in rural areas, and that most of them depend either directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods and food security. This timely reminder is sharpening the focus of government and donor attention on designing and implementing development policies, programmes and projects that can make a difference to the lives of hundreds of millions of rural poor. At the same time, many urban poor also depend on agriculture, either directly growing crops on small house-plots or pieces of wasteland in urban areas or depending on the ‘family farm’ up-country. Labour can migrate seasonally and cyclically between rural and urban areas. Land, farming, livelihoods and the management of natural resources are intertwined and continue be central issues in tackling poverty.

To help address the poverty agenda, Mokoro’s small group of experienced consultants can provide expertise covering:

• rural and urban land tenure, policy and reform,
• social and economic issues in sustainable rural development and poverty alleviation,
• agricultural development, and
• the often related challenges of natural resource management.

Cutting across all four themes, our consultants also bring solid expertise on gender and governance aspects of land, livelihoods, agriculture and natural resources

Land

Security of land tenure is a widely recognised public good, and a particularly important issue for equitable gender relations. Mokoro consultants have experience in developing and implementing policies that give the poor secure access to land, allowing them to pursue their livelihoods without fear of harassment or eviction. Such policies include reform of the arrangements under which people use, occupy and transact land. This may be essential if rights holders are to manage and use their land sustainably and invest in improvements. The scope of our work on land is broad, embracing both urban and rural areas. It also covers the resolution of critical issues relating to the rights and responsibilities of land holders and the role of the state in administering the land. Land-related development issues also include redistribution where appropriate

Livelihoods

Mokoro’s capacities on socio-economic issues address rural livelihoods including social protection dimensions, food security and smallholder agricultural development, and the challenges of commercialisation and market development in the rural sector. (Social protection encompasses a range of policies going beyond the rural world. Mokoro has expertise too in some of the other aspects of social protection as explained on our Governance and Society webpage.) In the livelihoods context, Mokoro’s consultants recognise the difficulties of finding the right balance between a growth-led focus and food security and social protection, which must always be addressed country by country. Mokoro also recognises the importance of rural-urban linkages and of migration for work. Its consultants understand households as complex constructs and take an holistic approach to livelihoods and poverty reduction. They have experience of issues relating to micro-credit and women’s economic empowerment.

Agriculture

In many parts of the developing world, especially in resource poor contexts, agriculture is a prominent instrument for spurring growth, enhancing food security and overcoming poverty, as too is the secure land tenure on which successful agriculture rests. Accelerated growth has a range of requirements. It needs a sharp productivity increase in smallholder farming combined with more effective support to the millions coping as subsistence farmers, many of them in remote areas; attention to market and rural-urban linkage development, and to the development of non-farm and off-farm livelihood opportunities; and support for appropriate large-scale commercial agricultural development. Some recent improvement in agricultural performance provides a promise of success that can be scaled up in terms of productivity. Future priorities are to secure and increase the assets of poor households and communities, make smallholders more productive, and create opportunities in the rural non-farm economy that the rural poor can harness - all this in a manner consistent with sustainable management of natural resources. Indeed, access to resources for rural populations is a key issue in improving on- and off-farm livelihoods, with significant gender dimensions.

Natural Resources

Effective and equitable natural resource management is an essential framework condition for sustainable rural development. It is a technical, social and governance challenge spanning all scales from the local to the international, from farmers conserving the soil and water on their fields to governments collaborating in the management of major river systems. It requires technical insights and skills concerning how ecosystems function, how natural resources can be degraded by human action and how individuals and society can use them sustainably. It depends on appropriate socio-economic insights and arrangements that recognise the differing resource use interests of, for example, women and men or pastoralists and sedentary farmers. It must be achieved through socially, economically and politically viable arrangements that range from local user groups to management authorities for major natural units like river catchments and national parks. Despite its vital technical dimensions, natural resource management is most fundamentally a challenge of governance at different levels that must be met through appropriate dispositions of resource use and conservation rights and responsibilities in the framework of equitable and efficient institutions for access, tenure and administration.

Cross-cutting Issues - Gender and Governance

Mokoro’s consultants recognise that progress in the fields of land, livelihoods, agriculture and natural resources depends on conducive community and local governance frameworks, ranging from effective governance of common property resources to functioning and sustainable local government systems and institutions that are responsible for land and natural resource management. Progress also depends on an understanding of gender dynamics and household and community power relations and rights over resources, whether income or assets such as land. Policy development must therefore be based on an understanding of community and local level dynamics, sector development planning, public financial management, capacity development, and effective aid management. Mokoro’s expertise in all of these areas provides a basis for comprehensive systems approaches.

Mokoro Experience

Mokoro has provided technical, social, legal and financial advice for land-related work in Southeast Asia and Eastern and Southern Africa for more than a decade. Mokoro consultants have worked in research and training, policy development, the drafting of land laws, the planning and implementation of land policies and legal reforms, institutional and capacity development, analysis of land-related revenues, and programme planning and evaluation. Mokoro’s experience spans most aspects of land policy, land management and land administration, including urban, rural and peri-urban land issues, land dispute resolution, land issues for women, pastoralists and indigenous people, and community land management. Mokoro consultants have worked directly within governments and with civil society, and their practical experience is backed up by solid research credentials. We also have recent experience of working on land issues in post-conflict and fragile states.

Mokoro consultants’ natural resource management experience includes work on socio-economic aspects of land use planning in Rwanda, on range management in Lesotho, on community-based natural resource management across southern Africa, and on the relationship between the rural poor and protected nature conservation areas in South Africa and Rwanda. They have a wide-ranging background in the governance of common property resources and in assessing the relationship between agricultural development and evolving natural resource management systems in many areas of sub-Saharan Africa.

Elsewhere, Mokoro’s recent work has covered a range of socio-economic, livelihoods and agricultural issues, spanning small-scale food production strategies, new (and old) ways of looking at agricultural extension, decentralised development planning in the context of local government reform and social protection. One of Mokoro's Principal Consultants spent a year heading a project which established the National Agricultural Advisory Service in Romania. Mokoro has had a strong presence in Ethiopia with one consultant carrying out long-term research into food security and another working on impact reviews of investments in agricultural research, rural finance, and pastoral areas community development. Mokoro has also assisted recently with agri-business development in Kosovo. Mokoro’s agricultural public expenditure work in Rwanda and Gambia has involved looking at the technical and economic efficiency and outcomes of agricultural service delivery.