This study focuses on impacts of the environmental and socio-economic transformation on the indigenous people's livelihoods in Vietnam's Central Highlands recent decades since the country's reunification in 1975. The first empirical section sheds light on multiple external conditions (policy reforms, population trends, and market forces) exposed onto local people. The role of human and social capital is examined again in a specific livelihood of community-based tourism to testify the resilience level of local people when coping with constraints. The study concludes with an outlook on implications of development processed which still places agriculture at the primary position livelihood, and pays attention to human capital and social capital of indigenous groups in these highlands.

This volume of essays is intended to honour an exceptional, indeed a unique scholar. Joan Hardjono grew up in Sydney and graduated from Sydney University in the mid-1950s. She majored in English and Geography and like most girls in those years who had managed to complete a tertiary degree, she probably expected to embark on a career as a high school teacher in Australia. But no doubt prompted by the spirit of adventure which she has kept throughout her long career, she decided to go to Indonesia as a volunteer teacher. The scheme which brought young Australian graduates to Indonesia at that time was pioneering; it pre-dated the US Peace Corps and several of the participants went on to distinguished academic careers. On the boat from Australia to Indonesia, she met a young Indonesian called Hardjono, who after participating in the struggle against the Dutch in the late 1940s, gained an engineering degree at the Institute of Technology in Bandung, then as now Indonesia’s leading tertiary institute for the study of engineering and technology. Joan was posted to teach in Semarang, the capital of the province of Central Java, and family legend has it that Hardjono used a borrowed motor cycle to pay her frequent visits, bringing with him Javanese delicacies as gifts. Since the late 1980s, Joan has been busy as a consultant to a number of bilateral and multilateral aid agencies. She has retired as a university teacher, but served for several years as an active member of the advisory board of a Bandung-based research organization, AKATIGA. She has also served since its inception in early 2001 on both the Board of Trustees and the Advisory Board of the Jakarta-based research group, The SMERU Research Institute. The editors are pleased that four chapters in this volume have been contributed by staff of these two institutions. Joan continues to be an active member of the SMERU boards, and in her advisory role, she has always stressed that SMERU should focus on what it does best, namely conducting solid research on the problems of poverty, social protection and unemployment, rather than engaging in policy advocacy. She worked very hard editing the institute’s first international publication, Poverty and Social Protection in Indonesia, which was published by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore in 2011. Joan has often regretted the fact that so few Indonesian social scientists publish internationally, and has assisted a number of scholars over the years to turn their research findings into publishable papers in English-language outlets. Like many Indonesians in her age group, Joan has at times been disappointed that the country’s macroeconomic progress over the last four decades has not yet achieved the elusive goal of a just and prosperous society. To friends, she can be at times very critical of the performance of politicians and senior bureaucrats, both during the Suharto era and subsequently. But she would be the last to deny that some progress has been made. She continues to visit Australia on a regular basis, but Bandung remains her home, and she remains steadfast in her love for, and commitment to, the people of Indonesia.

The area of eastern Africa, which includes Tanzania and Kenya, is known for its savannas, wildlife and tribal peoples. Alongside these iconic images lie concerns about environmental degradation, declining wildlife populations, and about worsening poverty of pastoral peoples. East Africa presents in microcosm the paradox so widely seen across sub Saharan Africa, where the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations live alongside some of the world’s most outstanding biodiversity resources. Over the last decade or so, community conservation has emerged as a way out of poverty and environmental problems for these rural populations, focusing on the sustainable use of wildlife to generate income that could underpin equally sustainable development. Given the enduring interest in East African wildlife, and the very large tourist income it generates, these communities and ecosystems seem a natural case for green development based on community conservation. This volume is focused on the livelihoods of the Maasai in two different countries - Kenya and Tanzania. This cross-border comparative analysis looks at what people do, why they choose to do it, with what success and with what implications for wildlife. The comparative approach makes it possible to unpack the interaction of conservation and development, to identify the main drivers of livelihoods change and the main outcomes of wildlife conservation or other land use policies, while controlling for confounding factors in these semi-arid and perennially variable systems. This synthesis draws out lessons about the successes and failures of community conservation-based approach to development in Maasailand under different national political and economic contexts and different local social and historical particularities.

Interrogates the narratives of land grabbing and agricultural investment through detailed local studies that illuminate how these are experienced on the ground and the implications for Africa's land and agricultural economy.

This book provides an assessment of the impacts of human intervention on the natural environment and peoples' livelihoods through land-use conversion due to industrialization. Problems of land acquisition and the execution thereof have varying consequences that depend on the specific geographical as well as socio-political contexts in which they occur. This book covers a specific study of JSW Bengal Steel Ltd., which in 2014 planned to set up a 10.0 million ton per year integrated steel plant at the upper catchment of Sundra basin, the tributary of the Shilabati that ultimately pours to the river Rupnarayan, located at Salboni Block of Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal, India. The project was ultimately put on hold, but caused many lingering environmental and socioeconomic problems due to the acquisition of formerly productive lands. The book examines this case to generate a database on the different aspects of land acquisition and its negative impacts on the geomorphology and hydrological of non-timber forest products, agricultural impacts resulting in livelihood changes, policy dimensions of land acquisition, and the impacts of delays in project implementation through a comparative analysis between projects-affected areas and non-project areas. The book will appeal to environmental managers and industry workers, as well as students and researchers in environmental economics, anthropology, and human geography.

This Atlas presents the first national dataset on livelihoods and the farmers capacity to adapt to climate change in the Lao People's Democratic Republic. Maps included in the Atlas include the satisfaction of farmers’ basic needs, farmers’ access to the resources needed for innovation and the farmers’ capacity to translate innovation into action. The landscape characteristics mapped include attitudes towards livelihood-related change, economic activity, soil fertility, supporting infrastructure, food security issues, water security, institutional support and extension services, access to climate information through information and communication technologies (ICTs ), market access vis-a-vis production orientation, use of and access to agricultural inputs, livelihood diversification, and dependency on agriculture, including the rearing of livestock and fish. The dataset has been generated using an innovative method that combines participatory mapping and advanced data analysis, and which is, both in terms of technical standard and scientific innovation, state-of-the-art. The livelihood data is available online in the Land Resources Information Management System thanks to the work of two collaborating teams: "Applying seasonal climate forecasting and innovative insurance solutions to climate risk management in the agriculture sector in Southeast Asia” (De-Risk) project, implemented by CIAT; and the "Strengthening Agro-Climatic Monitoring and Information Systems (SAMIS)" project, implemented by FAO.

There has been limited research on single women in customary tenure areas. Single women's experiences have been marginalized in research that focuses on notions of property, male headed domestic units and relies on normative research methods to investigate resource access in the communal farming areas of Zimbabwe. This work focuses on the hearth-hold as a domestic unit and uses innovative research methods to investigate how women outside the marriage institution negotiate access to land, livelihood resources and make decisions to cope with livelihood vulnerability in customary tenure areas. The research illustrates through a focus on pathways and rural-urban connections how single women make decisions to secure livelihoods under fast changing conditions. The findings that patriarchy is only one but not the only institution governing land access in customary tenure areas and that women have more room to negotiate land access in communal areas especially through entitlements, family obligations and exploitation of multi-layered tenure systems are some of the publication's contribution to knowledge on single women, customary land tenure and livelihood vulnerability.