Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The
results
showed that that 84% of the fuelwood collectors tracked by the
researcher were collecting illegally (without a permit), while the patrols recorded
64% of women encountered as having no permit. This discrepancy is suggested to
be because illegal collectors tried to avoid encountering patrols, and shows the
importance of triangulation. The cost of permits for legal wood collection was
US$3.20 per year, compared to an expected cost of US$0.68 in fines and confisca-
tion from harvesting wood illegally. The women were acting rationally in harvest-
ing wood illegally. The detection rate would have had to increase from 12% of a
woman's trips to 58% for the balance to change in favour of buying a permit.
The
conclusions
suggested that law enforcement was not the best way to influ-
ence women's behaviour towards sustainability, because fuelwood was a necessity.
This was already being tacitly realised by the park authorities, in that they had
introduced a policy of cautioning the women rather than fining them in order to
improve relations with the local villagers.
Future directions
: Despite the relatively simple analysis, this study clearly
revealed the drivers behind the behaviour of fuelwood collectors in the Lake
Malawi National Park. The spatial analysis enabled the behaviour of the users and
patrols to be compared and conclusions to be drawn. However, it was a static ana-
lysis, in that there was assumed to be no change in the women's or the patrols'
behaviour. One extension would be to consider how depletion of the fuelwood
resource might change behaviour, such as the locations where it was most cost-
effective to gather the wood. This could then be incorporated into an analysis of
sustainability.
3.3.2.1 Background
The
sustainable livelihoods
approach has received a great deal of attention in
recent years. One definition is: 'A livelihood comprises the capabilities, assets
(including both material and social resources) and activities required for a means
of living. A livelihood is sustainable when it can cope with and recover from stresses
and shocks and maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets both now and in the
future, while not undermining the natural resource base' (DFID 2001). Using nat-
ural resources is one of many ways in which people can earn a living or provide food
for their household. Hence it fits comfortably into the sustainable livelihoods
approach. By looking at natural resource use in a broad livelihoods context we can
better understand why certain members of a community use natural resources,
how much of their time they devote to it, what they do with their produce, and
how policy changes or prey depletion might change these decisions. Livelihoods
are dynamic, so that behaviour changes with circumstances. For example, people
can be most dependent on wild resources when times are hard. This means that an
analysis of 'typical' resource use patterns can be misleading. Instead we have to
think about people's behaviour in terms of how they cope with uncertainty and
hardship (Maxwell and Frankenberger 1992; Mehta
et al
. 1999).
