Abstract
Largely based on secondary data sources, a comparative analysis of the socio-economic scenario of the degraded and non-degraded villages in the district has been placed in the fourth chapter. The social, economic and educational aspects of development are mapped, and an attempt has been made to establish a link between the land degradation and rural development. Two key insights that have been brought out from the analysis of the distribution of villages across size classes of different attributes are as follows. Firstly, as in the case of other fragile ecological regions, spatial distribution of the population across the villages is an important aspect of the pattern of socio-economic development in this region. Secondly, the spatial pattern also gets reinforced by the linkages among the distribution of villages according to various indicators.
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Notes
- 1.
Gallup et al.. 1999. Geography and economic development. International regional science review, 22(2), pp.179–232. Gallup et al. (1999) conclude that ‘Tropical regions are hindered in development relative to temperate regions, probably because of higher disease burdens and limitations on agricultural productivity’ and ‘Coastal regions, and regions linked to coasts by ocean-navigable waterways, are strongly favoured in development relative to the hinterlands’.
- 2.
Environmental externalities refer to ‘the economic concept of uncompensated environmental effects of production and consumption that affect consumer utility and enterprise cost outside the market mechanism.
As a consequence of negative externalities, private costs of production tend to be lower than its “social” cost. It is the aim of the “polluter/user-pays” principle to prompt households and enterprises to internalise externalities in their plans and budgets’ (OECD: Glossary of Statistical terms. Available at https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=824).
- 3.
The EKC is also related to the structural transformation of the economy. Initially, economic progress is driven by industrialization, which tends to be more polluting than the later stage when less-polluting economic activities such as services predominate.
- 4.
For details see, Jodha NS. Common property resources and rural poor in dry regions of India. Economic and political weekly. 1986 Jul 5:1169–81.
- 5.
Explaining the ‘cumulative causation’ in the African context, a study argues: ‘Many poor African pastoralists and farming households respond to declining land productivity by abandoning their existing degraded pasture and cropland, and moving to new lands for grazing and cultivation. Even if rural households choose to stay on degraded land, its declining productivity will be unable to support growing rural populations. Thus, some households will be forced to abandon existing agricultural areas in search of new land. However, without additional investments in soil conservation, this process will repeat itself. Eventually, overgrazing and cultivation will lead to land degradation, and the search for new pasture and cropland will begin again’ (Barbier 2000: 351). For details, see Barbier, E.B., 2000. The economic linkages between rural poverty and land degradation: some evidence from Africa. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 82(1–3), pp.355–370.
- 6.
While the focus of the previous section was to compare the levels of socio-economic development in the district and tehsil levels, to bring out the differences within the district in a comparative framework, the analysis in this chapter goes a step further to bring in the interdistrict variations to the forefront. The exercise aims to capture the differences in the levels of development in the villages located in the degraded and non-degraded regions. The background information in Tables 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7 and 4.8 helps to understand the nature of these differences.
- 7.
The indicators adopted for the analysis in this study are guided by two important considerations. Firstly, the vast literature on indicators suitable for understanding the complexities associated with land degradation has been used to select the relevant indicators; and secondly, the availability of information in the secondary data sources have also been taken into consideration while selecting the district, sub-district and village-level indicators. The indicators used in the study are similar to those used and recommended in a number of well-established studies on land degradation. For example, see Blaikie (1985: 30–3; 56–7); Svenson (2005); Nachtergaele and Licona-Manzur (2008); Sommer et al. (2011); Salvati and Zitti (2009); Nkonya et al. . (2011); Pani and Carling (2013); Mythili and Goedecke (2016).
- 8.
For the details of methodology, see Sect. 1.13.
- 9.
Female workers are not included because the factors determining their participation in the non-farm economy are much more complex. It is possible, for example, that in a highly developed economy, participation of women workers in the non-farm economy is low because of social norms and restrictions.
- 10.
The Infrastructure Development Index is the mean score of the Educational Infrastructure Index, Road Connectivity Index, Power Supply Index, Village Services Index, Information and Entertainment Index and Health Infrastructure Index. All these indices were constructed on the basis of data available from the Primary Census Abstract and the Village Directory. The availability of a particular infrastructure within the village was assigned the value 5; in case it is available within 5 kms from the village, the assigned value was 3; if it is available within a distance of 5–10 km, the assigned value was 2; and if it was available at a distance of more than 10 km, the assigned value was 1. The scores generated for each of the infrastructures were standardized, and then average value of the indices was arrived at by taking the arithmetic mean of the Z-scores of indicators.
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Pani, P. (2020). Land Degradation and Socio-economic Development: Linkages. In: Land Degradation and Socio-Economic Development. Advances in Asian Human-Environmental Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42074-1_4
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