Rural Development Policies and Sustainable Land Use in the ...

6 CHAPTER 1
In addition to providing empirical information
useful to policymakers and other stakeholders
in Honduras, this study makes a
methodological contribution to the largely
qualitative livelihood strategies literature by
developing a quantitative application of the
livelihoods approach (Ashley and Carney
1999; DFID 1999). While assessing causes
and effects of household livelihood strategies
and land management decisions in an integrated
framework, it shows how this framework
can be used as a policy targeting tool,
thus integrating the livelihood strategies
literature and the policy targeting literature
(see, e.g., de Janvry and Sadoulet 2000;
Elbers et al. 2004). The marriage of these
two literatures offers not only methodological
and empirical advances in the livelihoods
strategies framework, but also a practical
policy development and evaluation tool
for policymakers.
In the case of Honduras, the government’s
current strategy for reducing poverty,
as laid out in the Poverty Reduction
Strategy (Government of Honduras 2001),
has six pillars, many of which address rural
development issues: accelerating equitable
and sustainable growth, reducing rural
poverty, reducing urban poverty, enhancing
investment in human capital, strengthening
social protection for vulnerable groups, and
ensuring sustainability through governance/
institutional reforms and enhanced environmental
sustainability. The government’s
policy vision regarding rural development as
described in its Rural Development Strategy
(RDS; see SAG 2004) makes a clear distinction
between households located in the
lowlands and households located in the hillside
areas. For the former, the focus is on
development of their productive capacity,
improving market links and competitiveness.
For the latter, the focus is on diversification
of the local economy, household food
security, and community agroforestry options.
But because rural populations are
highly heterogeneous, efficiency considerations
call for the design of policy interventions
to be differentiated according to this
heterogeneity. Even though the RDS recognizes
that survival of small family farms in
the hillside areas is essential for rural poverty
reduction, it provides no guidance regarding
how to address the diversity within
this group.
Previous studies 9 in Honduras have offered
hints about investment priorities for
pro-poor rural growth. While many of these
studies provide an amalgam of recommendations
on agricultural technology and extension,
land, rural finance, nonfarm rural
income, human and social capital, and market
infrastructure, they generally do not offer
recommendations regarding the combinations
of assets to invest in for maximum
poverty impact or which population groups
should be targeted with which type of investment.
This study, while implementing
and quantifying the livelihood strategies
framework, provides a characterization of
the heterogeneity within the hillside group
of farmers, and by analyzing the specific attributes
and asset combinations of different
livelihood strategies, offers a policy analysis
that is better targeted to subgroups of hillside
farmers.
There is a rapidly growing body of theoretical
and empirical work that draws on
1999) investigates the impacts of various public investments on agricultural production and poverty. But their
work does not analyze the impacts of such investments on households’ livelihood strategies or land management
conditions. Finally, there is also a rapidly growing literature on rural nonfarm income and livelihood diversification
in developing countries (e.g., Ellis 2000; Barrett, Reardon, and Webb 2001; Reardon, Berdegue, and Escobar
2001), but little of this investigates the implications of livelihood diversification for natural resource management.
9
See, e.g., Pino, Jiménez, and Thorpe (1994); Díaz Arrivillaga (1996); Scherr and Neidecker-Gonzalez (1997);
IADB (1999); Barham, Carter, and Deininger (2000b); PEP (2000); Ruben and van den Berg (2001); Barham,
Boucher, and Useche (2002); Boucher, Barham, and Carter (2002); Walker and Pino (2002); and Varangis et al.
(2003).