Natural Resource Sustainability versus Livelihood Resilience: Model of Groundwater Exploitation Strategies in Developing Regions
15 Aug 2012-Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management (American Society of Civil Engineers)-Vol. 138, Iss: 5, pp 512-522
TL;DR: In this article, a stylized model representing farming in water-scarce regions of South India to address the problem of managing depleting groundwater assets facing the threat of irreversible loss is presented.
Abstract: This paper designs a stylized model representing farming in water-scarce regions of South India to address the problem of managing depleting groundwater assets facing the threat of irreversible loss. Circumstances under which it may be optimal to forgo sustainable water use are evaluated in the context of farmers’ wealth and land endowments, crop choices, and risk of groundwater loss. Several policy and management implications are derived. Additionally, it is argued here that attaining livelihood resilience will entail a transformation process involving tradeoffs between different capital assets where it may be optimal for a farmer to forego the objective of maintaining groundwater sustainability. However, mere forgoing of sustainability may not ensure resilience for all. Initial wealth and risk endowments come into play, especially in heterogeneous communities.
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TL;DR: In this paper, a model for tourism resilience considers the rate of change (transitioning from slow to fast), and the scale of tourism interest (scaling from that of the entrepreneur to those that are community-wide).
Abstract: Resilience planning has emerged in recent years as an alternative to the sustainable development paradigm to provide new perspectives on community development and socio-ecological adjustments to a rapidly changing world. Tourism scholars have been somewhat slow to adopt the recent conceptual ideas related to community resilience that have been published in other disciplinary areas, though this situation is also changing rapidly. While most resilience research focuses on major disasters and crises, new frameworks that encompass slow change variables provide a more comprehensive view on resilience. A model for tourism resilience considers this rate of change (transitioning from slow to fast), and the scale of tourism interest (scaling from that of the entrepreneur to those that are community-wide). The resulting 2 × 2 matrix presents four contexts with distinct resilience issues, methodologies and measurements, ranging from entrepreneurs managing daily maintenance needs, to community disaster readiness, res...
215 citations
Cites background from "Natural Resource Sustainability ver..."
...…that mark shifts in natural ecosystems, though it also applies to humans and settlements that shift into new occupations and economic base industries (see Ranjan, 2012), or the adoption of land use policies that force development away from increasingly sensitive areas (Russell & Griggs, 2012)....
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TL;DR: In this article, the optimal extraction of renewable groundwater resources when extraction affects the probability of occurrence of an irreversible event is studied, where the term irreversible signifies that the event occurrence renders the resource obsolete.
Abstract: Optimal exploitation of renewable groundwater resources when extraction affects the probability of occurrence of an irreversible event is studied. The term irreversible signifies that the event occurrence renders the resource obsolete. It is found that uncertainty concerning the event occurrence has a profound effect. Under certainty - when the stock level below which the event occurs is known in advance - the optimal state process converges to a unique equilibrium state. Under uncertainty, when the event occurrence level is unknown, we identify equilibrium intervals and show that optimal processes initiated elsewhere converge to a boundary of one of these intervals. Inside an equilibrium interval, the expected loss due to the event occurrence is so high that it does not pay to extract in excess of recharge, even though under certainty doing so would be beneficial. These properties are illuminated by means of an example for which analytic solutions are derived.
116 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined economic ideas such as exhaustible resource theory (over exploitation), and optimization methodologies that can incorporate new ideas of groundwater sustainability, population growth constraints, include both short term and long term consequences, and consider multi-objectives.
Abstract: With the worldwide depletion of groundwater and the intensified use around the world, particularly in many arid and semi-arid regions for irrigation and municipal use, there is no satisfactory approach to groundwater sustainability. The lack of and miss-management of this valuable resource has not only created serious groundwater pollution problems but has created present and/or future water supply problems. This paper does not present a solution, but instead examines economic ideas such as exhaustible resource theory (over exploitation), and optimization methodologies that can incorporate new ideas of groundwater sustainability, population growth constraints, include both short term and long term consequences, and consider multi-objectives. Concepts of groundwater footprint, recharge, and safe yield are discarded as concepts for measuring groundwater sustainability. The concept of developing a sustainability index that could also be used within the context of optimization is introduced. Also the concepts of traditional knowledge are discussed with the emphasis on the use of these methodologies for both developed and developing regions of the world to achieve groundwater sustainability.
113 citations
Cites background from "Natural Resource Sustainability ver..."
...Ranjan (2012) presents a model representing farming in water-scarce regions of South India that addresses the problem of managing depleting groundwater assets with irreversible losses....
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...The main analysis that Ranjan (2012) used is focused on the issue of optimal groundwater harvesting strategy when additional drawdown of an aquifer increases the risk of groundwater loss but also forces the marginal farmer closer towards acquiring resilience....
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...Ranjan (2012) illustrates the use of the latter definition in which a hazard rate of groundwater loss is assumed to be a function of the groundwater level....
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...The main analysis that Ranjan (2012) Groundwater Resources Sustainability: Past, Present, and Future 4417...
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...When groundwater is completely depleted, the risk of no future revival is governed by the maximum possible hazard rate (Ranjan 2012)....
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TL;DR: In this article, a total of 43 samples were collected and analyzed using principal component analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis to model the relationship and interdependence among the various physicochemical variables contributing to groundwater quality.
Abstract: Groundwater is an important source of livelihood in regions where rainfall is scanty, surface water sources are absent, and all domestic and agricultural needs are fulfilled with groundwater. This study deals with groundwater quality assessment in a hyper-arid region using multivariate statistical analysis. A total of 43 samples were collected and analyzed using principal component analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis to model the relationship and interdependence among the various physicochemical variables contributing to groundwater quality in the study area. The results of the statistical techniques showed that the variables are in strong correlation with each other. Cluster analysis proved to be a good tool to ascertain the spatial similarity between the contributing variables. The methodology adopted in the present study has been found to be effective and can be utilized to establish strong water quality monitoring network in similar areas.
43 citations
Cites background from "Natural Resource Sustainability ver..."
...The contamination of groundwater and its quality degradation affect the farmers in terms of crop choice and availability of potable drinking water (Ranjan 2012)....
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TL;DR: This research investigates the application of multiobjective optimization modeling to the issue of water resources sustainability, from a water supply standpoint, with specific application to the Prescott Active Management Area in Arizona.
Abstract: This research investigates the application of multiobjective optimization (MO) modeling to the issue of water resources sustainability, from a water supply standpoint, with specific application to the Prescott Active Management Area (AMA) in Arizona. One unique aspect of the investigation is the development of a method to quantify the nonuse value of groundwater for use in a quantitative optimization model. Another is the incorporation within the model of objectives that include the typically conflicting goals of growth, conservation, and cost minimization. The model is solved using a multiobjective genetic algorithm.
26 citations
References
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TL;DR: The traditional view of natural systems, therefore, might well be less a meaningful reality than a perceptual convenience.
Abstract: Individuals die, populations disappear, and species become extinct. That is one view of the world. But another view of the world concentrates not so much on presence or absence as upon the numbers of organisms and the degree of constancy of their numbers. These are two very different ways of viewing the behavior of systems and the usefulness of the view depends very much on the properties of the system concerned. If we are examining a particular device designed by the engineer to perform specific tasks under a rather narrow range of predictable external conditions, we are likely to be more concerned with consistent nonvariable performance in which slight departures from the performance goal are immediately counteracted. A quantitative view of the behavior of the system is, therefore, essential. With attention focused upon achieving constancy, the critical events seem to be the amplitude and frequency of oscillations. But if we are dealing with a system profoundly affected by changes external to it, and continually confronted by the unexpected, the constancy of its behavior becomes less important than the persistence of the relationships. Attention shifts, therefore, to the qualitative and to questions of existence or not. Our traditions of analysis in theoretical and empirical ecology have been largely inherited from developments in classical physics and its applied variants. Inevitably, there has been a tendency to emphasize the quantitative rather than the qualitative, for it is important in this tradition to know not just that a quantity is larger than another quantity, but precisely how much larger. It is similarly important, if a quantity fluctuates, to know its amplitude and period of fluctuation. But this orientation may simply reflect an analytic approach developed in one area because it was useful and then transferred to another where it may not be. Our traditional view of natural systems, therefore, might well be less a meaningful reality than a perceptual convenience. There can in some years be more owls and fewer mice and in others, the reverse. Fish populations wax and wane as a natural condition, and insect populations can range over extremes that only logarithmic
13,447 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1992
TL;DR: The concept of sustainable rural livelihoods as discussed by the authors is based on capability, equity, and sustainability, each of which is both end and means, and is defined as: "a livelihood comprises people, their capabilities and their means of living, including food, income and assets".
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to provoke discussion by exploring and elaborating the concept of sustainable livelihoods. It is based normatively on the ideas of capability, equity, and sustainability, each of which is both end and means. In the 21st century livelihoods will be needed by perhaps two or three times the present human population. A livelihood comprises people, their capabilities and their means of living, including food, income and assets. Tangible assets are resources and stores, and intangible assets are claims and access. A livelihood is environmentally sustainable when it maintains or enhances the local and global assets on which livelihoods depend, and has net beneficial effects on other livelihoods. A livelihood is socially sustainable which can cope with and recover from stress and shocks, and provide for future generations. For policy and practice, new concepts and analysis are needed. Future generations will vastly outnumber us but are not represented in our decision-making. Current and conventional analysis both undervalues future livelihoods and is pessimistic. Ways can be sought to multiply livelihoods by increasing resource-use intensity and the diversity and complexity of small-farming livelihood systems, and by small-scale economic synergy. Net sustainable livelihood effects and intensity are concepts which deserve to be tested. They entail weighing factors which include environmental and social sustainability, and net effects through competition and externalities. The objective of sustainable livelihoods for all provides a focus for anticipating the 21st century, and points to priorities for policy and research. For policy, implications include personal environmental balance sheets for the better off, and for the poorer, policies and actions to enhance capabilities, improve equity, and increase social sustainability. For research, key questions are better understanding of (a) conditions for low human fertility, (b) intensity, complexity and diversity in small-farming systems, © the livelihood-intensity of local economies, and (d) factors influencing migration. Practical development and testing of concepts and methods are indicated. For the reader, there is a challenge to examine this paper from the perspective of a person alive in a hundred years’ time, and then to do better than the authors have done. Gordon Conway is Representative for the Ford Foundation in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. He was previously Professor and Chairman of the Centre for Environmental Technology at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine. In the mid 1980s, he also established the Sustainable Agriculture Programme at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London. He has worked extensively in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, mostly on issues of agriculture and environment. For comments on an earlier draft we are grateful to John Lawton, Melissa Leach, and Michel Pimbert. The views expressed are ours and should not be attributed to the Institute of Development Studies or the Ford Foundation. URI http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/123456789/775 Citation Chambers, R. and Conway, G. (1992) Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: Practical Concepts for the 21st Century, IDS Discussion Paper 296, Brighton: IDS Is part of series IDS Discussion Paper;296 Library catalogue entry http://bldscat.ids.ac.uk/cgi-bin/koha/opac-search.pl?q=rn:90567 Rights holder Institute of Development Studies Sustainable rural livelihoods: practical concepts for the 21st century
3,945 citations
TL;DR: Early studies suggested that simple ecosystems were less stable than complex ones, but later studies came to the opposite conclusion as discussed by the authors. Confusion arose because of the many different meanings of "complexity" and "stability".
Abstract: Early studies suggested that simple ecosystems were less stable than complex ones, but later studies came to the opposite conclusion. Confusion arose because of the many different meanings of ‘complexity’ and ‘stability’. Most of the possible questions about the relationship between stability–complexity have not been asked. Those that have yield a variety of answers.
2,519 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose an elaboration of the Diamond model that permits multiple, locally stable stationary states, and this multiplicity is due to increasing social returns to scale in the accumulation of human capital.
Abstract: Standard one-sector growth models often have the counterfactual implication that economies with access to similar technologies will converge to a common balanced growth path. We propose an elaboration of the Diamond model that permits multiple, locally stable stationary states. This multiplicity is due to increasing social returns to scale in the accumulation of human capital.
2,070 citations
TL;DR: The pathology of natural resource management, defined as a loss of system resilience when the range of natural variation in the system is reduced encapsulates the unsustain- able environmental, social, and economic outcomes of command-and-control resource management is discussed in this article.
Abstract: As the human population grows and natural resources decline, there is pressure to apply increas- ing levels of topdown, command, and~control management to natural resources. This is manifested in at- tempts to control ecosystems and in socioeconomic institutions that respond to erratic or surprising ecosystem behavior with more control Command and control, however, usually results in unforeseen consequences for both natural ecosystems and human welfare in the form of collapsing resources, social and economic strife, and losses of biological diversity. We describe the "pathology of natural resource management, " defined as a loss of system resilience when the range of natural variation in the system is reduced encapsulates the unsustain- able environmental, social, and economic outcomes of command~and~ontrol resource management. If natu- ral levels of variation in system behavior are reduced through command-and~ontrol, then the system be- comes less resilient to external perturbations, resulting in crises and surprises. We provide several examples of this pathology in management. An ultimate pathology emerges when resource management agencies, through initial success with command and control, lose sight of their original purposes, eliminate research and monitoring, and focus on efficiency of control They then become isolated from the managed systems and inflexible in structure. Simultaneously, through overcapitalization, society becomes dependent upon com- mand and control, demands it in greater intensity, and ignores the underlying ecological change or collapse that is developing. Solutions to this pathology cannot come from further command and control (regulations) but must come from innovative approaches involving incentives leading to more resilient ecosystems, more flexible agencies, more self-reliant industries, and a more knowledgeable citizenry. We discuss several aspects of ecosystem pattern and dynamics at large scales that provide insight into ecosystem resilience, and we pro- pose a "Golden Rule" of natural resource management that we believe is necessary for sustainabllity: man- agement should strive to retain critical types and ranges of natural variation in resource systems in order to maintain their resiliency.
1,871 citations