Land Degradation and Society

Piers Blaikie, Harold Brookfield, Piers Blaikie, Harold Brookfield

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138923027
• eBook ISBN: 9781317411932
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Why does land management so often fail to prevent soil erosion, deforestation, salination and flooding? How serious are these problems, and for whom? This book, first published in 1987, sets out to answer these questions, which are still some of the most crucial issues in development today, using an approach called 'regional political ecology'. This approach acknowledges that the reason why land management can fail are extremely varied, and must include a thorough understanding of the changing natural resource base itself, the human response to this, and broader changes in society, of which land managers are a part.

Land Degradation and Society is essential reading for all students of geography, agriculture, social sciences, development studies and related subjects.

1 Defining and debating the problem

Piers Blaikie and Harold Brookfield

1 Land degradation and society: initial statements

1.1 Land degradation as a social problem

Land degradation should by definition be a social problem. Purely environmental processes such as leaching and erosion occur with or without human interference, but for these processes to be described as ‘degradation’ implies social criteria which relate land to its actual or possible uses. Other processes, such as acidification and salinization, are only rarely recognized under natural conditions, at least in an acute form, and have a more directly human origin. The word ‘degradation’, from its Latin derivation, implies ‘reduction to a lower rank’. The ‘rank’ is in relation to actual or possible uses, and reduction implies a problem for those who use the land. When land becomes degraded, its productivity declines unless steps are taken to restore that productivity and check further losses. In either case, the yield of labour in terms of production is adversely affected. Land degradation, therefore, directly consumes the product of labour, and also consumes capital inputs into production. Other things being equal, the product of work on degraded land is less than that on the same land without degradation.

It may be as well at the outset to face an objection to this statement, to which we return in chapter 5. It may be argued that, if there is abundant land or if losses in productivity can be made up by the provision of chemical fertilizers, degradation is neither an economic nor a social problem. However, this argument can be turned around: without degradation it would not be necessary to move to new land with the attendant costs; without degradation, such large inputs of chemical fertilizers would not be necessary in order to sustain production at constant levels, and efficiency of their use by plants would be greater. Either way, there are both economic and social costs. Also there are secondary costs, such as the nitrification of water supplies, which are purely social in nature in that they affect people and ecological conditions away from the site.

The social significance of degradation has been the subject of a wide variety of views rather than of engaged debate for reasons which are outlined by Blaikie (1985a: 12). We argue that under defined conditions it is a problem of a major order. Decline in the productivity of the land and of labour can be viewed as the ‘quiet crisis’ which nevertheless erodes the basis of civilization to adapt two phrases of Lester Brown (1981). This view claims that the problem is pervasive, often insidious but crucial to the future of humankind. There are elements of environmental fundamentalism in claims of this type – and we examine them in chapter 5 – but they underline the essentially social nature of the problem. Also, there is an important link between the chronic, slow-moving phases of the problem and the acute. When production conditions are adverse, as in a drought, the margin of productivity or of survival for a producer on degraded land is smaller than that of a producer on better managed land. When, as in large parts of Africa in recent years, climatic conditions remain adverse over a long period, farmers on badly degraded land suffer a particularly severe penalty. Land degradation, as well as drought, has been partly responsible for the severity of famine in agricultural areas of Ethiopia and Sudan (Eckholm 1976).

These simple considerations should alone be sufficient to establish land degradation as a problem of social significance. But it is also necessary to our argument to show that land degradation has social causes as well as consequences. While the physical reasons why land becomes degraded belong mainly in the realm of natural science, the reasons why adequate steps are not taken to counter the effects of degradation lie squarely within the realm of social science. Yet the problem of resource deterioration has been curiously neglected by the latter. There have been a few classic texts warning of the problems, such as Malcolm (1938), Jacks and Whyte (1939), Glover (1946), Rounce (1949) and Hyams (1952), but they are rarely cited in recent work. Also, neither classical nor Marxian economics have satisfactorily attacked the methodological problems of studying land degradation, thus depriving social scientists of a developed theoretical base. Seckler points out in chapter 5 that the problems of land degradation are as amenable to economic analysis as any other. But, for a variety of reasons, there has been remarkably little in the way of either empirical or methodological work on the economics of land and water conservation, by contrast with the economics of pollution which has a large literature. The Journal of Soil and Water Conservation and the output of some Departments of Agricultural Economics in the United States Midwest are perhaps honourable exceptions.

One of us (Blaikie 1985a) has recently sought to open the issue of degradation of land as a social problem. Essentially, that book built a number of theories to explain different aspects of degradation and conservation, drawn mostly from the standpoint of political economy. The present volume offers a greater diversity of approach, as well as a greater breadth of case-study material. A number of central social issues in land degradation which received only thematic treatment in the earlier book are discussed here in detail. These include the problems of measuring and economically appraising losses, and different institutional arrangements for land management, including common property and private property institutions and the state. More particularly, we also draw on a long and varied historical perspective in order to focus on the reasons why land management fails to be effective.

1.2 Issues of significance

Central to the issues discussed in this volume is the role of the ‘land manager’. Land managers may find themselves responding to changes in their social, political and economic circumstances quite independently of changes in the intrinsic properties of the land which they employ. They may be denied access to common resources, or be forced to grow crops by landlords, market or social demand, or by the state. They have to find a strategy with which to meet such pressures, and do this on land which itself changes in nature. The intersection of circumstances and strategies forms our subject matter.

Any interference by humans with the natural processes of soil formation, evolution and erosion has an effect upon these processes, often unforeseen. Leaching, compaction and erosion of the soil, changes in plant cover and hydrological regime, changes in soil and water chemistry all take place naturally in the absence of any human intervention or even presence; in some environments these processes take place quite rapidly under natural conditions. Violent atmospheric events can cause rapid changes in environments empty of people. In some islands of recent geological origin, it can be shown that the soil had been eroded and/or become able to support only a limited biota long before the arrival of people. Yet human interference has modified and usually accelerated all these processes and has created the conditions under which new sets of processes, previously absent or insignificant, come into play. With the exception of the work of bulldozers, explosives, trail-bikes and other tools of malice, all the processes of land degradation occur in nature, but human activity on the land changes the conditions of their operation. The task of land management is to recognize these changes and find some means of bringing them under control.

However, the effect of human interference is not the same at all times and in all places. Human management of the land without leading to degradation is not only possible in a great majority of environments, but has been frequently accomplished in human history. However, the same human skills are not useful and effective in all places; under similar systems of management the productivity of some land is well sustained, while that of other land deteriorates rapidly. The problem is further compounded by the fact that degradation has occurred at one period but not at another on the same land. Agro-technology has not only changed through time, but has also been applied with differing degrees of care and perception.

Human-induced degradation occurs when land is poorly managed, or where natural forces are so powerful that there is no means of management that can check its progress. Some degradation is caused when land that should never have been interfered with is brought into use, but most land now subject to accelerated degradation is capable of more effective management than it receives. Our basic question is why these failures have occurred, and whether or not the problem has been perceived as such by those responsible at the place and time.

Since land degradation has occurred in such a wide variety of social and ecological circumstances, it is clearly futile to search for a uni-causal model of explanation. Equally, there is a number of hypotheses which have useful explanatory power, such as ‘population pressure’ or the exploitation by people of people, and these are examined in this volume. However, we shall see that while there are many causes where ‘population pressure’ has contributed to land degradation, in others a marked decrease in population densities has led to the same result. Likewise, an onerous burden of taxes, inequitable distribution of landholdings, corvée labour systems and the like, have probably led to declining management on the part of the exploited, but not invariably. On the other hand, there are many examples where very favourable prices for agricultural commodities or for timber have led to accumulation of profits, but also to land degradation. This complexity leads us away from any single theory of land degradation, since there are so many conjunctural factors operating at one place and time. Rather, case-study material and discussion of methodological issues together suggest a general approach to the problem of land degradation to provide an illustrated manual with which readers can approach their own empirical evidence.

2 Definitions of value, capability and degradation

2.1 Choices in defining degradation

As the opening paragraph of this chapter states, the dictionary meaning of degradation is ‘reduction to a lower rank’. The term is therefore perceptual and implies at least a ‘rank’ scale of relative measurement. As a perceptual term, however, it is open to multiple interpretations. To a hunter or herder, the replacement of forest by savanna with a greater capacity to carry ruminants would not be perceived as degradation. Nor would forest replacement by agricultural land be seen as degradation by a colonizing farmer. Usually there are a number of perceptions of physical changes of the biome on the part of actual or potential land-users. Usually, too, there is conflict over the use of land – whether it be between farmers and conservationists, pastoralists and peasants, small farmers and the state, developers and concerned landholders. Since degradation is a perceptual term, it must be expected that there will be a number of definitions in any situation. It is, therefore, essential that the researcher recognizes any such conflict over the use of land and, therefore the definition of degradation. Sometimes the definition is given to the researcher as the ‘ruling’ one or the state-supported one, in the sense that land should be used in a certain way and degradation is, therefore, defined as reduction in capability to fulfil this demand. Sometimes the researcher will wish to supply other criteria derived from her/his own political and technical viewpoint.

It is of course more usual to employ the language of natural science to describe degradation, from the perspective of the soil scientist or agronomist. However, the processes are varied and, from a social point of view, their impact may be felt in very different ways. Erosion, especially gully erosion and massive sheet or rill erosion, is very obvious, although the role of human agency may not be. Modification of horizon structure, partial removal of fine particles, pan formation, podsolization, compaction and similar changes are less obvious and have only a more gradual effect on the productivity of the land. Changes in hydrology affect the flow of streams and ground water, affecting storage and the supply of water to livestock and people as well as to the soil. Impoverishment of vegetation, the invasion of weeds and the selective elimination of soil fauna and the larger fauna which live on them affect the whole quality of environment as well as of the land; new environments, such as the Mediterranean maquis, may be created and come to be regarded as natural. Among more insidious processes, salinization becomes persistently severe in dry areas and periodically severe where drought is of irregular incidence, where it is seen as a problem mainly at such times. Acidification, on the other hand, affects the rooting depth of plants in a more lasting manner, but its build-up is very slow and it is not at once perceived as a problem.

These physical changes have to be evaluated also in social terms. The first step is to estimate reductions in yields of crops, livestock or useful vegetation resulting from these changes. A useful review can be found in Stocking and Peake (1985). This is a relationship which researchers are only beginning to be able to quantify, and there are many crucial gaps in both our basic understanding and in orders of magnitude under different conditions. The second step is the evaluation of degradation in economic terms. As chapter 5 indicates, there are on-site and external dis-benefits of degradation, now and in the future; however, these are generalized income benefits expressed in money terms. Although these are of obvious and overriding importance in assessing the impact of degradation, they leave unanswered the problem of varying and competing perceptions of degradation. For example, a reduction in income for agriculturalists may result in an increase for herders. Also there are issues of the distribution of losses from degradation between different groups, and access to alternative means of livelihood (e.g. new land) or to new technologies to limit the effects of degradation or to reverse them – all these affect the boundary conditions for accounting the social impact of land degradation.

2.2 The ‘value’ of land

There is also another issue which should be discussed before proceeding to a definition of land degradation, and this concerns the ‘value’ of land, which in some way is reduced for the user by degradation. It raises a number of theoretical problems. In none of its forms does the theory of value take adequate account of the ‘value’ contained in the natural source of all energy in the ecosystem, the sun’s energy and of the stored products of that energy, which include the weathered material and nutrients which constitute the soil. Such ‘value’ cannot be said to be created by labour, does not have a cost of production, and is priced by the market according to a mixed set of utilities, including location, which often ranks higher than quality. Insightful comment on the failure of economics, specifically but not only Marxian economics, to take account of the physical processes underlying production is provided by Alier and Naredo (1982), Alier (1984) and Gutman (1985). While these authors, and the nineteenth-century socialist, Podolinsky, also fail to consider land degradation, they call attention to the failure of economics to consider energy flows or to come to terms with the notions of energy, except in a very imperfect manner.

Marx did, in fact, come somewhat closer to an appreciation of the role of land in production than did most other classical writers. He recognized that:

Man … can work only as nature does, that is by changing the form of matter. Nay more, in this work of changing the form he is constantly helped by natural forces … labour is not the only source of material wealth, of use-values produced by labour. (Marx 1887/1954: 50)

But while there is a recognition of land as the product of natural forces, land – and other natural resources – were considered ‘free’ inputs into production and did not produce value since it was only labour that was considered to perform this function. On the contrary, it is clear that land may need to be ‘paid’ a great deal in order to continue to ‘exist’ at the same quality, as this book seeks to demonstrate. Even modern resource-depletion models fail almost entirely to consider the environment itself as a degradable resource (Hufschmidt et al. 1983: 57). It is difficult, therefore, to use the term ‘value’ in relation to land, and even Robinson’s (1963: 46) cop-out in regarding value as a metaphysical concept without empirical meaning does not help; we therefore avoid the term.

2.3 Capability’ of land

The term used instead is capability. When land is degraded, it suffers a loss of intrinsic qualities or a decline in capability. This term is not one within the economic literature. It is, however, in modern agronomic literature with something like the sense which is required. As a first step towards clarification, degradation is defined as a reduction in the capability of land to satisfy a particular use. If land is transferred from one system of production or use to another, say, from hunter-gathering to agriculture, or from agricultural to urban use, a different set of its intrinsic qualities become relevant and provide the physical basis for capability. Land may be more or less capable in the new context. This is important, because it must not be supposed that deforestation necessarily constitutes degradation in a social sense, even though it certainly leads to changes in micro-climate, hydrology and soil. Socially, degradation must relate to capability, and it is only if the degradation process under one system of production has reduced the initial capability of land in a successor system, actual or potential, that degradation is, as it were, carried across the allocation change. In actual practice, this is often the case, since more serious degradation reduces capability for most, if not all, future possible land uses.

2.4 A definition of degradation

We have noted that the effect of human interference need not always be deleterious. It is also possible to restore and improve land, and to create new productive ecosystems of which the outstanding example is the irrigated rice-terrace. The land itself also has its own means of repair: new soil is formed, gullies grass over and become graded; nutrient status is restored under rest. Just as we need to take account both of the interaction between natural processes and human interference in degrading land, so also we must recognize both natural reproduction of capability and of human artifice in assisting this reproduction. Bidwell and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Defining and debating the problem
• 2 Approaches to the study of land degradation
• 3 Measuring land degradation
• 4 Decision-making in land management
• 5 Economic costs and benefits of degradation and its repair
• 6 Colonialism, development and degradation
• 7 Questions from history in the Mediterranean and western Europe
• 8 Degradation under pre-capitalist social systems
• 9 Management, enterprise and politics in the development of the tropical rain forest lands
• 10 The degradation of common property resources
• 11 Land degradation in socialist countries
• 12 The farmer, the state and the land in developed market economies
• 13 Retrospect and prospect
• References
• Index