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Virtual water, that is the water used to produce exported products from agriculture and other commodity sectors like mining, has produced multiple effects on the socio-economic and environmental conditions of the producer regions and their populations. Export-related growth and increase of revenue have come together with resource-depletion, socio-environmental conflict and geo-political claims of local and/or national resource-ownership. While trade agreements and multi-scale environmental regulation try to address some of these issues, though in controversial ways, there is still a long way to go through in the construction of water governance arrangements that ensure sustainable water use. Our presentation illustrates this argument with cases of export agriculture and large scale mining in the Mediterranean and South American regions.

Better aligning agriculture and environmental policies is an important issue for Mediterranean areas. Minimizing conflicts between the two sectors requires better understanding farmers’ concerns. Using survey data among a sample of livestock farmers in the French Mediterranean Alps, we examine the main constraints they are confronted with. While France has adopted environmental policies aimed at the conservation of natural habitats and wildlife, which have contributed to a “rewilding” of mountains, farmers’ responses suggest that the growing presence of wolves is a major concern, in addition to institutional and market-related constraints. Given that grassland changes, notably agricultural land abandonment in Mediterranean areas, is considered as problematic for its consequences on agriculture, biodiversity and landscape management, we examine whether the constraints perceived by farmers are related to land abandonment. Applying a probit regression to our survey data, we show that farmers’ perception of the wolf’s presence is positively associated with the level of abandonment of alpine grasslands. It is the only perceived constraint significantly associated with land abandonment. Our results have implications for the design of land use policies to support the permanence of mountain farming and to help livestock breeders confront their particular constraints.

Land use change studies increasingly integrate geographic factors to explain uneven patterns of land abandonment. For mountain areas, biophysical factors, such as altitude, and economic factors, such as distance from core areas of economic and urban development, have been associated with agricultural land abandonment. These interpretations have led to agricultural and land use policies based on compensatory measures to maintain economic activity in mountain regions without much consideration of the intra-regional differences in agricultural land abandonment patterns. This paper argues that such differences are significant and should be taken into account in land use and rural policy design. Based on GIS estimations of land cover change for the 1990–2006 period and regression analysis of socio-economic attributes for 417 mountain municipalities in Provence-Alps-Côte d’Azur in Southern France, our research shows that high altitude grasslands are less likely to be abandoned than those located in lower altitude areas. This result is counter-intuitive given the understanding that remoteness and biophysical constraints are often associated with low land rents, therefore with higher levels of abandonment. Our findings also suggest that grassland abandonment is caused by a combination of both local and regional/ global factors. European Union policies for maintaining agricultural activity in marginal areas were not fully effective in reducing grasslands abandonment.

In France, agricultural land abandonment constitutes a critical issue. Mountains, in particular, are reckoned to be particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon; therefore, several policy measures attempt to maintain agricultural activities in mountains. In addition to the role of targeted subsidies in reducing abandonment of mountainous areas, we contend that place attachment helps explain the permanence of economic activity in these areas. By using survey data and controlling for several variables likely to influence place attachment, we investigated the relationship between place attachment and living in high or lower altitude mountains in a sample of livestock farmers in the French Southern Alps. Applying an ordered probit model, we found high-mountain farmers to be relatively more attached to their place compared to medium-mountain ones. Our findings also suggest that social relations at the family and neighborhood levels, satisfaction at work, and the distinctiveness farmers assign to a place are important factors of attachment. However, we found no significant association between place attachment and farm profitability. Several policy implications regarding agricultural abandonment and support for mountain livelihoods are derived.

Framed by concepts of territorial project, social coalitions, and scalar relationships, we analyze rural territorial dynamics under conditions of rapid expansion in natural gas extraction. Analyzing recent economic, political, and territorial transformations of Bolivia's gas-rich region, Tarija, we argue that pre-existing territorial projects of a diverse set of subnational and national actors have: (i) shaped the influence of the gas industry on local dynamics; (ii) changed the scale relationships between local communities, the state, and companies; and (iii) mediated the transformation of territories in ways determined by the nature and aspirations of these territorial projects

¿Cómo se hace desarrollo territorial rural? ¿Qué explica que unos territorios sean dinámi-cos, mientras otros queden rezagados? ¿Qué tipo de acción pública conduce a que las dinámicas sean exitosas? En los estudios de desarrollo y en la práctica de la política públi-ca, estas han sido algunas de las preguntas centrales a la que académicos, políticos, acti-vistas de la sociedad civil y los propios actores del espacio rural han buscado responder. Son también las preguntas que motivan el programa Dinámicas Territoriales Rurales (Ri-misp 2007) a cuyas respuestas el proyecto DTR en Bolivia busca contribuir. En esa búsqueda de entender el por qué del éxito y qué explica la diferenciación, se han identificado factores que tienen que ver con la base económica (la idea del crecimiento y la productividad); con la base ambiental (las particularidades físicas del capital natural y su capacidad de generar servicios ecosistémicos); con las estructuras organizativas e ins-titucionales (el capital social); con las estructuras de poder y el contexto político (la eco-nomía política del desarrollo); y con las interrelaciones entre actores y espacios.

The governance of water resources is prominent in both water policy agendas and academic scholarship. Political ecologists have made important advances in reconceptualising the relationship between water and society. Yet while they have stressed both the scalar dimensions and the politicised nature of water governance, analyses of its scalar politics are relatively nascent. In this paper, we consider how the increased demand for water resources by the growing mining industry in Peru reconfigures and rescales water governance. In Peru, the mining industry’s thirst for water draws in and reshapes social relations, technologies, institutions, and discourses that operate over varying spatial and temporal scales. We develop the concept of waterscape to examine these multiple ways in which water is co-produced through mining, often beyond the watershed scale. We argue that an examination of waterscapes avoids the limitations of thinking about water in purely material terms, structuring analysis of water issues according to traditional spatial scales and institutional hierarchies, and taking these scales and structures for granted.

Este informe de investigación presenta los resultados de un ejercicio de microsimulación que busca conocer la orientación de los cambios en indicadores de bienestar (gasto per cápita, pobreza y desigualdad) en Bolivia y mapear tales cambios en el territorio nacional, a fin de identificar las desigualdades espaciales en la distribución del crecimiento y el desarrollo ocurrido en el período intercensal 1992 – 2001 a nivel de unidades geográficas pequeñas. La caracterización de dinámicas provinciales, en base a una tipología construida a partir de la combinación de indicadores de bienestar obtenidos mediante el método de Estimación en Áreas Pequeñas (SAE) en la aplicación propuesta por Elbers y otros (2003), permitió mostrar que durante el período analizado se han generado diversas dinámicas de desarrollo territorial rural en casi todo el territorio nacional que cuestionan las apreciaciones de que en Bolivia se habrían generado procesos territoriales dicótomos de un grupo de regiones „ganadoras‟ y otro de „perdedoras‟. Los resultados de este trabajo muestran también que entre los impactos de las políticas de ajuste implementadas desde 1985 y de las reformas estructurales de la década de 1990 – dentro de las cuales los procesos de descentralización y de participación popular resultarían fundamentales – se tiene que contar no solo el cambio en indicadores económicos y de desarrollo sino también una cierta re-configuración del territorio nacional en su conjunto y del espacio rural en particular. Son estos cambios los que – al menos en parte – ayudarían a explicar el desarrollo subsiguiente de movimientos sociales y políticos territorializados que se observaron desde inicios de 2000. Así, si bien se puede observar una mejora casi generalizada en términos de incremento de gasto, reducción de pobreza y reducción de desigualdad en casi todas las regiones del país, los procesos positivos más marcados en varias de las regiones llanas del „Oriente‟ (particularmente en los depart

The trade-sustainable impact assessment of the European Union-Mercosur trade agreement found that the economic impact of the trade liberalisation scenario could be positive in the agricultural sectors of Mercosur countries. However, it also found that the social and environmental impacts would be mixed and potentially detrimental. This paper addresses the likely effects on the livelihoods of vulnerable rural populations. It argues that the potential impacts can be analysed within a diversified livelihood strategies framework, which is expanded to include institutional and policy factors. It concludes that the negative expected impact responds to the highly uneven access to capital assets. On the other hand, the effects are not generalised to all Mercosur countries, nor to all regions in each of the member countries. Enhancing or mitigating measures refer to the importance of sequencing and regulation to improve disadvantaged groups‘ abilities to participate in trade-led agricultural intensification or industrialisation processes.

This paper reviews social protection trends and policy responses in Latin America as part of a global scoping study on social protection commissioned by Ford Foundation (See Appendix One for ToR for this paper). The paper is organised as follows (following the paper contents as described in Appendix One): Section 1 identifies the main trends in poverty and vulnerability in the region, with particular references to rural-urban and life course poverty incidence. Section 2 provides a review of social protection trends. It discusses the two main areas of change and innovation in the last two decades: the reform of social insurance provision and the rapid expansion of social assistance schemes. Section 3 identifies some potential points of engagement between Ford Foundation work and the social protection policy agenda in the region.

The governance of water resources is prominent in both water policy agendas and academic scholarship. Political ecologists have made important advances in reconceptualising the relationship between water and society. Yet while they have stressed both the scalar dimensions and the politicised nature of water governance, analyses of its scalar politics are relatively nascent. In this paper, we consider how the increased demand for water resources by the growing mining industry in Peru reconfigures and rescales water governance. In Peru, the mining industry’s thirst for water draws in and reshapes social relations, technologies, institutions, and discourses that operate over varying spatial and temporal scales. We develop the concept of waterscape to examine these multiple ways in which water is co-produced through mining, often beyond the watershed scale. We argue that an examination of waterscapes avoids the limitations of thinking about water in purely material terms, structuring analysis of water issues according to traditional spatial scales and institutional hierarchies, and taking these scales and structures for granted.

Este informe de investigación presenta los resultados de un ejercicio de microsimulación que busca conocer la orientación de los cambios en indicadores de bienestar (gasto per cápita, pobreza y desigualdad) en Bolivia y mapear tales cambios en el territorio nacional, a fin de identificar las desigualdades espaciales en la distribución del crecimiento y el desarrollo ocurrido en el período intercensal 1992 – 2001 a nivel de unidades geográficas pequeñas. La caracterización de dinámicas provinciales, en base a una tipología construida a partir de la combinación de indicadores de bienestar obtenidos mediante el método de Estimación en Áreas Pequeñas (SAE) en la aplicación propuesta por Elbers y otros (2003), permitió mostrar que durante el período analizado se han generado diversas dinámicas de desarrollo territorial rural en casi todo el territorio nacional que cuestionan las apreciaciones de que en Bolivia se habrían generado procesos territoriales dicótomos de un grupo de regiones „ganadoras‟ y otro de „perdedoras‟. Los resultados de este trabajo muestran también que entre los impactos de las políticas de ajuste implementadas desde 1985 y de las reformas estructurales de la década de 1990 – dentro de las cuales los procesos de descentralización y de participación popular resultarían fundamentales – se tiene que contar no solo el cambio en indicadores económicos y de desarrollo sino también una cierta re-configuración del territorio nacional en su conjunto y del espacio rural en particular. Son estos cambios los que – al menos en parte – ayudarían a explicar el desarrollo subsiguiente de movimientos sociales y políticos territorializados que se observaron desde inicios de 2000. Así, si bien se puede observar una mejora casi generalizada en términos de incremento de gasto, reducción de pobreza y reducción de desigualdad en casi todas las regiones del país, los procesos positivos más marcados en varias de las regiones llanas del „Oriente‟ (particularmente en los depart

¿Cómo se hace desarrollo territorial rural? ¿Qué explica que unos territorios sean dinámi-cos, mientras otros queden rezagados? ¿Qué tipo de acción pública conduce a que las dinámicas sean exitosas? En los estudios de desarrollo y en la práctica de la política públi-ca, estas han sido algunas de las preguntas centrales a la que académicos, políticos, acti-vistas de la sociedad civil y los propios actores del espacio rural han buscado responder. Son también las preguntas que motivan el programa Dinámicas Territoriales Rurales (Ri-misp 2007) a cuyas respuestas el proyecto DTR en Bolivia busca contribuir. En esa búsqueda de entender el por qué del éxito y qué explica la diferenciación, se han identificado factores que tienen que ver con la base económica (la idea del crecimiento y la productividad); con la base ambiental (las particularidades físicas del capital natural y su capacidad de generar servicios ecosistémicos); con las estructuras organizativas e ins-titucionales (el capital social); con las estructuras de poder y el contexto político (la eco-nomía política del desarrollo); y con las interrelaciones entre actores y espacios.

The trade-sustainable impact assessment of the European Union-Mercosur trade agreement found that the economic impact of the trade liberalisation scenario could be positive in the agricultural sectors of Mercosur countries. However, it also found that the social and environmental impacts would be mixed and potentially detrimental. This paper addresses the likely effects on the livelihoods of vulnerable rural populations. It argues that the potential impacts can be analysed within a diversified livelihood strategies framework, which is expanded to include institutional and policy factors. It concludes that the negative expected impact responds to the highly uneven access to capital assets. On the other hand, the effects are not generalised to all Mercosur countries, nor to all regions in each of the member countries. Enhancing or mitigating measures refer to the importance of sequencing and regulation to improve disadvantaged groups‘ abilities to participate in trade-led agricultural intensification or industrialisation processes.

This paper reviews social protection trends and policy responses in Latin America as part of a global scoping study on social protection commissioned by Ford Foundation (See Appendix One for ToR for this paper). The paper is organised as follows (following the paper contents as described in Appendix One): Section 1 identifies the main trends in poverty and vulnerability in the region, with particular references to rural-urban and life course poverty incidence. Section 2 provides a review of social protection trends. It discusses the two main areas of change and innovation in the last two decades: the reform of social insurance provision and the rapid expansion of social assistance schemes. Section 3 identifies some potential points of engagement between Ford Foundation work and the social protection policy agenda in the region.