Socio-Ecology of Land Use Planning in Semi-Arid Regions

Land use planning in tropical developing countries has posed a tremendous challenge to planners owing to high ecological diversity. The problem is particularly complex in semi-arid regions where due to high degree of environmental uncertainty, the traditional land use practices have been evolved by farmers with a high degree of flexibility. Most of such intra and inter-household resource adjustment strategies have involved simultaneous operations of farmers in several resource markets. Options of farmers in one market thus could not be analysed in isolation of constraints or opportunities in other markets. In this paper, a new approach, termed socio-ecological, has been proposed to provide a perspective for land use planning which would be consistent with long term interests of ecological balance and short term interest of survival for the poor. This concept is fundamentally different from the traditional socio-ecological studies pursued by Part and Hawley. Contention is that ecology defined the range of economic enterprises that had been found suitable for survival typically by different classes of farmer. Access to institution coupled with other public intervention influenced the scale at which these enterprises were operated by different classes. After discussing socio-ecology of stress in semi-arid region, some of the traditional risk adjustment mechanism have been listed. Empirical evidence on land, livestock, tree and household energy management has been presented. Inter-play between ecological and market forces has been illustrated with the help of credit resources and land-transfer maps of a block of about 70 villages. It is hoped that this approach would provide scope for generating land use options that widen the decision-matrix of poor and at the same time lead to better natural resource management. Finally, it is argued that policy intervention for redesigning institution and their access model in backward regions – unable to attract market forces – is called for. This will enable poor to mange land, livestock, labour use linked with craft activities in semi-arid region in congruence with environmental needs.