Journal of Environmental Management 159 (2015) 254e263

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Journal of Environmental Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jenvman

Review

Transforming river basins: Post-livelihood transition agricultural

landscapes and implications for natural resource governance
K.G. Sreeja*, C.G. Madhusoodhanan, T.I. Eldho
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400076, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The agricultural and livelihood transitions post globalization are redefining resource relations and
Received 26 September 2014 redrawing landscapes in the Global South and have major implications for nascent natural resource
Received in revised form governance regimes such as Integrated River Basin Management (IRBM). A mosaic of divergent re-
16 April 2015
ciprocations in resource relations were noticed due to livelihood transitions in the rural areas where
Accepted 17 May 2015
Available online 27 May 2015
previous resource uses and relations had been primarily within agriculture. The reconstitution of rural
spaces and the attendant changes in the resource equations are observed to be creating new sites of
conformity, contestation and conflicts that often move beyond local spaces. This paper critically reviews
Keywords:
Livelihoods
studies across the Global South to explore the nature and extent of changes in resource relations and
Diversification agricultural landscapes post livelihood diversification and the implication and challenges of these
Agricultural landscape changes for natural resource governance. Though there is drastic reduction in agricultural livelihoods
Natural resources throughout the Global South, changes in agricultural area are found to be inconsistent and heteroge-
River basin management neous in the region. Agriculture continues in the countrysides but in widely differentiated capacities and
Governance redefined value systems. The transformed agrarian spaces are characterized by a mosaic of scenarios
from persistence and sustainable subsistence to differentiation and exploitative commercial practices to
abandonment and speculation. The reconfigured resource relations, emergent multiple and multi-scalar
interest groups, institutional and policy changes and altered power differentials in these diversified
landscapes are yet to be incorporated into natural resource governance frameworks such as IRBM.
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The major agricultural regions of the world, especially in the
Global South are experiencing drastic realignments to livelihoods
that feature on-farm diversifications, off-farm occupations, multi-
ple occupational commitments and seasonal, circular or permanent
migrations for livelihood security (Bryceson, 2009; Ellis and
Freeman, 2004; Reardon, 2001; Rigg, 2006). These livelihood
transitions embody complex and multiple influences that range
from physical constraints such as resource closures and climate
change to altered personal and societal aspirations to state in-
terventions and national and international policy climates (Rigg,
2005). The shifts from agriculture as the livelihood mainstay are
accompanied by extensive and reciprocal changes in natural
resource relations, redrawing of the rural agricultural landscape
and diverse emergent conflicts and struggles over resources and
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: kg.sreeja@gmail.com (K.G. Sreeja), madhucg@gmail.com
(C.G. Madhusoodhanan), eldho@civil.iitb.ac.in (T.I. Eldho).
ownership (Aide and Grau, 2004; Barbier, 2000; Chen et al., 2014;
Chi et al., 2013). New forms of inequality and social differentia-
tion are also part of such transformations (Batterbury, 2010). These
reciprocal interactions of livelihoods and agrarian landscape have
received scant focused attention in livelihoods literature to date
(King, 2011).
The diversified and modified agricultural landscape is of
particular significance to sustainable Natural Resource Manage-
ment (NRM) institutions and policies even though it has not criti-
cally informed Natural Resource (NR) governance discussions until
now. The current resource governance regimes and nascent insti-
tutional mechanisms for NR governance such as Integrated River
Basin Management (IRBM) therefore need to be examined in the
changing context of these new livelihood landscapes and man-
agement spaces created in its wake (Kay, 2008; King, 2011; Woods,
2007). In river basins as management units, the dynamic rela-
tionship between rural landscapes and livelihood activities is of
particular importance. It is also remarked that understanding the
socio-economic motivations and multi-scale interactions governing
the dominant land-use changes, especially in the tropical South, is

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2015.05.021
0301-4797/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 K.G. Sreeja et al. / Journal of Environmental Management 159 (2015) 254e263
highly significant for coming to terms with global warming and its
impacts (Wohl et al., 2012). In the context of these pervasive
changes to agricultural livelihoods, landscapes and their signifi-
cance to sustainable resource governance and resilience in the
various agro-ecological settings of the South, certain questions
demand critical appraisal.
1. How has livelihood shifts and diversification affected resource
relations, links and agricultural landscapes in the Global South?
2. Has livelihood oriented rural development research and policy
post globalization made a difference to visualization of NRM
spaces such as river basins?
3. What are the implications of these reconstituted landscapes for
NR governance and policy especially in the context of river basin
based NRM?
These questions are answered through a critical and compre-
hensive review of academic and policy literature on livelihoods and
river basin management studies across the Global South. The region
under consideration, ‘the Global South’ includes all those countries
previously designated as ‘developing countries’ since the 1970s. It
includes the countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the
Caribbean. A complete list is provided in UNDP (2004). Studies
were selected from published literature available through elec-
tronic database, workshop proceedings, reports and book chapters
on livelihoods and river basin management following the meth-
odology for systematic review suggested by the Campbell collab-
oration guidelines (Hammerstrøm et al., 2010). Evidence is
consolidated and interpreted from macroeconomic analyses and
empirical micro-level case studies on rural occupational diversifi-
cation using diverse disciplinary and methodological frameworks,
both quantitative and qualitative, to capture the changes in
resource relations and landscapes following livelihood transitions.
The locations of the 80 case-studies and seminal macro-level ana-
lyses on livelihood transitions are indicated in Fig. 1. These 80
studies chosen for the present review is an attempt to represent all
the prominent agricultural regions and diverse pathways of agri-
cultural landscape change following livelihood shifts in the Global
South. The 14 locations of river basin based case-studies explore the
links of landscape-livelihood changes to NRM and related
Fig. 1. Locations of macro and micro-level livelihood studies reviewed across Global South.
255
governance. The past two decades of turbulent livelihood shifts
post-liberalization (1990e2014) is the time period under consid-
eration here during which sustainable livelihood studies pro-
gressed and matured in the Global South and river basin based
NRM was introduced in several of these very same locations.
The next section of the paper provides an analysis of the extent
of change in agricultural employment in the Global South in rela-
tion to agricultural land area for the time period under study. It also
examines the multiple strands of the livelihood studies literature,
its scope, potentials and limitations within the purview of the
present work. The third part critically reviews these livelihood
studies across Asia, Africa and Latin America with specific attention
focused on the links between changing livelihoods and rural space.
The fourth section concentrates on how livelihoods and resource
relations are conceptualized and operate within a river basin as an
NRM unit. The fifth and the final section explores the governance
implications of changed resource relations and the potentials and
challenges of addressing these within a river basin management
framework.
2. Agrarian change and livelihood transitions in the Global
South
The rural and agrarian spaces of the world have been going
through a phase of accelerated transformation in the past 20 years
variously theorized as a structural change, a transition and/or a
crisis phase (Rigg et al., 2012). Assessment of the extent of liveli-
hood transitions began as macroeconomic analyses of the rural
nonfarm sector and its various policy implications (Haggblade et al.,
2010; see Supplementary material). Although the decline in agri-
cultural employment as a share of total employment in the past two
decades is consistent across the South, the share of land dedicated
to agriculture in these regions show varying tendencies (Fig. 2).
While African and Latin American countries display an increase in
agricultural area with decreasing agricultural occupations, South
and East Asia including the Pacific exhibit marginal reductions in
area under cultivation with steep declines in agricultural employ-
ment. The relationship between agricultural livelihoods and land-
use therefore indicates a continued but differentiated resource
engagement in agriculture, the nuances of which demand a more
256 K.G. Sreeja et al. / Journal of Environmental Management 159 (2015) 254e263
Fig. 2. Changes in agricultural area and employment across the Global South
(1994e2010). Note: Colors black, blue, green and red indicate years 1994, 2000, 2005
and 2010 respectively; symbols represent each country grouping. (Data source:
FAOSTAT, 2014). (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the
reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
detailed appraisal on the basis of empirical evidence and substan-
tiation through a review of the livelihood literature from these
regions.
Within the literature reviewed, the nexus of livelihoods and re-
sources is studied in various capacities and extent by multiple and
cross-disciplinary perspectives from both natural and social sciences
(Scoones, 2009; Solesbury, 2003). Macroeconomic studies on the
rural non-farm economy (Barrett et al., 2001; Haggblade et al., 2010;
Lanjouw and Lanjouw, 2001; Reardon et al., 2007) and micro-level
case studies using Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA)
(McLennan and Garvin, 2012; Turner, 2012), political economy
(Braun and McLees, 2012) political ecology (Batterbury, 2001, 2010),
rural sociology, agricultural economics (Barbier, 2000) human and
cultural geography (King, 2011; Vadjunec et al., 2011; Zimmerer,
2014) frameworks are all employed in the analysis and interpreta-
tion of livelihood-landscape intersections. More recently, landuse
change science literature dealing with drivers of Land Use Land
Cover (LULC) change (Ribeiro Palacios et al., 2013) and transition
studies (Wang et al., 2011), land grab and acquisition studies
(Woodhouse, 2012) and to a limited extent climate change adapta-
tion research (Wohl et al., 2012) have also contributed to livelihood
writings. These studies were conducted at various scales of the
household, village, community, farming system, agro-ecosystem
and river basin by using a wide range of quantitative and qualita-
tive methodologies from rapid and participatory rural appraisals,
ethnographic participant observation, questionnaire surveys and
interviews to use of modeling (Taylor, 1992) remote sensing and GIS
tools (Chi et al., 2013).
Despite the wide ambit of livelihood studies, it is argued that
obsession with ‘driver-feedback’ analyses has greatly limited the
investigation of reciprocal relationships between livelihoods and
landscape (Carr and McCusker, 2009; McCusker and Carr, 2006).
The livelihood scholarship is also being criticized for its failure to
conceptualize changing livelihoods in the context of globalization
(Kanji et al., 2005; Scoones, 2009). Even though these studies were
systematic in their exploration of the minute aspects of livelihood
strategies at the micro-level, they more or less failed to capture the
macro-level significance of these changes or the micro-macro links.
The global debates on diverse NR governance frameworks to meet
the challenges to environmental sustainability were also largely
bypassed by the livelihoods research (Scoones, 2009). Even though
sustainable livelihood and integrated river basin approaches
became operational in the Global South along the same time period
in almost similar localities, both have moved along in exclusivity
with insights from one approach not informing the other. Several
scholars have thus expressed the urgent need to acknowledge the
local realities of livelihoods in NR governance (Batterbury, 2001;
Rigg et al., 2012; Runk et al., 2007; Zimmerer, 2014).
3. Changing resource relations; transforming agricultural
landscapes
Livelihood transitions and the changed resource interactions in
the globalized South have led to conceptualizations of the rural
agricultural landscape as a ‘new rurality’/‘global countryside’/
‘remittance landscape’/‘hollowed countryside’ etc. (Batterbury,
2001; Liu et al., 2010; McKay, 2003; Woods, 2007; Yarnall and
Price, 2010; Zimmerer, 2014). On a physical plane, agricultural
landscapes are recognized to be fragmented, isolated and under
constant fluctuation along with various emergent uses as diversi-
fication and off-farm incomes intensify (Ellis, 2000; Fabusoro et al.,
2010; Liu et al., 2014; Su et al., 2011; Zoomers, 2002). The multiple
uses of resources within both agricultural and non-agricultural
realms have given rise to competitive tensions in resource con-
sumption (Van der Ploeg and Jingzhong, 2010). The social spaces of
multi-occupational livelihoods display intensified labor mobility,
changed rural labor configurations through feminization and ger-
iatrification, revised rural terms of trade and market, blurred rural-
urban distinctions and dispersed peasant community cohesion and
identity (Bryceson et al., 2000; Kay, 2008; Wang et al., 2011).
Indeed, the increasingly delocalized livelihoods have changed the
fundamental notions of fixed spatiality central to agrarian land-
scapes and life (Bouahom et al., 2004; Padoch et al., 2008). Cultural
landscapes are another rapidly changing facet of agricultural live-
lihoods in transition (Zimmerer, 2014). In an interesting contra-
diction of these rapidly changing biophysical and socio-cultural
agricultural landscapes, Braun and McLees (2012) call attention to
the recent social construction of the rural spaces as ‘pristine’,
‘natural’ and ‘rustic’, in order to promote rural tourism ventures.
The policy and institutional landscapes are also changing, albeit
lackadaisically, to accommodate the multitude of transformed
resource relations. For instance, the recent Land Acquisition Act of
India (The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land
Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013) was revised
after more than a century in the light of growing demands on rural
lands for non-agricultural developments and ensuing conflicts (GoI,
2013). Even then, the traditional institutional spaces are found to be
highly constrained in resource governance of these post-transition
landscapes (Woods, 2007).
Thus a mosaic of divergent reciprocations and ‘productive
bricolage’ in resource relations was noticed due to livelihood
transitions, creating a complex and changing landscape in the rural
areas (Batterbury, 2001; Bouahom et al., 2004; Ribeiro Palacios
et al., 2013; Zimmerer, 2014). A spectrum of agricultural scenarios
that range from persistence and sustainable subsistence to differ-
entiation and exploitative commercial practices to abandonment
and speculation is a characteristic of these transformed landscapes.
This has given rise to multiple perspectives and contentions
regarding livelihood-landscape links which will be explored below.
3.1. Agricultural intensification/de-intensification/abandonment
Livelihood diversification and the inflow of non-agricultural
 K.G. Sreeja et al. / Journal of Environmental Management 159 (2015) 254e263
income especially remittances have mixed, differential and at times
countervailing effects on the agricultural landscape (Gray, 2009;
Yarnall and Price, 2010). Post-livelihood transition landscapes are
noted to indicate both agricultural intensification and de-
intensification (Delgado-Wise and Guarnizo, 2007; Zimmerer,
2007). Many researchers have advanced interpretations based on
‘virtuous and vicious cycles’ to bring out these varied effects of non-
farm incomes on agricultural landscapes (Barrett et al., 2001;
Bouahom et al., 2004; Delgado-Wise and Guarnizo, 2007; Yarnall
and Price, 2010). However, there is consensus that countrysides
have become more heterogeneous, differentiated and complex
than before, changing the context and agency of agriculture
(Zoomers, 2002).
The ‘virtuous’ school advances that non-farm income, especially
remittances, help in the continuation and enhancement of house-
hold agricultural practices and raising productivity through in-
crease in on-farm investments and innovations, recruitment of
hired labor, purchase of modern inputs and improved access to
credit, input and output markets (Koczberski and Curry, 2005;
Lanjouw and Lanjouw, 2001; Reardon et al., 2007). For example,
evidence from field studies in various sub-Saharan African coun-
tries show that non-farm income afforded hired laborers for timely
agronomic practices and allowed for purchase of sufficient farm
inputs (Ellis and Freeman, 2004; Ellis, 2006). Agricultural produc-
tivity per hectare rose steeply across the various non-farm income
ranges and non-farm activities did not result in neglect of farming
activities. Hired labor replacing family labor following remittances
and off-farm incomes, was also reported from various Latin
American localities (Isakson, 2009; Steward, 2007). Off-farm in-
come sponsored agricultural investments that include high yielding
variety seeds, increased use of fertilizers and plant protection
chemicals, irrigation infrastructure and agricultural mechanization
resulting in increased cropping intensity and productivity are being
reported from various regions in Africa and Latin America (DeFries
and Rosenzweig, 2010; Yarnall and Price, 2010). Yield increase
through agricultural intensification is also pointed out to result in
ecosystem benefits through limiting land encroachments and
marginal land cultivation (Chen et al., 2014; Rigg et al., 2012). It is
further postulated that with intensive use of high-quality land,
ecologically fragile and marginal land can be spared for ecosystem
and biodiversity restoration (Aide and Grau, 2004; Chen et al.,
2014; Wang et al., 2011).
Contrary to these optimistic readings of the effect of off-farm
incomes, several other case studies illustrate the deleterious im-
pacts of diversification mainly due to shortage of labor and time to
invest in agriculture, especially among the youth (Bouahom et al.,
2004; Kay, 2008; Lambin and Meyfroidt, 2011; Rigg and
Nattapoolwat, 2001). It is also remarked that even when agricul-
tural production practices are intensified through increased appli-
cation of inputs, these measures are short term and immediate
rather than the long term labor intensive measures of the past
(Bouahom et al., 2004; Crowley and Carter, 2000). The nature of
farm activities and the type of crops grown changed when labor
was shifted away from farming. The families that continued to farm
shifted to less labor demanding perennial crops, aquaculture or
agroforestry practices in several villages of Africa, Asia and Latin
America (Akram-Lodhi, 2005; McLennan and Garvin, 2012; Rigg
and Nattapoolwat, 2001; Snyder, 2009; Steward, 2007). The tra-
jectory of pluriactive households were observed to be to gradually
move out of agriculture altogether rather than invest the off-farm
income in farm operations, as reported from Tamil Nadu, India
(Djurfeldt et al., 2008). ‘Simplified farming’ which involves elimi-
nation of several steps in land preparation; desertion of double
cropping and disappearance of labor intensive crops are noted in
Chinese rural spaces with high incidence of circular migration
257
wherein a migrant worker temporarily and repetitively moves out
of his/her home to host regions in search of gainful employment
(Van der Ploeg and Jingzhong, 2010). The massive non-agricultural
shifts in occupation in China that have left rural lands abandoned
and population greatly reduced and weakened due to a predomi-
nance of elderly segment of population who are left behind has
been dubbed ‘rural hollowing’ (Liu et al., 2010). Modeling for
impact of remittances in Mexico revealed that reduced labor supply
due to migration encouraged activities that were less labor inten-
sive (Taylor, 1992). In rural south-western Niger, due to diversifi-
cation and migration of people, several agronomic practices such as
early-season field preparation were sacrificed leading to increased
soil erosion rates (Batterbury, 2001). The consequent declines in
soil quality further reduce primary dependence on agriculture.
Terrace farming and various other practices that had both increased
yield as well as conserved land were found to be abandoned in an
agricultural community in Northern Tanzania as there was
observed a general disinterest in farming among the new genera-
tion (Snyder, 2009). Labor shortages, decreased investments and
general disinterest and resultant yield declines are reported to lead
to further shrinkages and abandonment of productive farm hold-
ings, decrease in multi-cropping indices, reduced agro-biodiversity
and further reductions in agricultural outputs (Liu et al., 2014; Rigg
et al., 2012; Zimmerer, 2010). Increased abandonment and idling of
highly productive farmlands as a consequence are being reported
from across the rural South (Batterbury, 2001; McLennan and
Garvin, 2012; Rigg, 2006).
The trajectories of intensification and de-intensification were
found to be different for poorer households. These households
dependent on casual, unskilled and temporary wage earnings had
to give up on land management altogether due to labor paucity and
lack of time and investment capital. Many subsistence households
have had to sell their land to finance the migration related expenses
so that they are left with no land to continue cultivation (Isakson,
2009). In the context of these small holder households especially,
off-farm work can therefore never result in agricultural in-
vestments and increased productivity (Bouahom et al., 2004). A
noteworthy contradiction is the leasing of neglected agricultural
lands by landless agricultural laborers through a variety of tenancy
arrangements, the details of which are presented in Section 3.5.
3.2. Persistence/disappearance of subsistence agriculture
The type of agriculture that is being practiced in these
intensified/de-intensified landscapes of transition has also been
subject to much analysis and academic debate. Persistent engage-
ment in subsistence-oriented agricultural practices despite preva-
lent off-farm incomes is seen as a powerful form of resilience of
smallholder cultivators of the countries of the Global South
(Fabusoro et al., 2010; Gray, 2009; Isakson, 2009; Jokisch, 2002;
Steward, 2007; Van der Ploeg and Jingzhong, 2010). For instance,
the African landscape of today is stated to be a crafting together of
non-agricultural occupations with continued subsistence agricul-
ture (Batterbury, 2001; Bouahom et al., 2004). Migrant workers
especially regard continuation of agricultural subsistence activities
at their rural roots as a vital fall-back option (Bryceson, 2009; Van
der Ploeg and Jingzhong, 2010) creating novel forms of community
values. In Guatemala for example, migrant remittances and
returning migrants are involved with reinforcing and expanding
the native subsistence agricultural base (Isakson, 2009). In a pre-
dominantly non-agricultural region in South India, family farms
using an increased share of family labor were noted to have
increased by buying up/leasing-in land from both big landowners
as well as smallholders (Djurfeldt et al., 2008). More recently, the
practice of subsistence agriculture is also adopted by the returning
258 K.G. Sreeja et al. / Journal of Environmental Management 159 (2015) 254e263
mine workers in many regions of Africa and also formed part of
state policy to rehabilitate ex-mine workers (Maconachie, 2012;
Mususa, 2012). In the Amazon basin, planting homegardens and
the practice of subsistence agriculture are observed to be ways in
which new and prospective migrants staked claim on property
acquisitions (Steward, 2007). These emergent subsistence practices
have given rise to the conception of re-agrarianization of country-
sides (Maconachie, 2011).
In several other regions, non-farm income was found to have no
significant influence on subsistence farming (Jokisch, 2002). On the
other hand, decline in subsistence agriculture, small-scale com-
mercial cultivation and livestock rearing and an abandoning of
traditional landuses were reported from non-agrarian livelihoods
dominated rural landscapes of Costa Rica. Rigg (2001) had cate-
gorically stated that there were no more subsistence farmers left in
Thailand. Earlier centers of subsistence production are postulated
to be the new hubs of large-scale commercial agriculture, global
commodity networks, labor export/import and non-agricultural
investment in natural resources (Gray, 2009; Vadjunec et al.,
2011; Yarnall and Price, 2010). Cultivation of new non-traditional
commercial crops destined for biofuel markets was the feature of
a diversified community in Northwest Costa Rica (McLennan and
Garvin, 2012). In the Valle Alto in Bolivia, subsistence farming for
the local market was substituted by more specialized commercial
cultivation for the national market through agricultural mechani-
zation and irrigation infrastructure development (Yarnall and Price,
2010). Thus, agriculture continues to persist in the countrysides of
the Global South but in widely differentiated capacities and rede-
fined value systems, even within subsistence agriculture systems.
3.3. Forest transition/degradation
Rural out-migration and agricultural diversification are also
hypothesized to curtail the deleterious impacts of cultivation on
forest lands on the one hand and continue or exacerbate forest
degradation on the other. The widely reported forest transitions in
the Global South (Mather, 2007) is in a large measure attributed to
the diminishing importance of agriculture and increased non-
agricultural incomes in these regions (Hecht and Saatchi, 2007;
Lambin and Meyfroidt, 2011; Rudel et al., 2005; Qin, 2010). Aban-
donment of pasture and regrowth of secondary forest following
livelihood shift from cattle farming to tourism related service in-
dustries was witnessed in Costa Rica during the 1990s (McLennan
and Garvin, 2012). A link between forest transition and diversifi-
cation of livelihood strategies was also reported from upland
Vietnam which showed an increase in closed canopy forests and
enhanced diversity between 1999 and 2009 (Trincsi et al., 2014).
Household out-migration in the Southeast China countryside is
observed to promote ecological restoration of mountains, uplands,
wetlands and marginal lands by decreasing rural population den-
sity and encroachments (Wang et al., 2011).
In direct contradiction to these observations and in-
terpretations, revival and recovery of forests in the humid tropical
rural landscapes are argued to be unattainable even in the face of
rapid de-agrarianization (DeFries and Rosenzweig, 2010; Fearnside,
2008; Gray, 2009). Urban expansion which is often complementary
to rural diversification and the resultant increases in rural resource
extraction are pointed out to subvert attempts to conserve forest
resources. For example, increasing urbanization has created de-
mand for construction materials along the Ucayali River in Peru
(Padoch et al., 2008). The boom in construction activities in urban
areas that had absorbed a fair share of rural agricultural labor in
Asia is also seen to increase demand for natural resources of sand,
stone and wood resulting in exploitation of the remaining wood-
lands, rivers and rock outcrops (Reardon et al., 2007).
3.4. Land grabs/acquisition e resource alienation and livelihood
shifts
In contrast to these gradual changes in landscapes and resource
relations, extreme alterations are also underway through opening
up of these regions to national and transnational capital, com-
modities and labor in various commercial ventures that range from
aquaculture to biofuel cultivation, tourism and mines (Messerli
et al., 2013; Turner, 2012). World over, these investments had led
to loss and degradation of arable land and virtual exploitation of
other rural natural and common property resources of forests and
water (Rulli et al., 2013; Tortajada, 2013). Access and control over
these natural resources are often ceded to the investors through
diverse methods such as willing or coerced sale and long term lease
arrangements on state as well as private lands (Rulli et al., 2013;
Woodhouse, 2012). In a traditionally pastoral community of Costa
Rica, tourism and residential development by predominantly ab-
sentee foreign investors were observed to be the new landuses
(McLennan and Garvin, 2012). Foreign direct investments in
extensive rural land area for export oriented biofuel cultivation was
reported from Ghana (Boamah, 2014). Transnational gold-mines
have modified land relations throughout the Cajamarca region of
Peru by altering tenure institutions, land values and landuse pat-
terns (Bury, 2005). Similar changes to NR relations are reported
since the 1980s from many of the traditionally agricultural African
economies such as Tanzania, Botswana and Nigeria due to expan-
sion of artisanal and large-scale mining of gold, diamond and oil
(Bryceson et al., 2012; Fabusoro et al., 2010; Gwebu, 2012). In
addition to facilitating investments over land, the state also stakes
claim on rural lands and resources for developmental projects that
range from industrial development to infrastructure expansions
(Braun and McLees, 2012). Such extensive alienation of rural
landscapes has fostered competition and conflicts over resources
between the local residents, outside investors and the state (Chen
et al., 2014; Messerli et al., 2013).
3.5. New resource values, meanings and relationships
In the aftermath of continued livelihood diversification, the
societal perception on resource values has undergone considerable
reassessment. While these changed value systems signal a gradual
disconnect with land in some cases, in others newer forms of
engagement are forged. Niehof (2004) comments that often, the
resource base of diversified households are de-diversified through
sale of landed assets. The gradual diminution in the role and rele-
vance of land in previously agricultural spaces in South East Asia
has been noted (Rigg, 2006). On the other hand, land is seen to have
acquired worth anew as an object of speculation and investment
(Zoomers, 2002). The rural areas are also fast becoming affordable
and quiet residential sites away from the city bustle for an
increasing number of commuter workers in the adjacent towns and
urban ‘hobby’ farmers (Graziano da Silva and Eduardo Del Grossi,
2001; Tubtim, 2012). It is predicted that such changes in the rural
resource relations would gradually lead to de-linking of rural
population from land and land inheritance systems and ultimately
to the erosion of the traditional land based power differentials
(Bouahom et al., 2004; Wittman, 2009).
Land has now become valuable as an investment, real estate and
financial security, and barely for what it can produce agriculturally.
For instance, a livelihood case study from the highlands of Ecuador
indicates that cultivation is generally looked upon as unwise in-
vestment of remittance compared to housing and real estate out-
lays (Jokisch, 2002). As a matter of fact, remittances invested in
housing is regarded as a stimulant to the new rural economy by
creating jobs for local masons and carpenters through much of
 K.G. Sreeja et al. / Journal of Environmental Management 159 (2015) 254e263
central Mexico and the southern Indian state of Kerala through the
1990s (Eakin and Appendini, 2008; Gopikuttan, 1990). Thus
building large and ostentatious houses have come to be the new
measure of remittance worth compared to agricultural investments
in land (Isakson, 2009; Yarnall and Price, 2010). This status-seeking
remittance strategy is actually found to be a continuation of the
trends identified earlier in several European countries (Ruggiero,
2005). In addition to elaborate private homes, new public and
community spaces such as shopping malls also reflect urban in-
fluences and remittance investments so that the new rural land-
scape has become a micro representation of the ‘urban’ (Rigg et al.,
2012). Despite these deep-rooted changes that are coalescing rural
and urban identities, the migrant workers away from home still
persist in the idea of ‘native village’ as essentially bucolic though
this notion does not essentially contribute to maintenance of
former social orders (Padoch et al., 2008; Rigg et al., 2012).
In this new landscape, an assortment of markets is developing
that range from natural resource to external food markets. The food
deficiency that had resulted out of major landuse and value shifts
has led to greater dependence on external markets for meeting the
subsistence needs of even cultivator households (Snyder, 2009).
Shortage of labor, lack of enthusiasm for processing and post-
harvest operations due to a change in community values and
greater access to outside markets have heightened this depen-
dence. The development of land markets and increasing land prices
have led to prevalent conceptions of land as a speculative com-
modity rather than for agricultural production (Zoomers, 2002).
Due to willing, coerced or helpless involvement in these markets, a
significant share of rural land in these regions is seen to belong to
non-agricultural households and outside investors. In a telling
example, most international migrant households were observed to
increase their landholdings in south-central Ecuador compared to
non-migrant households whose landed possessions remained
stagnant (Jokisch, 2002). A threefold increase in land market
participation through rentals or purchase was noticed in rural
Vietnam post-globalization (Akram-Lodhi, 2005). The emergence
of water markets is remarked to be a feature of non-agricultural
rural landscape in the state of Gujarat in India (Moench et al., 2003).
The constantly increasing prices and fluctuating resource mar-
ket conditions due to agricultural transformations apparently
perpetuate growing landlessness and rising inequalities in the rural
regions of the South (Isakson, 2009; Kay, 2008; Zoomers, 2002).
There is increased accumulation of land by the richer non-
agricultural households leading to exacerbation of differentiation
(Akram-Lodhi, 2005; Kay, 2008; Zoomers, 2002). The emergence of
a land market due to non-farm occupations and migration led to
gradual concentration of holdings and other resources by the
wealthier class and a growing marginalization and landlessness on
the other end of the social spectrum in the Mekong Delta (Akram-
Lodhi et al., 2007). It was also noted that the quality of land held by
the non-farming richer households was far better than those
occupied by the cultivating poorer households (Akram-Lodhi,
2005; Bezu et al., 2012). Widened social stratification among
those who remain engaged in agricultural production is also being
reported (Yarnall and Price, 2010).
In many instances, the ownership, tenure arrangements and
access conditions of these resources have also undergone drastic
realignments. Revival of tenancy markets and new forms of tenure
relationships are an increasingly familiar characteristic of diversi-
fied agricultural landscapes. Tenancy relations, including share-
cropping, had returned to rural Vietnam and Amazon Brazil due to
operation of land markets during the period of agrarian transition
from the 1990s (Akram-Lodhi, 2005; Rigg, 2006; Steward, 2007).
This had led to land being leased-in for cultivation by households
which had lower endowments but greater labor assets, from those
259
households that leased them out due to off-farm employment of
the household (Djurfeldt et al., 2008). In China, significant land
under agriculture was only observed in those villages which had a
high prevalence of land leasing arrangements and where the share
of agricultural laborers in the households were high (Wang et al.,
2011; Zhang et al., 2014).
Often, the rural landscape and NR relations in the era of glob-
alization and livelihood diversification are a mosaic of such con-
tradictory forces that vie for domination. These post-livelihood
transition landscapes also involve various interest groups of land-
less peasants, migrant landowners, in-migrants laborers, women,
old-aged farmers, urban investors, transnational corporations and
lease holders within multiple tenure arrangements. The conven-
tional rural management entities and local governance bodies are
identified to be highly insufficient and constrained in dealing with
the diverse impacts of non-agricultural livelihoods in resource use
and governance (Batterbury, 2010; Liu et al., 2014; Woods, 2007).
The diverse actors and the emergent relations of power operating
between them demand alternative imaginings of NR governance
regimes (Cleaver and Franks, 2005; Sneddon and Fox, 2006). Sus-
tainable NRM and institutions oriented towards it therefore acquire
new dimensions and require renewed deliberation in a globalized
post-livelihood transition rural landscape (Batterbury and
Bebbington, 1999; Zimmerer, 2007). In the following section, river
basins as emergent NRM units are examined for conceptualization
of its resource spaces, livelihood transformations within these and
the changing contexts of governance.
4. Livelihood and resource use scenarios in river basins
The changes to livelihoods and landscape in the rural regions
described in the above sections acquire added relevance when
considered within resource management spaces such as a river
basin. River basins as units of NRM have found renewed acceptance
since the early 1990s in the form of Integrated River Basin Man-
agement (IRBM) and Integrated Water Resources Management
(IWRM) and presently form the foundation of water policies across
the world (Hering et al., 2010; Mehta and Movik, 2014; Mollinga
et al., 2009). Majority of the river basins across the Global South
have substantial regions which are rural. Historically, the devel-
opment of these rural basin spaces was primarily for agricultural
expansion. However, previously agricultural rural river basins are in
a state of high flux today due to a mosaic of livelihood strategies
and landuses and are more vulnerable economically and socio-
ecologically (Ribeiro Palacios et al., 2013). Natural resource con-
sumption, conflicts and interest groups and consequently the NRM
priorities of today's river basins differ markedly from those
assumed in a conventional IRBM framework. Critical engagement
with the concept of river basin as a management unit therefore
demands integrating NRM to the lives and livelihoods of the people
who inhabit these basin spaces (Runk et al., 2007; Vogel, 2012).
The agrarian character of river basins has rarely been subjected
to a critical review from the perspective of human livelihoods and
resource links. Very few studies are seen to capture the dynamics of
the engagement with the basin resources, or seriously attempt any
analysis of the rapid changes to livelihood portfolios and the
ensuing issues of resource access and ownership. Further, marginal
resource users in a basin primarily dependent on non-agricultural
ecosystem services are often excluded from decision-making pro-
cesses (Nesheim et al., 2010). The lack of consideration of these
non-agricultural resource users and marginal communities is
decried as a strategic failure of IWRM (Waalewijn et al., 2009). Even
when it is realized that past inequities in resource distribution need
to be redressed, a more textured analysis of the current resource
relations of the basin population is found to be largely missing.
260 K.G. Sreeja et al. / Journal of Environmental Management 159 (2015) 254e263
Fig. 3. Reciprocal livelihood-landscape links and governance relations in the rural spaces of the Global South.
In many basins across the South, over abstraction and closure of
river basins have signaled an inevitable shift away from agriculture
as a major livelihood activity and main user of basin resources
(Moench et al., 2003; Molle, 2007). In the Sabarmati river basin in
Gujarat, the severe decline in groundwater levels led to the
movement of traditional landowning and agricultural laborer
castes away from primary dependence on agriculture to other oc-
cupations and in many instances to permanent migration (Moench
et al., 2003). In several other basins, rapid urbanization and
industrialization are leading to these shifts despite resource
abundance. For instance, in the water abundant and fertile south-
ern and coastal regions of the Yellow river basin in China, capital is
being reallocated away from agriculture into secondary and service
sectors (Su et al., 2011; Webber et al., 2008). In the Red River Delta,
Vietnam and Yangtze River Delta, China, numerous fertile agricul-
tural fields were transformed into industrial zones (Dai et al., 2013;
Su et al., 2011). Moreover, other NR based enterprises such as
mines, commercial aquaculture, tourism etc. are on the increase in
several of the river basins of the Global South (Little, 1999; Venot
et al., 2008). Mineral mining booms are reported all along the Af-
rican and Amazon river basins (Hinojosa, 2013; Kamete, 2008).
Large-scale adoption of commercial aquaculture in the Krishna
basin delta in South India resulted in small farmers and fishermen
selling or leasing out their lands to outside investors (Venot et al.,
2008). Remittances of migrant labor to the rural areas in several
river basins have also reduced primary dependence on agricultural
livelihoods (Swatuk and Motsholapheko, 2008; Turton et al., 2006).
These livelihood and resource diversifications have thus realigned
the resource relations of the basin population and redefined basin
landscapes providing the changing context of basin management
(Cuba et al., 2014; Franks et al., 2011). Moreover, the concerns and
conflicts over the emergent resource uses are found to transcend
local resource use spaces and have basin level impacts (Hinojosa,
2013). Therefore a spatially cognizant NRM framework such as a
river basin becomes all the more relevant in a diversified rural
landscape.
5. Transition landscapes and implications for natural
resource governance
Natural resource governance involves decision-making on the
use and distribution of natural resources through formal and
informal institutions involving stakeholder participation. River
basin based NR governance being institutionalized in many coun-
tries of the South is rooted in the principle of subsidiarity whereby
resource management actions are taken at the lowest appropriate
level (Molle, 2009; World Bank, 2004). The reconstitution of nat-
ural resource use in diversified livelihood landscapes of river basins
links the local spaces of NR governance across multiple scales and
institutional levels through resource and livelihood networks
(Adger et al., 2005; Cleaver and Franks, 2005; Sreeja et al., 2012;
Venot et al., 2011). Distinct interest group networks are formed in
the wake of these new resource configurations that play a huge role
in stakeholder based co-management of resources. In the heavily
mined basins of the Peruvian Andes, interest groups of trans-
national mining corporations and the local communities were
involved in land and water rights negotiations (Cuba et al., 2014;
Hinojosa, 2013). New livelihood interest groups of women
farmers, migrant workers, in-migrant laborers and field caretakers
and their respective networks were identified in the central Boli-
vian Andes (Zimmerer, 2014). The highly marginalized and often
invisible categories of lease farmers and in-migrant workforce who
receive scant recognition in traditional policy and institutional
circles were encountered in the Chalakudy river basin in the
Western Ghats of India (Sreeja and Shetty, 2015). Beyond the con-
ventional realm of stakeholders that mostly involve irrigators and
large agriculturists, river basin based NR governance in a changed
rural landscape would need to incorporate these highly differen-
tiated and emergent social actors who juggle livelihood activities,
processes, networks, resources and power at multiple scales
(Batterbury, 2010; Cuba et al., 2014; Zimmerer, 2014). The recog-
nition of changing resource use and user dynamics within river
basins and multi-scalar governance efforts can also challenge the
recent trend towards centralized management in IRBM frameworks
(Andersson and Ostrom, 2008; Go €rg, 2007; Harris and Alatout,
2010; Lankford and Hepworth, 2010; Molle and Mamanpoush,
2012). The interlinks between livelihoods, resources and gover-
nance that is defining the rural landscape of the Global South is
presented in Fig. 3.
Even though it is believed that shifts out of agriculture would
relieve the stress on basin resources (Molle, 2007; Phansalkar,
2005), others point out to the possibility of increased conflicts
 K.G. Sreeja et al. / Journal of Environmental Management 159 (2015) 254e263
due to competition for resources between emergent livelihood
activities and the traditional agricultural communities (Moench
et al., 2003; Seto, 2011). The emergent livelihoods and resource
relations are also reported to constrain investments in sustainable
resource management initiatives (Moench et al., 2003; Swatuk and
Motsholapheko, 2008). Further, increase in the non-agrarian uses
of water is postulated to widen future divergences between the
river basin and the area that uses a river's waters (Pani, 2009).
Alternative livelihood strategies in river basins are also changing
the livelihood value of resources to basin residents which are yet to
be reflected in basin resource use policies (Eakin and Appendini,
2008). The ‘idealized version of rural life’ is still implicitly
assumed by NRM institutions, ignoring the rapid and prevalent
manifestations of livelihood changes in rural landscapes (Bryceson
et al., 2000; Chase, 2010; Koczberski and Curry, 2005). In the
absence of IRBM taking cognizance of these emergent resource
relations, Hinojosa (2013) foresees a situation where inadequate
governance mechanisms for diverse resource uses lead to resource
depletion and environmental injustice.
6. Conclusion
Changes in natural resource use and relations in the context of
agricultural livelihood shifts in the Global South post-globalization
lead to a highly diversified rural landscape which has been altered
physically, socially, culturally and institutionally. A plethora of
resource use situations were identified to qualify these agricultural
landscapes that range from agricultural intensification to dein-
tensification; deagrarianization to reagrarianization; persistence of
sustainable agriculture to its disappearance and abandonment;
forest transitions and degradations; resource grabs, acquisitions
and alienation and above all changed and emergent resource
values, meaning and power differentials. The changed livelihood
commitments have also created 'non-traditional' interest groups
and networks in resource relations which are giving rise to diverse
struggles, contestations and compliances in resource use and re-
lations. The social movements and conflicts in various corners of
the Global South are a testimony to these redefinitions that are
affecting the previously largely agrarian communities and land-
scapes and the pressing need for an institutional perspective that
can address these issues over multiple scales. It is therefore dis-
turbing to note that such prevalent shifts to resource user spaces in
the rural areas have not seriously informed conceptualizations of
nascent environmental governance regimes such as IRBM and
IWRM.
Even though river basins as NR governance units provide multi-
scalar participatory spaces for decentralized governance,
acknowledgment of river basin relations and spaces as diversified is
scarce in scholarship. The obsession with agricultural basins is still
rife and the officially recognized stakeholders are found to be most
often limited to the powerful classes of irrigators. The involvement
of non-agricultural resource users and several other marginal users
of basin resources that range from in-migrant laborers to the
landless lease farmers on the one hand and the drastic non-
agricultural uses of basin resources such as gold and oil mining,
stone quarrying, foreign direct investments on land, virtual water
trade etc. on the other are rarely part of basin resource governance
discussions and negotiations. There is therefore an urgent need to
visualize river basins of today as highly differentiated spaces due to
widespread livelihood and resource use reconfigurations. The
agrarian distress and livelihood transitions that the Global South is
facing for over two decades which have led to considerable tur-
bulence in the rural landscapes and social spaces cannot be wished
away while dealing with river basin management in these very
same spaces.
261
Acknowledgments
The first and second authors are indebted to the Chalakudy river
basin and its people for painstakingly taking us through the life-
scapes of diversity. The first author acknowledges the doctoral
support received at the National Institute of Advanced Studies,
Bangalore and the post-doctoral fellowship at the Indian Institute
of Technology Bombay, India. We thank the two anonymous re-
viewers for their insightful and creative comments on the
manuscript.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data related to this article can be found at http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2015.05.021.
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