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Since the 1980s, forest plantations have expanded globally in response to commercial demand for wood products. Research has focused mainly on the economic and environmental impacts (carbon reduction) of the forestry industry. However, our research focuses on the social impact of large-scale forestry plantations, particularly the effect of the expansion of tree plantations on local communities. We evaluate the positive (employment and income) and negative (poverty and income inequality) externalities of the expansion of the forestry industry in Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations located in six regions of Southern Chile, where 73% of the rural Indigenous people live, over the period 1997–2015. Our findings show that the forestry industry’s expansion has not reduced unemployment or improved incomes for the Indigenous or non-Indigenous population. On the contrary, it has increased poverty and inequality between them.

This paper inquires into the reasons for the comparatively lower fertility and population growth among the Maasai (than among other Kenyan communities, particularly cultivators). It hypothesizes that a number of factors including male elder control of society, sexually transmitted diseases, seasonal food shortages, and general environmental health hazards all act together to suppress fertility. This situation must certainly change with further socioeconomic progress.

The relationship between fishing, livelihood diversification and poverty was investigated in the lower Mekong basin, in Laos, where fishing forms an important, but usually secondary part of rural livelihoods. Results from a household survey show that participation in fishing is common and positively associated with higher occupational diversity and more agricultural activities. This is likely due to the low opportunity costs associated with many forms of fishing and factors such as tradition, enjoyment of fishing, underutilised labour and low capital requirements. Alternative livelihoods within the rural setting are therefore unlikely to cause fishers to leave the fishery, but instead strengthen the livelihood portfolio as a supplementary activity. Fishing is not an activity only for the very poorest households, but is undertaken by all wealth groups. However, fishing forms a greater proportion of income, employment and food security for the poor and is important in households with poor quality farm land.

This commentary outlines the conflict of interests inherent in the state-transnational corporation relationship, and briefly discusses the failure of bilateral and multilateral mechanisms to ensure corporate accountability and compliance with basic human rights and international environmental laws.

The subak has a long history as an irrigators’ institution on Bali. It has also spread across Indonesia along with Balinese farmers who were resettled by colonial and post-colonial governments or who have migrated spontaneously since colonial times. While subaks have been much researched in Bali itself, little is known about subaks outside Bali. Luwu District in South Sulawesi is one of the areas where thousands of Balinese families settled in the last four decades. Based on research in this transmigration area, this paper analyzes the emergence and development of the subak in relation to the development of irrigation infrastructure of a state-built irrigation system. A comparison between two Balinese settlements in the same system shows that differences in infrastructural and managerial conditions and arrangements between parts of the irrigation system were major determinants of the institutional space allowed for the subak and ways in which the subaks developed.

In the early 1980s residents of Hobeni, in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, were subjected to forced resettlement, under “betterment” policy ostensibly aimed at soil conservation. They were moved into a spatially contiguous but socially differentiated village. South Africa’s political transition ended this policy, and in the early 1990s, some people, mainly from part of the resettlement area (Kunene) characterized by dense kinship networks who had faced pressure to leave, and began to return voluntarily to their former sites, opting to live in dispersed, flexible settlements. Few people resettled in Mhlanganisweni, a part of the village more diverse in its social composition, returned to their former sites. This research highlights the ways exclusion within “socially-embedded” land tenure systems, together with the layout of resettlement areas and other forms of social and economic differentiation, caused patterns of resettlement to diverge from planners’ intentions.