'Producing' institutions of climate change adaptation and food security in north eastern Ethiopia. (1st March 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Gebreyes, Million
• Is Part Of: Netherlands journal of agricultural science. Volume 84(2018)
• Page Start: 123
• Page End: 132
• Publication Date: 2018-03-01
• Subjects: Institutions -- Diagnostics -- Food security -- Adaptation -- Resource management -- Power relations; Agriculture -- Periodicals; Agriculture -- Research -- Periodicals; 630
• DOI: 10.1016/j.njas.2017.10.007
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1573-5214

Abstract

Highlights: Institutions play an important role in adaptation and food security action coordination. State actors could use institutions to contain the resource management. Institutions need to be seen as dynamic and socially produced. Institutional diagnostics needs to capture social processes that produce institutions. Abstract: The paper presents institutional diagnostics, which is sensitive to dynamic social and political processes 'producing' institutions underlying practices in resource management, climate change adaptation, and food security. The paper is based on a qualitative case study on watershed development interventions conducted in two villages in Amhara Region, Ethiopia. The research showed that resource management, adaptation, and food security institutions in Ethiopia are a result of struggles between containment strategies of the Ethiopian state and counter containment strategies of local communities. While the state's containment institutions allowed it to mobilize a large number of rural residents for its resource management interventions, the counter containment strategies from local communities limited the potential contribution of the interventions for adaptation and food security endeavors of the state. From an institutional diagnostic perspective two conclusions are made, one empirical and another theoretical. The empirical part of the paper concludes that the Ethiopian state is using institutions to contain its population towards state-driven development pathways, which is essential to understand watershed development and state-led natural resource management interventions. The theoretical portion concludes that although institutions are often portrayed as static elements of social life, in fact they are also dynamic, socially produced, and could be coopted by powerful actors.