Abstract
The Inter-Oceanic Highway is among the first wave of large infrastructure projects under the auspices of the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America, which proposes regional integration as a means of economic development. Such projects have reignited debates over infrastructure impacts, which in many ways center on the ramifications for natural resource management. We pursue an analysis of the implications of highway paving for local livelihoods by focusing on the effects of market connectivity on livelihood diversity. Given that infrastructure brings shocks to affected regions, we argue that livelihood diversity is usefully interpreted in terms of household resilience to such shocks. We draw on rural household surveys from the tri-national frontier where Bolivia, Brazil and Peru meet in the southwestern Amazon, where the Inter-Oceanic Highway has recently been paved. The findings show that households more connected to markets in terms of travel time and road paving have less diverse livelihoods. This confirms concerns about regional integration and rural household vulnerability.
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Notes
Our original intention was to visit two additional communities in Pando, but political violence in September 2008 rendered this unviable.
Data collection in Acre was delayed by a year due to permitting requirements.
This required conversions from various local measures of weight and involved extensive consultations with counterparts, community leaders and other key informants. Reported values constitute estimates of production, and are thus subject to errors. We mitigated such problems by using interviewers who often came from the communities visited, and were thus familiar with local production practices and units of measurement. Interviewers also asked respondents to figure production in more than one way, which permitted more accurate estimation.
We assumed 250 kg/head of cattle, 50 kg/head for pigs, and 1 kg/head for chickens to calculate amounts produced.
In our analysis of distributive diversity, we focus on production rather than income. We considered modeling income diversity since we have data on amounts sold. However, local price data vary in availability and quality among products and countries. In past analyses of livelihood diversity with production as well as income, findings did not vary greatly (Perz 2005). We therefore stay with analysis of livelihood diversity in terms of production.
Timber extraction may be on-farm or on other lands such as concessions. We asked about amounts of timber extracted, but logging is often illegal and many respondents did not admit to timber harvesting, so we discount reported values.
All values in Table 1 reflect weights applied to the observations to correct for differing sampling ratios we employed among communities.
We also considered children ages 0–5 and 6–15 separately on the expectation that the younger age group involves consumers but the older group also engages in productive activities. Models did not indicate distinct effects of the two groups, so we combined them.
Because we used different sampling ratios in communities of different sizes, we apply weights to the observations to offset the ratios and thereby ensure representativeness of households among communities, which implies weighted regressions.
Castaña is a key exception, but our present analysis is broader than a single product.
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Perz, S.G., Rosero, M., Leite, F.L. et al. Regional Integration and Household Resilience: Infrastructure Connectivity and Livelihood Diversity in the Southwestern Amazon. Hum Ecol 41, 497–511 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-013-9584-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-013-9584-x