Desakota: The Concept and Tool for Urban Environmental Planning- Mr. Dipak Gyawali, Interdisciplinary Analysts, Kathmandu

1. Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum: RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
Desakota and “Toad’s Eye Science” as Conceptual Tools
Dipak Gyawali
NEC SACIWaters Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum 16 August 2010
Inception Workshop, Kathmandu.

2. RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
• Picture of truck/diesel pump
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

3. RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
Conceptual Framework of Interlinkages
Political Economy Global Envirnmental
Change (GEC)
- Migration
- Consumerism - Climate change
- Industrialisation - Water availability and quality
- Communication - Land Degradation
- Urbanisation - Biodiversity
Social DESAKOTA PHENOMENON Natural
Science Science
Poverty ? Water-based
Ecosystem Services
- 1 $ per day
- Access - Provisioning
- Entitlement - Regulating Supporting
- Cultural/
Aesthetics
Output
Evidence based gaps and research question
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

4. Desakota: the co-penetration RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
of rural and urban systems
Urban
Desakota
Rural Region Urban
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

5. Desakota Criteria RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
• Greater connectivity – physical, electronic, cultural.
– This connectivity contributes to time-space collapse.
• Greater penetration of cash economy with remnants of reciprocity
mechanisms on the decline.
– Increasing market linkages are facilitating the predominance of a cash economy over
reciprocity mechanisms, with much of it in the informal sector rather than the formal.
• Mixed livelihoods drawing upon local and non-local service and
manufacturing opportunities.
– Household income baskets contain a mix of rural and urban characteristics.
• Greater diffusion of modern production and resource extractive
technologies.
– Modern technologies are gaining predominance over conventional and traditional means of
resource harvesting or harnessing, with implications on demands and pressures on natural
resources.
• Tensions between formal and informal and traditional institutions for
resource management.
– Institutionally, desakota regions are often characterized by a poorly linked mix of formal
institutions, declining or evolving traditional institutions and emergent informal institutions
filling the gaps and often encroaching across enclave boundaries.
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

6. Desakota Drivers RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
• Improved physical access through basic
transportation
• Easy communication flow
• Changing demography through in- and out-
migration
• Increased conflicts, both low-intensity and
violent
• Climate change inducing greater uncertainty
in the other four
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

7. Desakota Drivers: RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
Regional Comparison
South Asia China Sub-Saharan Africa Amazon-Andes
Distinguishing Strong state and civil Transition to market Inequality and Connection to global
determinant of society, economy instability markets and
desakota developmentalism, government
Population densities development policy
Urbanisation trend Moderate growth Rapid growth Rapid growth Highly urbanised
Economic driver Government Rural industrialisation Uneven, enclave High value agriculture,
sponsored development service economy
modernisation,
industrialisation and
agricultural
mechanisation
Institutional context Interdependent formal Shift from communal Large informal sector Parallel formal and
and informal systems to private land informal systems
management, State
policy
Social impacts Communal resource Urban-rural income Households under Gendered inequality in
management under gap increasing stress wages
stress. Widening
income gap
Infrastructure driver Road network, Enclave Communications Road network
communications industrialisation technology
technology
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

8. Knowledge Systems RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
• Disjuncture between ‘high’ science used by global decision-
makers and ‘low’ science coming from tradition and
everyday experience and interactions
• Need for a communication strategy between global and
local decision-making to mutually feed research needs
• Basis for projecting future from historical probabilities are
evaporating, requiring new approaches that incorporate
higher levels of uncertainty, both physical and social
• Social sciences face the challenge of coping with new
categories and concepts beyond past dichotomies such as
‘rural’/’urban’ or ‘formal’/’informal’ divide
• Adaptive learning between locally and globally generated
knowledges
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

9. Points of Entry for Change RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
• Unpacking and refining conceptual
frameworks
• Developing new data metrics that allow for
dialogue between different levels and
different social solidarities
• Interdisciplinary research
• Research developing new methodologies and
tools
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

10. Ecosystems and Desakota RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
• Expanding desakota increases
pressures and demands on water-
based ecosystems
– Land use change
– Change in water flow and storage
• Shift in the importance of provisioning
and regulating ecosystem services
• Increased dependency on
geographically distant ecosystems
• Many environmental problems
exacerbated by climate change
• Change in resource use has shown
some positive impacts
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

11. Ecosystems and Desakota RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
Vegetation and Land Cover Change
• Interactions between atmosphere, climate and land cover
– Human induced changes in vegetation cover
– Climatic feedbacks (e.g. Amazon)
• Land use change
– Changes associated with desakota (Clearance of natural vegetation)
– Need to identify critical thresholds and impact of landscape mosaics
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

12. Ecosystems and Desakota RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
Land use, water stores and flow regimes
• Water storage Example: Aquifer mining in Balochistan, Pakistan
– Climate-induced 0
– Human-induced -2
-4
Groundwater Decline (m)
-6
-8
-10 Pischin
Mastung
-12
-14
-16
-18
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Year
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

13. Ecosystems and Desakota RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
Land use, water stores and flow regimes
• River flow regimes
– Impact of changes on littoral, riparian and aquatic ecosystems
– Connectivity between surface water, groundwater and dependent
ecosystems
(Stanford 1998)
Example: Flooding in Nepal
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

14. Ecosystems and Desakota RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
Land use, water stores and flow regimes
• Water quality
– Desakota development
associated with declines in water
quality from dual pressures on
water-based ecosystems
– Poor water quality is having
health impacts in some desakota
areas
– Need for development of buffer
areas to mitigate against this
Example: waste
disposal in Nepal
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

15. Ecosystems and Desakota RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
Water-related disease
• Some desakota characteristics (poor sanitation, contaminated drinking
water) understood
• Indirect impacts (land use pressure) and climate impacts less understood
• Scientific controversy
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

16. Ecosystems: Research Needs RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
• A broad understanding of natural system function is needed, which
considers linkages between climate, ecology and hydrology
• Further research into the identification of critical thresholds in natural
systems is needed, which considers indicators and investigates linkages
across scales
• Specific research needs:
– Interactions between land cover and climate under desakota pressures
– Inclusion of such processes in climate change models
– The role of desakota for increasing energy consumption, the impact on climate and the need for
appropriate alternative ‘green’ technologies
– River flow regime characterisation, which considers riparian-surface water-groundwater
connectivity
– Small scale hydrological, geomorphological and ecological response to global climate change
(including water-borne disease)
– The impact of desakota development on water ecosystem processes and water-borne disease
– The development of management strategies to mitigate against any adverse impacts
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

17. Ecosystems and Desakota: RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
Institutions
Institutional challenge:
Example:
- Rapid, informal development
Balochistan, Pakistan - Changing livelihoods, less
RURAL URBAN RURAL dependency on proximate
Pishin Quetta Mastung ecosystem services
- Lack of ‘reach’ of existing
institutions
- Growth of informal markets
for provisioning services, but
not on management
Urban Influence Rural Influence
- Locational disjuncture
between “ecosystem” itself
and service it provides
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

18. Institutions: research needs RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
Institutions:
– Empirical investigation of the impact of institutional transitions in desakota
areas, and how this has impacted access to resources from vulnerable
populations
– Development of strategies, institutions, incentives for mediating conflicting
demands and pressures on resource base, and for moderating pollution and
maintaining flow and water quality regimes for basic water services
– Investigation of new institutional models which move beyond community- or
government-based water and resource management in desakota areas
Economic analysis:
– Improved approaches for estimating the benefits of water-based ecosystem
services, which includes probabilistic estimates
– Innovative approaches for valuing ecosystem services beyond PES or polluter-
pays principles
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

19. Desakota, Poverty and ES RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
Understanding poverty
• Changing concepts of who is
Rupees (in billion)
Remittance income considered “poor”
• Understanding factors that contribute
70 people to move in and out of poverty
60
• Limitations of existing poverty
50 measures
40 • offers opportunities for moving out
30
of poverty,
20
• Mobility, diversified livelihoods, non-
farm employment
10
• Transport, access to markets
0
1995 1998 2002 2004
• Communication and knowledge of
markets, technologies
Year
Worker's remittance FDI
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

20. Desakota, Poverty and ES RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
Decreased access to
provisioning services
• Direct dependency
threatened (decreasing
quality, quantity, less
secure tenure)
• Increasing reliance on
market institutions
(implications for poor?)
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

21. Health and Disaster Risks RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Increasing exposure to health, disaster risks
• Quality of regulating services decreases
– flood control, disease regulation, filtering of pollutants
• Increasing vulnerabilities
– HIV/AIDS, lack of tenure, weak political organization
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

22. Desakota, Poverty and ES: RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
Research Issues
– Identifying how desakota may change the relationship between ecosystem services
and poverty (e.g. from provisioning to regulating services; exposure to environmental
extremes, health risks; dependencies within desakota livelihood systems on
geographically distant ecosystem services).
What are factors contributing to vulnerability of the poor?
– Investigate how desakota may provide new opportunities, constraints and
vulnerabilities for particular social groups and develop actions/policies which can be
taken to address these inequities
– Develop more holistic indicators of poverty and consider the factors affecting why
people move in and out of poverty
– Understand role of (and access by poor to) secondary and tertiary (market)
institutions for provisioning of water, food and fodder in desakota areas
– Investigate strategies of collective action by poor, and enabling factors, that have
enhanced access to quality ecosystem services in desakota contexts (e.g. Gujarat)
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum

23. Desakota, ES and Poverty RURAL DESAKOTA URBAN
Re-imagining the Rural-Urban Continuum