GEOG 3020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Water Politics, Water Scarcity, De Jure
Document Summary
Emerging mainstream view as alternative to neo-malthusianism in 1970s/1980s. Those who are poor and hungry will often destroy their immediate environment to survive. Economic marginality: production at the margin" = diminishing returns to scale. You add more money into your product than it"s helping you make back. Ecological marginality: sensitive, less productive, less resilient to disturbance. Social and political marginality: groups on the fringe with little power. These three together create a cycle of marginalization: marginalization is a process where marginal groups are forced into marginal land. As they try to make a living, they push the land to its ecological limits, only to have marginal returns. From a soil quality perspective, the idea land in southern mali would apply large amounts of organic fertilizer, practice intercropping (number of different species planted at a certain time) and no-till on a large proportion of farm fields. Shifting/swidden cultivation farm, allow land to regain it"s nutrients.
