Vulnerability, resource use, and market access in South Africa

The dry biomes of southern Africa are home to large numbers of charismatic megafauna. Animal biomass in these systems is limited by the metabolite production of the plants, and these plants are, in turn, limited by water. The natural system, typified by the diverse mix of browsers and grazers at varying levels of food selectivity, has been supplanted by the uniformity of ranching and agricultural systems. This has severely altered the dynamic nature of the ecosystem that has evolved between vegetation and high herbivore diversity, heavily contributing to desertification, bush encroachment and ultimately a reduction in yields of cattle and crops.;Yet there exists few livelihood alternatives to ranching and rain fed agriculture. The lack of viable alternatives to rural households increase livelihood vulnerability as the local system becomes progressively dryer and unpredictable in terms of rainfall. It is important to understand the interrelationship between covariant shocks and the local economic structure in order to design policy mechanisms that would decrease vulnerability to shocks and maximize benefit to communities from their land while preserving its productivity. Markets, in addition to providing income generating activities and access to productive inputs, supply opportunities for ex ante risk mitigation and ex post shock coping mechanisms. However, most studies to date that have looked at the influence between market access and household welfare or vulnerability, has defined "access" simply in terms of a households spatial relationship to a major market town.;This research has two broad aims. The first is to go beyond traditional notions of the conceptualizing of market access of a spatial concept toward one that recognizes that households need the capacity to utilize and access the resources that markets provide (such as jobs, financial instruments, and insurance). The second broad goal is to build knowledge around the concept of household vulnerability as it relates to market access and household resource use decisions. Data was collected for this research from 6 communities bordering Kruger National Park in South Africa. A total of 489 households were interviewed from June of 2009 to June 2010.;The first research segment used factor analysis to investigate the multi-dimensional qualities of market access. Findings suggest that market access is a function of place, social connections, capacity and financial knowledge. The sub-dimensions were then utilized as independent variables in econometric models to see the impact of each sub-dimension on resource use decisions. For household decisions on the allocation of consumption towards local natural resources, each sub-dimension had a negative relationship. Hence as a household improved its score in relation to the place, social connection, household capacity, or financial knowledge sub-indices, the household shifts away from local natural resources to market substitutes. A model using the number of cattle a household owns as a dependent variable was also run. However, only an improvement in household capacity would result in a reduction in cattle ownership, suggesting that market goods that are substitutes for cattle are only accessible via an increase in education and / or exposer to the cash economy.;The next major portion of the research uses the above market access index to evaluate how household welfare and vulnerability are influenced by the market access sub-dimensions. The market access sub-components are then allowed to interact with vulnerability to evaluate if gains from market access to household resource use decisions are different between vulnerable and non-vulnerable households. Vulnerability is quantified via the econometric method vulnerability as Expected Poverty (VEP). Results indicate that market access does impact vulnerability, where vulnerability decreases as market access increases. While there is no significant interaction effect between market access and vulnerability, both have impacts on the decision to utilize natural resources.;As the data needs of the VEP method goes beyond the capacity of SANPark Social Ecologists in terms of funding and time, a short-form method is established that would allow SANParks to identify vulnerable households. With such a tool, social ecologists will be able to ensure that policies and management plans will not unduly harm vulnerable populations. While several models were attempted, the best result was a model based on robust regression. This short form model agreed with the VEP model up to 78% of the time in the classification of households into groups based on vulnerability levels. Additionally the quantification of this short-form model only requires a maximum of 65 items, much less than the 1,200 items used in the VEP model.