Ruth Meinzen-Dick
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 168504 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Ruth Meinzen-Dick |
| PRENOMES | Ruth |
| SOBRENOME | Meinzen-Dick |
| ASSINATURA | MEINZEN-DICK R |
| AFILIAÇÕES | International Food Policy Research Institute |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4782-3074 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 65 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 973 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 64 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1997 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 17 |
Learning effects of an experiential groundwater resource Game in North-Eastern Ghana
The growth of dry season farming in Ghana is putting increased pressure on groundwater resources. Using mixed methods this paper examines the learning effect of an experiential groundwater resource game in Ghana's Upper East Region that simulates real-life resource use and common-pool resource management dilemmas. Results indicate short and medium-term learnings associated with participation in the game. During the game, group interaction and com…
Helping rural women secure their land and resource rights
Women's tenure security on collective lands
The Group‐Related Collective Agency Scales ( GCAS ‐23 and GCAS ‐12)—Full and Short Form Scales for Construct Measurement
Collective agency refers to a group's perceived ability to come together, establish common goals or shared interests and take action to attain those goals/interests. Given the absence of rigorously developed scales available to measure the social construct, the aim of this study was to clarify the conceptualization of collective agency and to identify both long and short scales that actors can employ to measure collective agency. Using a rigorous…
Expanding tenure horizons in food policy research
Understanding pastoralist adaptations to drought via games and choice experiments
Transhumant and nomadic pastoralism in arid and semi-arid spaces from West through Central, East, and Southern Africa is regarded as critical to regional system resilience and food security. Although pastoral systems are highly adapted and adaptive to uncertainty and change, recent decades of severe climatic events and increasing resource pressure are pushing pastoral systems to adopt novel norms and practices. Importantly, forage residue conserv…
Integrating Earth observation, biophysical, and survey data to evaluate the ecological impacts of a common land protection and restoration intervention in Rajasthan, India
Approximately, one-quarter of India’s land area comprises common-pool resources, e.g., pasture land, forests, and water bodies, upon which the livelihoods of over 300 million rural people depend. Despite their importance, these resources are subjected to encroachment and degradation, raising important questions about what can be done to promote their protection and restoration. Since 2001, the Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) has worked w…
Reconciling conservation and development requires enhanced integration and broader aims
Crafting Combinations to Govern Groundwater
Groundwater is a vital common pool resource for water supply, irrigation, and ecosystems, but can be difficult to govern due to invisibility, conflicting interests, and limitations of available institutions. While there are many policy and technical instruments (tools) available, efforts to apply them are often ineffective. This special issue of the International Journal of the Commons presents a set of papers with insights into policy instrument…
Getting Ahead of the Game
Groundwater management is highly complex, with many users sharing the same resource often with limited understanding of their interconnectedness. Behavioral experiments (games) that simulate real-life common-pool resource use have shown promise as an experiential learning tool for improving resource governance. This study pilots an experiential learning intervention in Ethiopia using a groundwater game to help raise awareness of groundwater over-…
Combining Approaches for Systemic Behaviour Change in Groundwater Governance
Over-extraction of groundwater is a prominent challenge in India, with profound implication for food security, livelihoods, and economic development. As groundwater is an ‘invisible’ and mobile common pool resource, sustainable governance of groundwater is complex, multifaceted, requiring coordination among various stakeholders at different scales. It remains an open question as to what can be done to strengthen the governance of groundwater, par…
Enhancing agency and empowerment in agricultural development projects
Development interventions increasingly include women's empowerment and gender equality among their objectives, but evaluating their impact has been stymied by the lack of measures that are comparable across interventions. This paper synthesizes the findings of 11 mixed-methods impact evaluations of agricultural development projects from South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa that were part of the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2…
Community-Based Conservation of Freshwater Resources
Freshwater resources (FWRs) are under enormous stress due to human activities and climate change. Given the centrality of local communities in managing natural resources, community-based conservation (CBC) for FWRs (fCBC) offers a mechanism for addressing these challenges. A framework informing fCBC that incorporates unique features of FWRs (such as being fugitive resources, having increased risk of negative externalities, and sheer spatial cover…
Using games for social learning to promote self-governance
Governance of shared resources needs to overcome collective action problems. Relational values and decision-making play a critical role in this process. Approaches are needed to stimulate self-governance, taking relational values into account. We review the literature on the use of collective action games as a tool to stimulate social learning and self-governance. We emphasize the importance of legitimacy in decision-making and the risk of crowdi…
Games for experiential learning
As resource users interact and impose externalities onto each other, institutions are needed to coordinate resource use, create trust, and provide incentives for sustainable management. Coordinated collective action can play a key role in enabling communities to manage natural resource commons more sustainably. But when such collective action is not present, what can be done to foster it? We contribute to the understanding of how experiential lea…
Valuing ecosystem services provided by land commons in India
Commons provide many ecosystem services that support the livelihoods of billions around the world. However, their contribution to people and the economy are rarely estimated in economic terms. Here, we estimate the economic contribution of the land-based commons in India, which cover 66.5 million hectares. We conducted a systematic literature review of publications between 1990 and 2020 and selected 161 peer-reviewed studies to develop an ecosyst…
How Do Game Design, Gender, and Players’ Backgrounds Affect Behavior in Framed Field Experiments? Evidence from Community Forestry in India
Framed field experiments (experimental games) are widely used to assess factors affecting cooperation in management of the commons. However, there is relatively little attention to how details of the games affect experimental results. This paper presents qualitative and quantitative results from a framed field experiment in which participants make decisions about extraction of a common-pool resource, a community forest. The experiment was conduct…
Can Restoration of the Commons Reduce Rural Vulnerability? A Quasi-Experimental Comparison of Covid-19 Livelihood-based Coping Strategies among Rural Households in Three Indian States
India has been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the context of a larger quasi-experimental impact assessment, we assess the pandemic’s effects on household coping behavior in 80 villages spread across four districts and three states (n = 772). Half of these villages were targeted by a largescale common land restoration program spearheaded by an NGO, the Foundation for Ecological Security (FES). The other half are yet to be targeted but are s…
Migration and Gender Dynamics of Irrigation Governance in Nepal
Nepal has a long history of irrigation, including government and farmer-managed irrigation systems that are labor- and skill-intensive. Widespread male migration has important effects on Nepalese society. How institutions such as Water Users’ Associations (WUAs) respond and adapt, is therefore critical to the understanding of rural transformation and the likely impact on gender equality, food production, and rural livelihoods. This paper examines…
Women's empowerment, extended families and male migration in Nepal
Combining qualitative and quantitative methods sheds new light on women's empowerment processes.•Upper caste Nepali women are disempowered by patriarchy; lower caste women by poverty and patriarchy.•Non-migrant husbands mediate the disempowering effects of living with in-laws.•Control over time, not just hours worked, is an important component of empowerment
Assessing the institutional foundations of adaptive water governance in South India
Vallury, S., H. C. Shin, M. A. Janssen, R. Meinzen-Dick, S. Kandikuppa, K. R. Rao, and R. Chaturvedi. 2022. Assessing the institutional foundations of adaptive water governance in South India. Ecology and Society 27(1):18. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12957-270118
Multistakeholder platforms for natural resource governance
Multistakeholder platforms (MSPs) are the subject of increasing attention and investment in the domain of collaborative natural resource governance, yet evidence-based guidance is slim on policy and investment priorities to leverage the MSP approach. We provide a comparative analysis of eight landscape-level MSPs spanning seven countries (Peru, Brazil, India, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and a cross-border case from Kenya and Somalia), representing a dive…
Securing the Commons in India
Common pool land and water resources in India play vital, but often overlooked, roles in livelihoods and ecosystem services. These resources are subject to the authority of various government departments and are often managed in ways that result in uncertain tenure for the people who depend on these resources for fodder, fuel, water, and other products. An Indian NGO, the Foundation for Ecological Security, has developed a process for “commoning”…
Women’s empowerment and gender equality in South Asian agriculture
This introduction to a special section describes how a recently developed measure, the project-level Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) can be used to assess empowerment impacts of agricultural development interventions in India and Bangladesh as well as broader changes in rural labor markets. The special section comprises three papers. The first examines the impact of membership in self-help groups in five states in rural India …
Collective action and “social distancing” in Covid-19 responses
The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index
The gender implications of large-scale land deals
This article introduces a discussion of gender dimensions into the growing debate on large-scale land deals. It addresses the current information gap on the differential gender effects of large-scale land deals through (1) an overview of the phases of large-scale land deals and discussion of related effects on rural men and women based on new literature on large-scale land deals and past literature on the gender effects of commercialization and c…
Collective action for smallholder market access
Development of the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-Weai)
With growing commitment to women's empowerment by agricultural development agencies, sound methods and indicators to measure women's empowerment are needed to learn which types of projects or project-implementation strategies do and do not work to empower women. The Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), which has been widely used, requires adaptation to meet the need for monitoring projects and assessing their impacts. In this paper, t…
Gender, property rights, and natural resources
Cutting the web of interests
What Affects Organization and Collective Action for Managing Resources? Evidence from Canal Irrigation Systems in India
Gender, Assets, and Agricultural Development
Ownership of assets is important for poverty reduction, and women's control of assets is associated with positive development outcomes at the household and individual levels. This research was undertaken to provide guidance for agricultural development programs on how to incorporate gender and assets in the design, implementation, and evaluation of interventions. This paper synthesizes the findings of eight mixed-method evaluations of the impacts…
Who Owns the Land? Perspectives from Rural Ugandans and Implications for Large-Scale Land Acquisitions
Rapidly growing demand for agricultural land is putting pressure on property-rights systems, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where customary tenure systems have provided secure land access. Rapid and large-scale demands from outsiders are challenging patterns of gradual, endogenous change toward formalization. Little attention has focused on the gender dimensions of this transformation. However this contribution, based on a 2008–09 study of l…
Gender, assets, and market-oriented agriculture
Strengthening the abilities of smallholder farmers in developing countries, particularly women farmers, to produce for both home and the market is currently a development priority. In many contexts, ownership of assets is strongly gendered, reflecting existing gender norms and limiting women’s ability to invest in more profitable livelihood strategies such as market-oriented agriculture. Yet the intersection between women’s asset endowments and t…
Gendered participation in water management
Collective Action within the Household
Households face many collective action situations, with members working together to produce livelihoods and allocate goods. But neither unitary nor bargaining models of the household provide frameworks to analyze the conditions under which households work collectively and when they fail to do so. Drawing on the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework based in the natural resource management literature, this paper explores the factors tha…
Land tenure security for women
While strengthening women’s land rights is increasingly on national and international agendas, there is little consensus on how to understand women’s tenure security. Analyses of women’s land rights often use very different definitions of land rights, from formal ownership to women’s management of plots allocated to them by their husbands. This paper identifies aspects of women’s tenure that should be included in indicators. It then provides a co…
Gender and property rights in the commons
Property rights, intersectionality, and women's empowerment in Nepal
The contested terrain of land governance reform in Myanmar
State control of land plays a critical role in producing land dispossession throughout the Global South. In Myanmar, the state’s approach towards territorial expansion has driven the country’s system of land governance, resulting in widespread and systemic land grabbing. This article investigates ongoing land governance reforms as key terrains for contesting such abuses of power. Employing a relational land governance approach, we view reform pro…
What happens after technology adoption? Gendered aspects of small-scale irrigation technologies in Ethiopia, Ghana, and Tanzania
Diverse agricultural technologies are promoted to increase yields and incomes, save time, improve food and nutritional security, and even empower women. Yet a gender gap in technology adoption remains for many agricultural technologies, even for those that are promoted for women. This paper complements the literature on gender and technology adoption, which largely focuses on reasons for low rates of female technology adoption, by shifting attent…
Playing games to save water
Groundwater is one of the most challenging common pool resources to govern, resulting in resource depletion in many areas. We present an innovative use of collective action games to not only measure propensity for cooperation, but to improve local understanding of groundwater interrelationships and stimulate collective governance of groundwater, based on a pilot study in Andhra Pradesh, India. The games simulate crop choice and consequences for t…
Property rights as policy tools for sustainable development
Implications of Legal Pluralism for Natural Resource Management
Summaries This article illustrates the implications of legal pluralism for our understanding of natural resource management and policies toward resource tenure, using the example of water rights. There is widespread recognition that property rights play a fundamental role in shaping how people manage natural resources. But many conceptions of property rights have focused only on static definitions, usually as defined in statutory law. The legal a…
Women's empowerment, extended families and male migration in Nepal
Combining qualitative and quantitative methods sheds new light on women's empowerment processes.•Upper caste Nepali women are disempowered by patriarchy; lower caste women by poverty and patriarchy.•Non-migrant husbands mediate the disempowering effects of living with in-laws.•Control over time, not just hours worked, is an important component of empowerment
Women’s empowerment and gender equality in South Asian agriculture
This introduction to a special section describes how a recently developed measure, the project-level Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) can be used to assess empowerment impacts of agricultural development interventions in India and Bangladesh as well as broader changes in rural labor markets. The special section comprises three papers. The first examines the impact of membership in self-help groups in five states in rural India …
Gender and Sustainable Forest Management in East Africa and Latin America
This paper presents a comparative study of forest management across four countries in East Africa and Latin America: Kenya, Uganda, Bolivia, and Mexico. It focuses on one question: Do varying proportions of women (low, mixed, high) in forest user groups influence their likelihood of adopting forest resource enhancing behavior? We found that higher proportions of females in user groups, and especially user groups dominated by females, perform less…
Increasing social-ecological resilience within small-scale agriculture in conflict-affected Guatemala
Hellin, J., B. D. Ratner, R. Meinzen-Dick, and S. Lopez-Ridaura. 2018. Increasing social-ecological resilience within small-scale agriculture in conflict-affected Guatemala. Ecology and Society 23(3):5. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10250-230305
Gender and property rights
Gender, property rights, and natural resources
Gender and property rights
Gendered participation in water management
Property rights as policy tools for sustainable development
Gender Issues for Food Security in Developing Countries
Women in developing countries play a crucial role in meeting the food and nutrition needs of their families through the “three pillars” of food security—food production, economic access to food, and nutrition security. Empirical evidence shows that income increases controlled by women have a greater impact on household food security, child health and schooling than those controlled by men. Despite women's importance, they are constrained by lower…
Irrigation systems as multiple-use commons
Gender and property rights in the commons
Implications of Legal Pluralism for Natural Resource Management
Summaries This article illustrates the implications of legal pluralism for our understanding of natural resource management and policies toward resource tenure, using the example of water rights. There is widespread recognition that property rights play a fundamental role in shaping how people manage natural resources. But many conceptions of property rights have focused only on static definitions, usually as defined in statutory law. The legal a…
What Affects Organization and Collective Action for Managing Resources? Evidence from Canal Irrigation Systems in India
Methods for studying collective action in rural development
Beyond panaceas in water institutions
The past 50 years of water policy have seen alternating policies emphasize the state, user groups, or markets as essential for solving water-management problems. A closer look reveals that each of these solutions has worked in some places but failed in others, especially when policies attempted to spread them over too many countries and diverse situations. A study of the variable performances of user groups for canal irrigation in India illustrat…
Introduction to the Special Issue on “Property Rights, Collective Action, and Local Conservation of Genetic Resources”
Water Reallocation
With rapid growth in demand for water, the resource is increasingly being transferred from agriculture to cities and industries. This paper examines trends and expected future changes in sectoral water demand, which drive water transfers. It then describes alternative mechanisms for water reallocation, including administrative reallocation, market‐based reallocation, collective negotiation, and other means, including combinations of mechanisms, a…
Collective action for smallholder market access
Cutting the web of interests
Gender and Sustainable Forest Management in East Africa and Latin America
This paper presents a comparative study of forest management across four countries in East Africa and Latin America: Kenya, Uganda, Bolivia, and Mexico. It focuses on one question: Do varying proportions of women (low, mixed, high) in forest user groups influence their likelihood of adopting forest resource enhancing behavior? We found that higher proportions of females in user groups, and especially user groups dominated by females, perform less…
Gender and the global food-price crisis
This article argues that it is imperative to take gender into consideration when evaluating the impact of the global food-price crisis and developing crisis-related policies. Consideration of gender is important, given the key role that women play in agriculture, the disproportionate impact that the crisis has on women, and the potential role that women can play in resolving the crisis. Recent research on differential impacts of the crisis is dis…
The gender implications of large-scale land deals
This article introduces a discussion of gender dimensions into the growing debate on large-scale land deals. It addresses the current information gap on the differential gender effects of large-scale land deals through (1) an overview of the phases of large-scale land deals and discussion of related effects on rural men and women based on new literature on large-scale land deals and past literature on the gender effects of commercialization and c…
Resource conflict, collective action, and resilience
Where access to renewable natural resources essential to rural livelihoods is highly contested, improving cooperation in resource management is an important element in strategies for peacebuilding and conflict prevention. While researchers have made advances in assessing the role of environmental resources as a causal factor in civil conflict, analysis of the positive potential of collective natural resource management efforts to reduce broader c…
Resource conflict, collective action, and resilience
Where access to renewable natural resources essential to rural livelihoods is highly contested, improving cooperation in resource management is an important element in strategies for peacebuilding and conflict prevention. While researchers have made advances in assessing the role of environmental resources as a causal factor in civil conflict, analysis of the positive potential of collective natural resource management efforts to reduce broader c…
Who Owns the Land? Perspectives from Rural Ugandans and Implications for Large-Scale Land Acquisitions
Rapidly growing demand for agricultural land is putting pressure on property-rights systems, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where customary tenure systems have provided secure land access. Rapid and large-scale demands from outsiders are challenging patterns of gradual, endogenous change toward formalization. Little attention has focused on the gender dimensions of this transformation. However this contribution, based on a 2008–09 study of l…
The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index
Gender in Agriculture
Gender and Sustainability
Sustainability and gender have been prominent on the development agenda since the 1980s, but there has been little systematic study of the links between the two. This review draws on ecofeminist theory, feminist political ecology, intrahousehold literature, and natural resource management case studies and reviews to examine how gender shapes the motives, means, and opportunities for men and women to contribute to sustainability. Particular attent…
Gender, assets, and market-oriented agriculture
Strengthening the abilities of smallholder farmers in developing countries, particularly women farmers, to produce for both home and the market is currently a development priority. In many contexts, ownership of assets is strongly gendered, reflecting existing gender norms and limiting women’s ability to invest in more profitable livelihood strategies such as market-oriented agriculture. Yet the intersection between women’s asset endowments and t…
Economics (50 obras) · Political science (44 obras) · Business (41 obras) · Geography (34 obras) · Agriculture (27 obras) · Economic growth (23 obras) · Sociology (23 obras) · Environmental resource management (22 obras) · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management (19 obras) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (14 obras)