Natural capital and Human well-being: What are the links? A study among rural inhabitants from Kodagu district (Karnataka State), India

Resum

Ecosystems are proposed as sources of human well-being. However, standard economic approaches have traditionally neglected the role of natural capital (i. e. good and services of ecosystems) as a fundamental source of human well-being. Drawing on the ecosystem services approach and on the Human Scale Development paradigm as frameworks to conceptualize natural capital and human well-being, this doctoral dissertation aims to understand the relationships between human well-being and natural capital. The Thesis has three main objectives which are addressed in three different chapters. The first chapter analyses the correspondence between the measurement tool adopted by governments to assess well-being and the elements defined by local people as important in their own well-being, called here local means. The second chapter aims to assess the local perception of ecosystem services and the socioeconomic determinants affecting individual perceptions. Last, the third chapter estimates the linkages between human well-being and natural and economic capital. This third chapter also analyses the linkages of capitals with three dimensions of human well-being (i. e. subsistence, security, and reproduction and care). As case study, the Thesis focuses on a small-scale society from Kodagu district (Karnataka State), India. The Thesis is based on cross-sectional data collected through qualitative and quantitative methods during a period of nine months. To collect data for the first chapter, free-listing technique was administrated in order to provided information on local means defining well-being among 114 individuals from Kodagu. The local means reported by local individuals were compared with the criteria used by the Human Development Report (HDR) of Karnataka, the main measurement tool of well-being used officially in Kodagu. Results suggest that HDR does not capture the means defined by people as main indicators of their well-being. The finding suggests an important gap between current well-being indicators considered by public policies and the means of well-being defined by people. For the second chapter, another free-listing was carried out to capture what ecosystem services were perceived by local people. Additionally, a structured survey was conducted to capture information on socioeconomic characteristics of 91 informants. The ecosystem services were classified into four categories of services defined by literature (i. e. provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services, cf. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment). The number of services listed was calculed in each category. Results suggest that ecosystems are locally perceived as a source of multiple goods and services that go beyond the production of food (for subsistence or for cash). Multivariate regressions were used to estimate the associations between number of ecosystem services and socio-economic characteristics. Results suggest that younger, wealthier, and more educated individuals perceive more ecosystem services than people without those characteristics. People from different cultural backgrounds also have different perceptions from local ecosystems services. For the third chapter, a questionnaire structured was designed on the base of information collected on the two previous chapters. The questionnaire was administrated to 171 adivasi and forest dweller individuals from Kodagu, different from people interviewed in previous samples. The questionnaire captured individual reports on levels of satisfaction with the overall well-being and satisfaction with three dimensions of well-being (dependent variables), and level of natural and economic capital (explanatory variables). Results of multivariate regressions suggest positive associations between well-being and both forms of capitals. Nevertheless, results also suggest that natural and economic capitals differed one from each other on their relative contributions to overall well-being as well as across dimensions of well-being. Results suggest that natural capital can become more important than economic capital on the fulfilment of overall well-being and its dimensions among adivasi and forest dwellers society. Last, I would like to conclude by outlining some policy suggestions. The Thesis provides insights for a set of plausible local indicators useful to achieve a balance between top-down and bottom-up approaches for the local public policies. Furthermore, since natural and economic capital play a different role as sources of satisfiers across dimensions, results give insights for possible strategies on how to complement natural and economic capital assets when designing policies to improve particular dimensions of well-being. The Thesis support ongoing calls for explicitly incorporating ecosystem services in the policy design focused on measuring and improving human well-being.

Data del Ajut	13 de jul. 2012
Idioma original	Anglès
Supervisor	Erik Nicolas Gomez Baggethun (Director/a) & Victoria Eugenia Reyes Garcia (Director/a)