Page - (000155) - in Evaluating Climate Change Action for Sustainable Development

in the interiorofForestReservesareunlikely tosee thischange inboundary,andas a consequence their permitted land titles are unlikely to change. The panel dataset for this study is thus divided into two types of villages: The firstgroupofvillages isagroupof257villages thathas ‘ambiguouspropertyrights’ over the duration of the study period, caused in large part by changing forest legislation and by changing forest reserve boundaries. These villages witnessed frequentchangesandhadambiguouspropertyrightsorAPRvillagesandconstitute 38%of the study sample.The secondgroupconsists ofvillages that claim tohave no secure rights consistently and are likely to be located deep inside Forest Reserves, where changing Forest boundaries create no ambiguity. The latter groupof villages are called ‘no secure property rights’villagesNPRvillages. Twoother features of the survey are that (i) villageheadmenprovide responses to questions and, (ii) the biennially conducted survey records modal values of variables.Data are collectedvia questions such as: ‘What is themodeof transport most (popularly)usedbyhouseholds in thevillage?’or, ‘What is themethodofsale formosthouseholds?’“What is themostpopularlygrownshort run (longrun)crop this year?” For crops other than paddy rice, crop area, the number of households growingthecropandotherattributesarerecordedonlyfor theshort-runor long-run crop that is ‘most popular’. Thismeans no crop is tracked for all years, other than paddy rice, unless that crop is ‘popular’ every year.19 Furthermore, crops are tracked in groups i.e. ‘short run crops’ or ‘long run crops’. Other challengeswith thedata includingabsenceofpricedataandagriculturalpracticesarediscussedand addressedinPuri(2006).Maincharacteristicsaboutvillagesincludedinthisdataset are presented inTables 8.4 and8.5. 8.4 Characteristics ofDataandHypothesizedEffects In this section I discuss the hypothesized effects that different village level attri- butes are expected tohaveon twomain agricultural variables: on agricultural area within a village andonaverage intensity of cultivationwithin a village. The intensityof cultivationvariable requires abrief discussion.Boserup (1965) in her classic expositionof factors governing agricultural expansion indeveloping countries, especially inAsia, definedagricultural intensificationas “. . .thegradual change towardspatternsof landusewhichmake it possible tocropagivenareaof land more frequently than before.” (pp. 43). In this definition she thus departed from the definition of intensification that measured increased use of inputs per hectare of cropped area. In this study, I use this Boserupmeasure to understand intensityofcultivation: Intensityofcultivation ismeasuredbyavariable that is the response to the question “What percentage of agricultural land is being used ( for 19Village headmen are also asked questions about “the secondmost important short (long) run crop” and the “thirdmost important short (long) run crop”.Data on these is scarcer. 8 UsingMixedMethods toAssessTrade-OffsBetweenAgriculturalDecisions. . . 139