Information for Livelihood Choices
The rural poor face a keen need for information directly relevant to their livelihoods—information such as market prices fortheir crops, alternative cropping or pest control options, the availability of government assistance or training programs, or opportunities for developing new products or markets for environmental goods, from local crafts to ecotourism.Agriculture-related information is often one of the mostimmediate needs, since small-scale agriculture is so importantto household incomes in rural areas. Information on currentcrop prices, fertilizer and pesticide costs, and the availability of improved seeds and low-cost improvements in farm technology can help guide the purchases of farm inputs and equipment,or help farmers successfully obtain credit.
Without information of this type, poor families find it harder to take advantage of new opportunities for generating income and increasing their assets. Numerous organizations, from multilateral agencies to local NGOs, are trying to improve access to livelihood-related information. One such effort is the farmer field schools developed by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as part of an Integrated Pest Management project in Indonesia. Using a participatory learning approach aimed at incorporating local knowledge and experience, these farmer field schools are yielding lessons that are being applied to information activities on sustainable livelihoods in other sectors, such as community forestry (Chapman et al. 2003:5).
Information for Public Accountability
Access to information on laws, mandated government services, and government expenses is fundamental for poor people to hold governments accountable for their performance. Unless citizens can find out what governments are doing and how they spend their funds, governments have little incentive to improve performance, deliver on their promises, or even provide basic services at adequate levels.
In Bangalore, India, citizen groups conducted surveys of municipal government performance and used the information to create “report cards” on the quality and efficiency of services such as water, transport, electricity, and police, and to press for reforms. In Rajasthan, India, citizen efforts to gain access to information on government spending and employment rolls led to exposure of local corruption, initiation of corrective action, and prompted consideration of a national right-to-information law. In Argentina, citizens can access a website—audited by a coalition of 15 NGOs—to find easily understandable information on public expenditures across a variety of government programs (Narayan 2002:32).
In Francophone Africa, cooperatively produced radio programming provides listeners of 48 rural radio stations in 10 countries with access to information on laws, legal systems, and justice. Developed during a workshop on law in Senegal, an initial radio program featured lawyers from six West African countries and provided information on land rights, women’s rights in marriage, and other legal matters. Following enthusiastic listener response, the producers developed a series of subsequent broadcasts on related legal issues, such as divorce, inheritance, access to justice, and conflict resolution (Chapman et al. 2003:22).
Language Barriers to Information Access
In many developing countries, language is the most important vehicle for excluding the poor and socially marginalized groups from access to information (Sibanda 2000:9-10). For the mature democracies of Europe, Asia, North America, and Oceania, the language of government is an indigenous language or a language in which the vast majority of ordinary citizens are fluent. However, across the developing world, a significant proportion of the population typically does not use or understand the language of government, which often is a European language—French, English, or Spanish—imposed during the colonial era. It is expensive to produce multiple versions of official documents in indigenous as well as colonial languages, and the process of designating which indigenous languages are to be used in official documents can aggravate existing ethnic rivalries. But the alternative is continued high costs in social exclusion and political instability. (See Figure 3.5 English Dominates The Internet .)
Choice of Information Technologies
Whether the rural poor have adequate access to information for environmental decision-making is not only a function of the quality and quantity of information supplied. It also depends on whether the delivery technologies are appropriate for the target audience. Different groups may have different information needs and preferences for information delivery, and efforts to increase the poor’s information access are most effective when they involve these groups in decisions about the information technologies to be used. For instance, in most developing countries radio and television remain much more widely accessible than the Internet. Technologies such as the wind-up radio make information dissemination possible in communities without electricity or access to batteries (Chapman et al. 2003:19-20).
Nonetheless, experience with pilot efforts indicates that it is possible to reach large numbers of people in developing countries with electronic sources of information. In the Philippines, a pilot project in the barangays (townships) on the island of Mindanao is using modern communications technologies to improve local access to information on topics such as agriculture, rural enterprise development, education, and health. The project features multipurpose community telecenters with telephone and Internet access (Chapman et al. 2003:17-18). The challenge remains to apply these pilot approaches more widely in Africa, Asia, and Latin America as well.
Equitable Access to Information
Despite new technological capacity for broad-based information dissemination, evidence suggests that if access to information is not universal, growing supplies of information may simply serve to exacerbate existing social, economic, and political inequalities. Historically, information on agriculture-based livelihoods in developing countries was viewed as a global public good that should be made available at no charge to all interested parties. More recently, donor agencies have emphasized private-sector provision of agricultural extension information, which can involve cost recovery and user fees that the poorest farmers cannot afford to pay (Chapman et al. 2003:vii). Involving the poor in decisions about who should pay for information services and how the sustainability of information services can be ensured is vital to ensuring the poor have access to such information.
Demand-Driven, Location-Specific Information
Rural producers in developing countries value locally generated, locally specific information much more than general information. Because farmers and fishers are unlikely to adopt new practices without substantial discussion of local examples, improved access to information is most effective when the information is focused on local conditions and local processing and marketing systems. Modern communications technologies such as the Internet and teleconferencing can enable rural farmers and fishers to discuss specific local problems with technical specialists based outside their area.
In India, the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation is using innovative information technologies in community managed “e-villages” to respond to the information needs of local groups. For example, weather forecasts and information on wave height are being routed to fishers in the village of Veerampattinam. Such initiatives can also stimulate two-way information flow between villages and researchers, so that farmers and fishers can contribute their specialized knowledge toenrich national and international information systems (Chapman et al. 2003:19).
Inclusion of Women and Socially Marginalized Groups
In Swaminathan’s e-villages, information centers are run mainly by semi-literate women and by students, with the aim of empowering them through their roles as information managers. By specifically targeting women and marginalized groups in knowledge management, initiatives to enhance the poor’s access to information can also promote social equity (Chapman et al. 2003:19).
