Principal speaker
Ms Yenny T joe
‘Sustainable Livelihoods in a Subsistence Community: Insights from West Timor Island, East Nusa Tenggara Province of Indonesia’
Presented by: Ms Yenny T joe, PhD Candidate, Department of International Business and Asian Studies, Griffith Business School
Subsistence communities offer an alternative approach to standard of living, based on shared cultural values and expectations about one’s maintenance. In terms of dryland farming, this is also known as smallholder agriculture, in contrast to capital-intensive agriculture. Members of such a community support themselves via small-scale agricultural production, often combined with additional incomes from non-agricultural sources. Unlike capital-intensive agriculture, this group has indigenous and adaptive process for soil moisture and fertility restoration, including fallow lands, agroforestry, and utilization of animal manure.
Existing studies of drylands tend to view the subsistence community as a marginal group and the pursuit of subsistence ends as a result of ecological and economic scarcity. Early literature also hypothesized a ‘downward spiral’ relationship between poverty and environmental degradation – where poor people were blamed for the increased pressure on natural resource base. In the context of Indonesia, this group of people are continuously categorized as primitive groups who need to be integrated into the wider modern society.
In this presentation, I would like to provide an introduction to the world of subsistence community in West Timor, the Atoin Meto (or the “dryland people”): to explore their annual activities, drought-related coping strategies, and natural resource management, and to learn about their model of adaptation and sustainability. Additionally, I will also share some practical tips for conducting fieldwork in rural settings.
Yenny is a second year PhD Candidate and a teaching staff at the Department of International Business and Asian Studies and an assistant at CESDI (Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Development for Indonesia). Her current research is on climate change adaptation and sustainable livelihoods of selected subsistence communities of West Timor, ranging from lowland to upland communities. She delivered a speed-talk + poster presentation at Climate Adaptation 2013 Conference, Sydney; contributed a chapter on Decentralization and Poverty Reduction in Indonesia: The case of East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) in "The Asian Century, sustainable growth, and climate change" (published by Edward Elgar in 2013); has an abstract accepted by Sustainability Conference 2014, Croatia.
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RSVP on or before Wednesday 5 March 2014 , by email b.hammond@griffith.edu.au , or by phone 07 3735 4702
Event contact details
- b.hammond@griffith.edu.au
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- 07 3735 4702