The co-production of land use and livelihoods change: Implications for development interventions

In a previous paper [McCusker, B., Carr, E.R., 2006. The co-production of livelihoods and land use change: Case studies from South Africa and Ghana. Geoforum 37 (5), 790-804], we argued that land use and livelihoods could best be understood as co-produced, where land use and livelihoods are not separate objects of knowledge related to one another through abstract processes, but different manifestations of social processes through which individuals and groups come to understand the challenges facing their everyday lives, the various resources available to them to negotiate these challenges, and the strategies by which they can conduct that negotiation. In this paper, we examine the theoretical basis for “co-production” with the goal of using this approach to inform development interventions.