There is more to solving the problems of sustainable agriculture than just the development of improved technical recommendations. The underlying cause is often a failure in government policy and/or the institutions set up to effect the policy. It is here, with sufficient political will, that the greatest advances could be made in promoting SARM (Stocking 1991). All that may be needed is a change in government policy (eg over land tenure rights, or crop pricing and marketing) or the effective implementation of existing policies and strategies so as to create the right policy environment for the adoption of SARM practices at the field level. If governments, through their policies, made it worthwhile for a farmer to conserve soil then soil degradation would be a thing of the past (Stocking 1991).
The policy dimension to SARM has to address the fact that farmers, governments and donor agencies view the problem of soil degradation from different perspectives and have different development priorities. Likewise they may have very different reasons for agreeing to participate in specific SARM activities (Douglas 1994).
Small-scale farm households place more emphasis on short-term planning than do governments and donors. Their strategy is one of simultaneously minimising risk, guaranteeing subsistence and generating cash income. They are motivated to participate in improved land management when they perceive soil degradation to be an immediate threat to their livelihood (Fones-Sundell 1989).
A government's political base rarely stems from rural areas, nor is natural resource degradation likely to pose a threat to its survival. Given the short-term perspectives of governments and the largely urban power bases they depend on, it is not surprising their preference is for `cheap food policies', and investing in the industrial rather than agricultural sector. Conservation for conservation's sake is thus not a high priority.
However, if declining agricultural productivity becomes a problem, e.g. food shortages or a balance of payments deficit, the agricultural sector can assume a higher political profile. Even then soil degradation will be only one of several major factors (inputs, infrastructure, technology, prices, etc) addressed in the effort to improve agricultural production (Fones-Sundell 1989). Because they want to show that their actions can produce quick results, governments will have more to gain from raising yields in areas with high agricultural potential, than investing in land use improvements in marginal areas. They will also be more interested in short-term increases in production and less interested in how such gains could be sustained over the long-term.
Donors do not suffer the same serious economic or political consequences as farmers and governments in the event of failure. Their officials are not going to go hungry or get thrown out of office. This gives them the option of taking a longer term perspective and defining the problem as one of achieving sustainable growth (Fones-Sundell 1989). In this regard donors are increasingly coming under political pressure from powerful lobbies in the west to take an environmental stance in the disbursement of aid. However donors are often constrained by their financial procedures to think in terms of fixed duration projects (Hudson 1991) and will want to see funds disbursed and objectives achieved within a relatively short 3-5 year period. Individual donor officials may also have their status and promotion prospects judged on their ability to disburse funds. They therefore have more to gain personally from approving large scale projects with rapid disbursement of funds than projects that start small and only slowly build up. Whereas donors have more scope for taking a long-term perspective on sustainable agriculture in practice their operational procedures may work against this.
In the past, national policies have been mainly concerned with economic planning and development. Some countries have separate five-year plans for agricultural development, but the most common practice today is for an overall development plan which includes agriculture as one important component sector. The trend is no longer to deal with agriculture in isolation, but to recognise its interactions with other sectors of the national economy e.g. urban and rural agro-based industries, rural infrastructure development (Hudson 1992).
In many countries the framing of national development policies regarding land use and agriculture relies heavily on proposals put forward by senior government officials. They usually have an administrative, planning or economics background, and will be conscious of the priorities of their `political masters'. The issues they are most likely to consider in developing a national agricultural development policy are therefore (after Hudson 1992):
The bio-physical dimension to SARM is rarely considered in any detail at this stage, nor the possible ecological repercussions of adopting a specific development proposal (Shaxson 1992b). For instance a development policy to expand food production may be laudable from a short-term social welfare and import substitution perspective. But if it leads to the expansion of agriculture into marginal areas, rather than intensification in existing areas, the end result may be increasing land degradation (Douglas 1994).
A national development policy document often contains unimpeachable statements about the country's determination to conserve its soils. While such statements may provide the national mandate for a particular technical department to get into the field and do soil conservation (Shaxson 1992b), they do not automatically translate into a comprehensive programme of action.
In tackling soil degradation, individual conservation projects and programmes are insufficient in themselves. They need to be part of national strategies of conservation-based resource development and management. Over the last decade a variety of different strategies have been used for developing policies and plans related to SARM. Some of the most commonly-applied are national conservation strategies (NCSs) and national environmental action plans (NEAPs) promoted respectively by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the World Bank.
During the 1990s the South Pacific Regional Environmental Programme (SPREP) assisted some 14 Pacific countries to develop national environmental management strategies (NEMSs) (Bass and Dalal Clayton 1995). Such strategies adopted as a component of a government's official development policies, can provide an effective context in which to plan the utilisation and conservation of a nation's natural resource base and to reconcile the need for conservation with the objectives of economic development (Commonwealth Secretariat 1987).
In Sri Lanka for example, national policy on the conservation and development of natural resources is set out in the NCS prepared by the Central Environmental Authority in 1988. In 1990 the same authority coordinated, in concert with the relevant line ministries, government agencies and NGOs, the development of a NEAP which tabulates specific management issues, actions to address these issues, and the institutions responsible for these actions. More is required than simply developing a strategy. A case study of land use planning in Sri Lanka (Dent and Goonewardene 1993) noted that the issues and responses were familiar, having been considered by successive Land Commissions.
Box 29
FAO has been helping Indonesia to formulate a national soils policy (NSP). Drafting a NSP begins with a round table meeting between members of the government requesting the study and representatives from FAO, UNEP and the International Society of Soil Science. FAO then provides soils experts, land-use planners and lawyers to review soils data and existing land-use legislation. The findings are presented as draft policy guidelines. The guidelines for Indonesia were prepared over a two-year period by a team of four national and international consultants. Part of the findings were that the government would need to undertake a number of activities to implement the NSP, including:
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FAO 1995
The study also noted two unsettling aspects of the proposals: (1) continuing reliance on the tried-and-tested and failed policy of restrictive legislation, with fruitless calls for the enforcement of this legislation; and (2) calls for more national co-ordinating organizations - including one with identical terms of reference to the existing Land Use Policy Planning Division. Furthermore implementation of proposed actions was not in evidence.
Other countries are starting to formulate national soils policies (NSPs) with the help of FAO and UNEP (e.g. box 29). An NSP is a document containing a plan of action or statement of aims and ideals made by a given government as to what it will do in order to manage its soils on a sustainable basis. Such a document and plan of action is drawn and based on background information and an analysis of the existing situation, identified problem areas, required solutions, and a set of strategies and modalities for implementing prescribed solutions for appropriate soil management (FAO/UNEP 1992).
There is no one type of approach and no single formula by which a national level SARM strategy can or should be undertaken. Every country has to determine for itself how best to approach preparation and implementation. To a great extent the process decided upon will be fashioned by prevailing political, bureaucratic and cultural circumstances (Bass and Dalal-Clayton 1995). As a consequence a `blueprint' approach is neither possible nor desirable. However a recent IIED/IUCN review of past strategies world-wide suggested a number of key lessons and guiding principles for successful strategies. Thus to be successful a national level SARM strategy should (after Carew-Reid et al 1994):
The translation of NCSs, NEAPs, NEMSs, NSPs etc into practical action requires in turn the formulation of a National Land Use Plan. This to determine land use and development priorities when preparing both sectoral and area plans. Together they provide the framework for resolving conflicts between short-term development needs and long-term conservation of a nation's natural resource base. They also enable conservation considerations to be integrated into national economic planning and development policies and programmes (Commonwealth Secretariat 1987).
Surprisingly few countries have a coherent policy for the use and development of their natural resources. Without a long-term policy on land use, it is difficult to move onto the next stage, which is a strategic plan for the development of a country's land resource, and even more difficult to arrive at a tactical plan for implementation by the appropriate departments, divisions or districts (Hudson 1993).
The starting point for any national policy on SARM is an inventory of the countries' land resources (FAO 1990a, Hudson 1992 & 1993, Sanders 1992b). There is no point formulating a specific agricultural development policy, such as to promote the production of rubber or copra, without first checking whether this is a realisable aim given the available soil, climate, fuel and labour resources. Reliable natural resource data - specifically soils, climate, vegetation, hydrology and topography - are needed if sound land use and conservation policies are to be developed (FAO 1990a).
The first need is to find out what data already exists and who has it. In practice most countries already have much natural resource data, but it is often fragmented, and located in the files and on the shelves of separate ministries, departments, institutions, libraries and universities. For instance in Sri Lanka, some 23 government departments and institutes could be sources of primary data for land use planning purposes (Dent and Goonewardene 1993). The data will have been collected by different people with no uniformity in the way its recorded, in the intensity of sampling, scale of mapping or reliability.
The second need is therefore to collect the existing data, review it and store the usable data in a readily retrievable form. At this stage its possible to identify the information gaps and to arrange for much of the missing data to be collected rapidly by interpreting air photographs and satellite imagery, backed up with appropriate field surveys.
With computers becoming more freely available, easier to use and able to handle larger amounts of data at greater speed, countries can establish central computerised natural resource data bases. Much of the present focus is on the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS). A variety of GIS computer programmes exist which typically involve digitizing information from topographic, geological, soil, and vegetation surveys as well as meteorological and hydrological data. Entering such data into a computer not only facilitates storage and retrieval but allows the different data sources to be integrated in a variety of combinations with the results presented in map form. The Philippines Bureau of Soils and Water Management was able to use the data in its GIS to model which areas around Mt Pinatubo were potentially at risk from lahar flows, given the quantity and extent of ash fall following its catastrophic eruption in June/July 1991. Papua New Guinea has likewise used its own GIS for crop suitability evaluation purposes.
Several countries have found other forms of computerised databases useful for collating bibliographic data (research reports, project documents, manuals, technical papers etc) and the documentation of indigenous and research derived technologies (see ASOCON 1990b). Such systems can save hours of searching through library shelves by allowing database searches using key words to quickly identify publications on specific topics, or technologies (as well as specific crops, or trees) that match specified land qualities or land use requirements.
Once such databases have been established they can easily be revised and refined as new and better data becomes available. Providing the relevant data is entered they can be used to identify the location, extent and severity of existing land degradation, as well as areas at risk in the future, either on a national or regional basis. They can thus be valuable tools for conservation policy formulation and development planning (Sanders 1992b).
Natural resource inventories, whether in the form of computerised databases or more traditional systems (i.e. stored in map cabinets, files and library shelves) do nothing on their own. They only become useful when used to help in decision-making (Hudson 1992). Too many inventories get bogged down in collecting facts rather than using the information they contain. Many computer based systems suffer from the operators fascination with the technology and can end up failing to supply information to potential users in a form they can use. GIS programmes can churn out a variety of nicely coloured maps, many of which decorate the walls of government offices. But such maps provide little information of use to senior policy makers with non-technical backgrounds (Douglas 1994).
Whereas the emphasis has been on inventories of bio-physical data (geology, soils, climate, relief) they should also contain human resource data (Hudson 1992) - not just demographic data (i.e. how many people, who are they and where do they live) but information on land use, farming systems and socio-economic data of relevance to agricultural development (prices, markets, land tenure). There is still a long way to go before computer-based GIS and other so called "expert systems" can properly integrate the bio-physical land base with the socio-economic circumstances of the land users. It should be noted that computer based systems are only as good as the data that goes in, and all outputs need to be subject to review by the ultimate expert system, namely common sense and professional experience, before being acted on (Douglas 1994).
For many years zoning has been used to ensure land use control in urban and peri-urban areas. More recently it has also become associated with the delineation of rural ecological units as in FAO's Agro-Ecological Zones Project (FAO 1978). In the urban planning sphere the word zoning is commonly used in a prescriptive sense; for example the allocation of peri-urban land for specific uses such as housing, light industry, recreation, horticulture or intensive industrial style livestock enterprises, in each case with the appropriate legal restrictions to land use (FAO 1995c). In its original agro-ecologic concept the word denotes an earlier stage of rural planning. It is a subdivision of the rural lands on the basis of physical and biological characteristics (climate, soils, terrain forms, land cover, and to a degree the water resources), and can be used as a tool for agricultural land use planning.
In the Asia Pacific region, depletion of good quality agricultural land continues due to the rapid expansion of land used for urban and industrial purposes. Much of this expansion has been outside urban and peri-urban areas subject to town planning controls. There is therefore a growing need, at the national level, for greater control over future administrative and legal land use decisions with regard to the allocation of land for particular uses. As a prerequisite different zones should be delineated according to the quality of their bio-physical resources. The aim is to show the location and extent of a country's prime agricultural and forest lands so that those responsible for future land use allocations have the necessary information to make choices between alternative options and are aware of the implications of land conversion from agricultural to non-agricultural use.
Farmers' land use practices are strongly influenced by the policy environment in which they operate. It is therefore important to look not only at field level technical options but also at potential options at the policy level. The first requirement is to identify those elements of the existing policy environment (prices, markets, subsidies, extension messages etc) that will influence farm households' land use practices, and to review their effect particularly with regard to the issue of SARM.
There is a need to distinguish between those influences that conform to the stated goals of government policies and those that relate to problems in implementing them, as the actual results of a particular policy may be quite different to the stated goals. Governments may have the right agricultural development policies but lack the manpower and financial resources to implement them. The proclamation of protected watersheds may end up inadvertently increasing social inequalities by imposing costs on poor hill farmers for the benefit of the better off lowland irrigated rice farmers.
Besides identifying those policies with a negative impact, and therefore need changing (or ameliorating), it may be possible to engage in some lateral thinking to identify alternative policy options that could have a beneficial impact on the external socio-economic circumstances and constraints influencing land use at the farm household level. For instance where a significant proportion of a farm household's scarce cash resources are allocated for school fees, there is a case for arguing that a government policy change, to reduce or abolish school fees, would be an equitable way of making more money available within the household economy for investing in farming activities.
Land reform is usually promoted on a social equity basis e.g. the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Programme (CARP) of the Philippines. Given that the existing land tenure arrangements, under which many farm households operate, may in themselves be constraints to sustainable land use (see chapter 5), land reform may be a worthwhile policy option in a SARM programme.
Land reform can also unwittingly contribute to degradation as happened in Rajastan India (Jodha 1987). Land reforms, introduced in 1952, abolished the feudal system of rule in villages, transferred the bulk of the common property grazing lands to private ownership for cultivation, and dismantled the traditional arrangements regulating the usage of common property resources. This resulted in excessive pressure on the few remaining communal grazing areas, which effectively became open access resources. The end result was overgrazing and degradation of the vegetation and soil resources. Rajastan is an arid area and the common property grazing lands distributed as crop lands to the landless, and others, were mostly submarginal and unsuited to cultivation. The change of use from extensive grazing to intensive, low external input, cultivation has itself contributed to soil degradation.
Land reform programmes that have been attempted commonly encountered a range of technical, economic and political difficulties (Falloux 1987). Technically many of the programmes were ill-prepared with unreliable cadastral data bases, cumbersome and time-consuming, surveying and titling procedures. Economically the total costs were very high including the direct cost of land redistribution and the indirect cost resulting from disruption in farm operations. Politically `popular' support for land reform eroded quickly when initial results were far from expectations. Political difficulties may also arise when many of those with a vested interest in seeing land reform fail (e.g. large landowners) are in positions of political power and able to block the necessary enabling legislation (e.g. opposition within the Philippine Senate to the CARP programme).
Given that adjusting rights of access to land, through nationwide land reform, is often politically unacceptable to the ruling elite, as well as being technically difficult and costly to implement, there is a need for alternative approaches better adapted to the social and political realities of a country. One option is for state intervention to buy land and redistribute it to landless farmers and/or small holders in the form of viable lots (see Falloux 1987 for a discussion on the pros and cons). Governments also have the option of opening up access to land previously reserved for the state (the land stewardship component of the Philippines Integrated Social Forestry Programme is an example).
In the case of a private landlord/tenant farmer situation it may be more realistic to regard tenure as a fixed constraint. The approach seeks alternative technical options that are not only conservation-effective but also offer short-term production benefits to the tenant (Douglas 1992a). In some situations there may be scope for developing community rules and regulations (local bye-laws) governing tenancy agreements, that while recognising the interests of the landlord would provide security for the tenant. For instance it may be possible to obtain a community consensus on the need for acceptable rates of compensation for any long-term investments made by a tenant if required to leave before the benefits are realised. In theory, under the Landlord and Tenant Act governing the leasing of land in Fiji, such an arrangement exists whereby the owner should compensate the tenant for any improvements to the land on conclusion of the lease. In reality there is no legal case history of this ever having been done (Sefa Tabua personal communication).
Most soil conservation activities involve short-term costs, and many only offer long-term benefits, some of which may not be realised by the present generation. Projects involving the construction of conservation works, as well as those promoting the planting of vegetative barriers, require a major labour input on the part of the farmer, as well as foregone benefits (lost crop production from the land area set aside for the structures or vegetative strips). Many such projects have found farmers reluctant to participate on a voluntary basis. Conservation planners have been quick to compromise and offer farmers a direct financial incentive to construct terraces, grass strips etc in their own fields as well as to participate in communal conservation activities elsewhere. The incentive is often in the form of a cash payment, or food for work. In this way bottlenecks in motivation can be bypassed and physical targets achieved (IFAD 1992).
The use of direct incentives is commonly justified on the following grounds (after Sheng 1989 and Hudson 1991):
Unfortunately the all too common end result of a direct incentives policy is to instil in farmers the belief that conservation is something someone else (the government or an NGO donor) pays you to do. It does not encourage farmers to believe that conservation is in their own interest. The same can hold true where subsidies are used to encourage the planting of particular crops. As one report (Clarke & Thaman 1997) from the Pacific noted:
It is known that subsidies do encourage the planting of coconuts in the Pacific Islands, but people do the work to gain the subsidy, not because they value having more coconut palms. Direct payment for planting or the provision of free planting material can lead local participants to have doubts as to their future rights to the trees and their products. Evidence is ubiquitous throughout the Pacific Islands that where plants are given away, rather than being purchased or propagated by the planters themselves, they are generally not cared for. |
Another argument against direct incentives is that a decreased sense of involvement and responsibility can lead to poor standards of work and poor maintenance (Hudson 1991). Farmers may regard themselves as hired labourers rather than participants (IFAD 1992, Prior 1992). Once a policy decision has been made to offer financial incentives for the construction of conservation works, it becomes very difficult to get farmers, in the same or adjacent areas, to construct them on a voluntary basis. Particularly at the end of a project when donor funding is no longer available and the incentives can not be sustained from government revenue budget sources. Visiting the site of a former project all too often reveals that when the `payment' stops the conservation stops (Douglas 1992b). As one FAO document puts it:
The ideal conservation project is not one where farmers or other land users are paid for their labour, or invited to join a `food for work' programme, but one where they plan and implement their own solutions for their own benefit" (FAO 1990b). |
In the light of the above problems there is a growing awareness of the limitations of a direct incentives policy for soil conservation. There is also recognition that such incentives are unnecessary where projects promote practices that are seen by farmers to be in their own interest.
In the past many conservation technicians believed that unless farmers are provided with a direct financial incentive for the construction of soil conservation measures they will not adopt the recommended practices. They argue that for the sake of preserving future benefits for society, farmers should receive a short-term incentive to compensate for the costs involved. There is a counter-argument to this, which rarely figures in the discussions on the pros and cons of incentives. This is that, if farmers will not voluntarily adopt a technical recommendation, the soil conservation specialists should go back to the drawing board and come up with an alternative that farmers will find acceptable i.e. one that offers them tangible short-term benefits commensurate with the costs. In considering the incentive policy option it needs to be borne in mind that instead of trying to adapt the farmers to the recommendation it is invariably more cost-effective to find an alternative technical option, i.e. the recommendation should be adapted to the goals and circumstances of the farmers (Douglas 1992a, 1992b).
A recommendation to change policy and stop paying incentives may run into resistance not only from farmers, who have come to expect it as a `right', but also from government and project staff. A project in Indonesia (Huszar 1992) noted that not all of the funds allocated for cash payments reached the farmers. Administrators of these funds appeared to have appropriated a portion of the funds as a form of `overhead charge' or `commission'. Given the low salaries of government workers such charges are generally accepted as normal practice in Indonesia. As extension workers in the project derived part of their incomes from the incentives they could be expected to resist any policy change
Where there is a need for external intervention to facilitate the adoption of improved land uses and/or management practices (for both production and sustainability purposes), there may be scope for policy interventions involving the use of alternative incentives and subsidies, involving no direct payment of cash or food for work.
As an alternative to cash or food several projects have provided free farm inputs as a reward for undertaking conservation activities. The EU-funded Southern Mindanao Agricultural Programme (SMAP) in the Philippines sought to encourage farmers to adopt the sloping agricultural land technology (SALT). They had developed a 0.5 ha package in which farmers were required to plant double contour hedgerows of Flamengia, a broad leafed leguminous shrub, that could be used for fodder and/or green manure in addition to its soil conservation function. SMAP provided free all planting material, notably the Flamengia seed (the contour hedgerows were established by direct seeding) and various fruit tree seedlings (guava, durian, mangosteen, papaya etc). However it was noticeable during a field visit in 1994 that the participating farmers had not expanded the SALT approach to their remaining land and that no other farmers in the area had adopted the technology. Discussions with local farmers revealed that the hedgerow establishment costs were high and not perceived by farmers as commensurate with the benefits, hence were not something they were willing to invest in using their resources.
Farm input incentive packages, such as the one described above, need to be analyzed carefully in the context of the farm household budget to assess the longer term feasibility of any innovations (IFAD 1992). A question that needs to be asked of such an incentive is, if the crop production package is in farmers own interests (i.e. financially attractive) why does it have to be given away free? If farmers need to be subsidised before they will adopt a package then perhaps the package should be rethought. If the only problem is a shortage of cash, with which to purchase inputs, then it may be a better option to tackle that with a government backed programme offering credit at low interest rates.
A lack of the necessary tools and equipment at the household or community level can be a serious constraint to the adoption of many conservation recommendations. Some projects have used their own machinery and equipment when they deem it necessary to facilitate the construction of conservation works (see box 30). The view is that it is unfair to deny people the use of technology which will make the work easier and much faster.
The use of heavy earth-moving equipment (bulldozers and graders) to construct bench terraces, graded bunds, waterways etc was common in the past but is now largely rejected, partly on cost, but also because of the lack of involvement of the beneficiaries in the exercise, thereby failing to engender any commitment to subsequent maintenance. Why should farmers feel they have the resources to maintain by hand something that was constructed for them by heavy machinery? There is also a growing reluctance on the part of donors to provide machinery which may break down and prove impossible to maintain post project.
Some projects may provide, free or at subsidy, the materials for specific conservation measures when they are not available within the resources of the household or community. In particular projects that promote vegetative measures rather than engineering structures may have to take the lead in supplying the planting materials if they are not available locally. This may involve transporting materials (seeds, seedlings, cuttings) from outside or establishing nurseries within the project area. It is rare for the full costs associated with these to be passed on to the farmers although they may be charged a token price in the belief that if farmers have paid for something they will value it more highly than a free gift.
Any indirect subsidy policy option should be either short-term (i.e. only needed to overcome an immediate constraint to the initial adoption of the recommendation) or sustainable over the long-term from revenue budget sources (i.e. to cover recurrent seasonal costs associated with the recommendation). The aim being to make it easier for farmers to adopt conservation effective farming practices perceived as beneficial in their own right, rather than as with the use of direct incentives needing to "bribe" farmers to conserve soil (Douglas 1992b).
Box 30 The Pakistan sub project of the FAO/Government of Italy Inter-regional Project for Participatory Upland Conservation and Development is located within the Kanak Valley in Mastung District, Balochistan. Attention has been primarily focused on the village upland grazing lands where the processes of degradation have already had a severe, and adverse, impact on rangeland productivity and water table recharge. Activities have been directed at correcting the present non sustainable situation through livestock exclusion and area protection, tree planting and reseeding, and physical conservation works designed to reduce runoff and increase infiltration. At present the project is responsible for providing the bulk of the inputs required to physically implement the field activities e.g. provision of a tractor to construct contour trenches and excavate planting holes, tree seedlings and seeds of native grasses and herbs, the costs of watering the trees during the establishment year, and half the costs of a village guard. The village association provides labour for tree planting, the water for irrigating the trees and half the costs of the village guard. Thus the project, rather than the intended beneficiaries, is bearing the bulk of the financial costs associated with the upland (rangeland) rehabilitation. Project management consider that this limited cost sharing on the part of the village associations (VAs) is inevitable at this stage in the process because the VAs will require proof that the efforts are worthwhile before they would be prepared to bear a higher proportion of the costs themselves. Thus the protected areas where the project is currently working are seen as serving a testing/demonstration role. The aim is to obtain visible proof that it is possible to make degraded rangelands productive again. Although the project is meeting most of the costs proof of the participatory nature of the approach comes from the way it has been possible to protect the treated areas by marking the boundaries with piles of white painted stones. The boundaries are respected both by the livestock owners of the village and the passing nomads. The evidence for this is a lack of any signs of encroachment (animal droppings, hoof marks etc) within the protected areas. The harsh environmental conditions prevailing in the project area (low rainfall and cold winter temperatures) mean that restoring a productive vegetative cover to degraded rangelands is a long-term process requiring a minimum of 3-5 years. Given the time it takes to go through the participatory planning process it is difficult to show tangible results within the life of a typical 3 year project. In order to tackle the rangeland problems in the Kanak valley what is required is the support of a long-term programme rather than a short fixed-term project. Thus there is a clear need for some continuing project involvement beyond the end of the present phase in mid 1997. |
Alternative incentives that do not require a government capital outlay could be identified. For instance in north Thailand farmers reportedly voluntarily adopt the practice of growing contour grass strips, not for their conservation benefits, but because by being seen to follow the recommendations they could obtain long-term land use rights in state forest land. Secure land use rights in this case is the incentive to voluntarily adopt the recommended conservation measures.
Direct incentives such as cash, food for work and farm inputs, while attractive to farmers, are costly for governments to sustain. During the life of a project governments may be able to meet the costs of any payment, from the donor's contribution. However, post project the situation may be different. The non-agricultural tax base of most Asia-Pacific countries is small and subsidies paid during donor-funded projects, for soil conservation and farm inputs, can rarely (if ever) be sustained from government revenue sources (Douglas 1993).
Given the shortage of government funds for incentives it is frequently proposed that farmers downstream of a project area be taxed on the benefits received (reliable supply of irrigation water, lower sedimentation rates in dams and irrigation canals, reduced risk of flooding). This is rarely a realistic option given the political and social realities in most Asian countries, i.e. upstream farmers have less eco-political influence on government than those downstream.
This option is being explored in at least one province in the Philippines. This would be a development of the practice whereby farmers who benefit from government investment in an irrigation scheme are required to pay an annual levy (in the form of rice grain) to the National Irrigation Authority (NIA). The Aurora Integrated Area Development Project (AIADP) has initiated discussions with several irrigators associations downstream of critical watershed areas, as to whether they would pay a small additional annual levy. This will fund upstream conservation activities, and in particular provide short-term compensation for hill farmers obliged to abandon their fields, or switch from annual to perennial crops, to protect the catchment area of an irrigation scheme. Members of the irrigators associations have expressed willingness providing they, rather than NIA, control the fund (Ongkiko personal communication). Such an approach may succeed where hill farmers are few and the lowland farmers can see a clear link between catchment protection and the water supplied to their rice paddies.
Unless countries have sufficient resources (e.g. non-agricultural tax receipts), or a politically acceptable mechanism to generate funds from the beneficiaries of particular programmes (see box 31 for an example from Malaysia), the payment of direct incentives to construct and maintain soil and water conservation measures in farmers own fields is not a sustainable option.
It is often suggested that governments should try to enforce their policies for good land use by the use of legislation. The record on legislation was reviewed some years ago by FAO and by the Soil Conservation Society of America (FAO 1971, SCSA 1974). Their conclusion, which is endorsed by more recent papers (e.g. Hudson 1981b, Sanders 1992b, Douglas 1992b) is that enforcement legislation that seeks to "command and control" how people use the land rarely, if ever, works.
Box 31 In Malaysia rubber sales are controlled and a cess is levied on every kilo sold. The funds thus raised are used to provide a financial incentive for smallholder rubber growers to uproot their old trees and replant with high yielding clones. The payments are to compensate for loss of income for the period between felling the old tree and the new one coming back into production. In this case an incentives policy is a viable option as the payments can be sustained, there being an accepted mechanism for generating the funds from within country sources. |
Careful consideration needs to be given when drafting conservation legislation as to whether the land users will consider it technically feasible and economically attractive. Also whether the reasons for it can be explained to them through the extension services, mass media, political rallies etc. As one study (IFAD 1992) puts it:
Where the law concerns the environment, poor extension, unpopular enforcement or non-enforcement can lower respect for the environmental principles legislators seek to promote. |
The history of state legislation regulating how land should be used, suggests that this is not an effective strategy for conservation purposes due to difficulties in getting it accepted by individuals and communities at the field level. On the other hand, the story is different where a conservation decree comes from a traditional ruler. In the Amarasi region of Timor, Indonesia a decree (adat regulation) pronounced in 1932 by the Raja required every farmer to plant rows of Leucaena leucocephala with at least 3-metre spacings along the contour within the plot before abandoning it to a fallow period (Metzner 1981). Such decrees may not be universally popular but will be obeyed, because within the local culture the ruler's authority commands a traditional respect, not usually shown to the dicta of government officials and politicians.
In the United States since the mid-1980s there has been a change in soil conservation policy resulting in elements of coercion being included in national legislation. Increasingly national and local soil conservation objectives are enforced by the withholding of various agricultural subsidies and benefits from those farmers not following approved conservation farming practices (see Hudson 1992 for a detailed discussion). This policy has been controversial and unpopular with many farmers. However its adoption within a democratic society reflects the growing political power of the conservation lobby and the fact that farmers are a minority of the overall population. Given that few Asian and Pacific countries have a large enough non-agricultural tax base to be able to sustain agricultural subsidies, the carrot and stick approach of the USA to soil conservation may not be a viable option for them.
There is a growing awareness of the need to enable land-using communities to monitor and regulate their own environmental behaviour. Only when such responsibilities are worked out and acted upon within the local community can adequate popular consensus be expected to produce a healthy agreement about the need to exploit local land resources without degrading them (IFAD 1992). Land use rules and regulations agreed on, and policed by, the local community will always be more effective than any legislation passed at the national level.
It is therefore better for members of a village conservation committee to monitor farmers' maintenance of terraces, rather than extension agents. Similarly grazing control, range management, use of local forest resources should be a village or tribal responsibility (Ibid.) Doing this may require that each community has its own local legal code (by-laws) governing use of private and communal lands, mechanisms for enforcement, and set of punishments for those infringing them. There may be considerable variation from community to community depending on past customs and present circumstances, but allowing the code to emerge from a consensus within the community should ensure its social acceptability.
Whereas national level enforcement legislation may be inappropriate there may be a need for enabling legislation, particularly where a technical or policy option cannot successfully be adopted without a change in the existing policy and legislative environment. For instance it may be necessary to consider introducing legislation that would provide, at the national level, the legal framework in which local communities can formulate and enforce their own by-laws. Consideration may also need to be given to changing existing legislation restricting the type of activities that can legally be undertaken within forest reserves. This may be needed before land use rights can be granted to individual households by means of land stewardship agreements, or before local communities can assume responsibility for the conservation and management of local forest resources.
The Forest Law of the PRC China clearly states that trees planted by rural inhabitants around their houses and on privately farmed plots of cropland and hilly land are individually owned. Article 28 also states that whereas anyone wanting to cut down forest trees must apply for a cutting licence, exceptions shall be made for rural inhabitants who want to cut down scattered trees belonging to themselves and growing on their private plots and around their houses. However in Fujian Province it was found that the forestry departments in different counties appear to interpret article 28 differently. In some counties (e.g. Ningde) the practice is that trees grown in non-designated forest areas, i.e. in the paddy and dry cropland areas, orchards and near the house, are not subject to strict felling controls. Hence farmers do not require cutting licences and are free to cut as and when they want.
However in other counties (e.g. Anxi and Nanan) farmers were required to obtain a licence from the county forest department to cut before they could fell individual trees growing on the terrace banks in their dryland crop or orchard plots. The end result of such confusion over the interpretation of the law is that any attempt to promote the growing of multi-purpose trees within farmers fields is likely to be unsuccessful unless farmers feel they are free to manage and harvest the trees and tree products (timber, fuel, fodder, green manure etc) as and when they wish.
Legislation has a role to play in combating land degradation. For instance most countries need legislation to establish the necessary institutions with responsibility for promoting soil conservation activities, to legalise their mandate and to ensure that they receive a regular budget (Sanders 1992b). The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED 1988) recognised the need for legislative reforms to be undertaken in order to create the right policy and institutional environment for promoting sustainable agriculture, as have others (see box 31).
While the first concern of rural households is food security, most farmers are aware of prospects in the local market place and will respond to perceived market niches within their resource constraints (Cheatle 1993). Smoothing the way to market and profit have not been subjects at the fore in soil and water conservation activities and are noticeably absent from standard conservation manuals (e.g. FAO 1977, Hudson 1987, Sheng 1989). Yet changes in market opportunities can have major implications for land use (see box 32).
With SARM largely dependent upon what the farmer does in the fields, knowledge of the market place is critical in determining the acceptability of particular recommendations. If the conservation opportunity lies with sweet potatoes (because of their ability to provide good ground cover) or with pigeon peas (because of the nitrogen fixing ability), there is a need to know if a market exists for such crops, and perhaps what can be done about improving it.
Box 32 A recent FAO report (FAO 1991d) on sustainable agriculture and rural development (SARD) recommended that legislative reforms should be undertaken at the following levels: Local, farmer and household levels 1. Provide the legal basis for the development of alternative financial resources to enable disadvantaged rural groups to adopt SARD techniques and practices. 2. Design legislation to facilitate farmers' participation in the decision-making process, protecting farmers' investments and promoting feedback and monitoring by farmers. 3. Delineate limits on government intervention, including public takings and restricted sovereign immunity doctrines, for effective decentralization and natural resource management, especially in land use planning. 4. Promote local regulation and resource management through legislative authority, property, rights, monitoring and implementation mechanisms, including use of traditional structures. National level 1. Review and revise legislation to identify and remove legal and institutional obstacles to SARD. 2. Revise legislation and regulations to recognise and encourage desirable SARD goals, especially laws on environment, agricultural and rural codes, property rights, contracts, and collective ownership forms (including corporations, associations, co-operatives and joint ventures which may be used with new rights and duties. 3. Implement SARD policy with tools such as mandatory EIA, property rights, land use planning, limited command and control regulation, natural resource management frameworks, debt reductions, liability, insurance, formal and informal remedies and sustainable administrative and regulatory procedures. 4. Clarify mandates and procedures of agencies to promote desirable cross-sectoral behaviour. 5. Re-orient legislation away from policing the use of resources toward providing extension services. 6. Set up regional (between local and national) and sectoral (in national plans) EIA reporting requirements. |
What is good for the individual farm household might have adverse consequences for groups or society as a whole. For instance if one farm household increases its use of fertiliser by 25 kg, it is a minor change. If two million farmers follow this practice, the effect on the whole country is significant in terms of fertiliser imports, foreign exchange requirements, additional subsidies, additional transport requirements, storage of produce, and increased taxes (CIMMYT 1988).
Likewise if a few farm households in an area switch from annual crops to litchis or longan, their financial returns may be attractive. However if all farm households in the same area do this, supply will exceed demand, with the price for all farmers falling to uneconomic levels. The credibility of extension workers who have persuaded farmers to plant perennial tree crops may plummet if, when the trees start to bear fruit, there is no market for the produce.
Policy interventions can influence commodity and input prices to encourage environmentally beneficial activities or discourage environmentally damaging ones. Governments have often guaranteed minimum prices for particular commodities to provide farmers with a minimum income and ensure a basic level of production. However the trend in government (often under donor pressure) is to withdraw from such interventions and leave everything to the so-called "market forces." For farmers with limited access to reliable market information, cash crop production has become more risky.
Box 33 A project in the Purple Basin of Sechuan Province in China built a new field station to service a programme of soil conservation and hydrological research. Although the experimental area was only 10km from the market town of Ziyan, access into and around the project area was by dirt roads only usable during the dry winter, and impassable during the rainy growing season. The area was intensively farmed with good soils and rainfall, suitable for a wide range of crops, including fruit and vegetables, but anything for sale had to be carried to market by foot or bicycle. A simple all-weather road was built to give access for the research workers into the area, and this also opened it to the trucks of wholesale merchants who could now come into the villages to purchase and take out heavier produce by the truckload. The area is ideal for the growth of water melons, for which there is an insatiable demand in China in the hot summer. As soon as the disadvantage of the crops weight, and a low value per kilo, was overcome by being able to ship them out by the truckload, production increased at an astounding rate. This resulted in an equally dramatic increase in disposable income which was immediately directed into improved accommodation. At the start of the project the only housing to be seen was traditional large extended family complex of single-storey pole and thatch buildings. Two growing seasons after the road was completed, new two storey brick houses were springing up throughout the area. |
Reducing the price of inputs such as fertiliser through government subsidies may encourage greater use, thereby raising agricultural production. But making them cheaper reduces the cost to farmers of soil erosion because they reduce the replacement cost of soil nutrients lost through erosion (Southgate 1988). Cheap mineral fertiliser discourages the use of organic alternatives given the higher labour costs when using compost and animal manure.
Pricing of forestry products presents special difficulties. To encourage reforestation it is possible to argue for high prices relative to agricultural products. But high prices create even stronger incentives to deforest the remaining standing timber. Low prices on the other hand reduce incentives for loggers and for reforestation (Lutz and Daly 1991). Attaching a low value to forest products, and therefore also to forested land, may encourage its conversion to crops or pasture.
Similarly, controlling fuelwood and charcoal prices in urban areas weakens the financial incentive in the surrounding countryside to either adopt agroforestry systems that yield fuelwood in addition to other commodities, or to establish fuelwood/charcoal woodlots and plantations (Anderson 1986).
A number of agricultural development projects have promoted mechanisation as a way of intensifying production. However, replacing buffalo or oxen with tractors or small power tillers can have an adverse impact from a SARM perspective. Loss of draft animals from the farming system may also mean loss of manure ,and may mean that crop residues become a waste product rather than a valuable on-farm livestock feed resource. Mechanisation also means increased reliance on non-renewable fossil fuels whose use ultimately is not sustainable.
Water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource within the region. Hence there is a growing need for policy interventions to ensure equitable access and efficient utilisation (box 34), which is illustrated by the situation in Balochistan Province, Pakistan (van Gils and Baig 1992). Severe rangeland degradation has decreased the rate of natural recharge of the underground aquifers. In addition current levels of groundwater pumping for the irrigation of crops (particularly apple orchards) are greatly in excess of the recharge rate, with the level of the water table dropping in some places by as much as 3 metres per year. New tubewells continue to be sunk leading to increased exploitation of a declining resource.
A range of technical interventions could be adopted to check and reverse the present rangeland degradation. Likewise techniques exist to encourage groundwater recharge and a range of improved irrigation and water conserving practices could be adopted to reduce water demand.
Box 34 Conflicts of interest Conflicts of interest between different groups of people often undermine the success and contribute to the failure of small water resource projects. A study of six small-scale water resources (three weirs and three tanks) within Khon Kaen Province, Northeast Thailand found a number of such conflicts of interest. At the Huay-Kor Tank two conflicts were found. One involved the fact that the people owning the cultivable land no longer allowed the villagers of Ban Nong Tana (where the tank was located) to use their land to grow vegetables and other crops during the dry season. The situation was extremely difficult to resolve because several villages were involved and the arable lands and the villages fell under the jurisdiction of two different provinces. The second conflict was between different groups of landowners, those whose lands all on high-level ground who wished to have the embankment raised to increase the water storage capacity, and those who lived near the tank who objected because they feared raising the embankment might lead to flooding. At the time of the study no compromise had been reached in settling the conflict. Solutions however had been found in other areas with similar problems. At the Muang-Po Weir, local leaders stepped in to mediate a conflict by calling meetings of both sides. A compromise was reached whereby the embankment's height was raised but not as much as originally requested, a solution satisfactory to both parties. At the Hu-Ling Tank conflicts existed between two groups, one with lands near the tank who wanted to store up water for use during the dry season; and another group who made their living by fishing and wanted to maintain regular distribution of water. In this case the village headman did nothing as he himself made a living by fishing and had no lands around the tank that received benefits from irrigation. The conflict of interests remained unresolved until those whose land surrounded the tank gave in by releasing part of the water supply from the tank during the dry season. Another example of conflicting interests was found at the Muang-Po Weir where there as a failure to adhere to a previous agreement that those whose fields were located at the tail end of the canal would receive their water first. The problem was only resolved by the intervention of a respected local leader in whom both sides had confidence. Tantuvanit et al 1988 |
However the institutional and legislative policy environment within the province does not encourage the adoption of such measures. For instance the flat rate electricity charge, for electric water pumps, means that the cost of using 1 litre of water is the same as that of using 100 litres. Hence there is no financial incentive to reduce water consumption. Likewise there is no effective regulation or control over the sinking of new tubewells. It is clear that without appropriate policies in place, and effectively implemented, any technical solutions to rangeland degradation and groundwater depletion cannot be widely adopted.
A recent report on agricultural restructuring and diversification in Thailand (Poapongsakorn 1996) noted that the Thai irrigation system has some major problems that may seriously retard future development of the agricultural economy, the most serious being the increasing water scarcity. While the annual flows of water into two large dams that supply water for the Central Plain have shown a declining trend since 1975, urban and industrial demand has increased rapidly, averaging about 4.6% per year during 1987-93. The increase is a consequence of the accelerated industrialisation and urbanisation. At the same time the amount of water use in the agricultural sector has not declined.
Despite increasing scarcity of water the agricultural sector is still the largest water consumer in Thailand, consuming almost 89% of total water used in 1993. Since the price of water is zero, farmers tend to use it excessively. As a consequence the marginal cost of water used in the agricultural sector is much lower (about 0.57 baht per cubic metre) than in other sectors (e.g. 6 baht per cubic metre for urban water supply). Conflicting interests in the demand for water can be expected to increase. Hence when seeking possible solutions to the problem of water scarcity the following issues have to be considered (Poapongsakorn 1996):
Similar solutions will be required elsewhere in the Asia Pacific region as conflicting demands for scarce water resources grow.
The issue of water scarcity in the Asia region is becoming an important transnational issue with regard to some of the continent's major river basins, notably the Ganges and Mekong. India and Bangladesh have recently signed an agreement on use of the Ganges water resources and the Mekong River Commission has contributed to resolving transboundary water resource management issues given that China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam all have an interest in the river. Bilateral or multilateral agreements for the development of shared water resources are going to become increasingly important to ensure equitable access to water and prevent future conflicts over water rights.