A camera crew is filming a field of stunted maize plants in Malaswa village, Ntcheu District, Malawi. They interview a farmer who explains that the seasonal heavy rains washed away seeds and fertile topsoil from his fields again last January, leaving him and his family of five with great food insecurity.

This is not your usual film crew; Eliasi, Maria, Baison, Hana and Kagolo are farmers from Malaswa village. The have been trained by CIAT in partnership with a CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) project during a six day participatory video workshop to present, via film, their own vision of how land degradation could be reversed in their community.

Malaswa, like many villages in sub Saharan Africa, suffers from severe land degradation, with red sandy fields lacerated by gullies. These fields are unable to efficiently absorb the flashflood rains that come after long dry periods. What can be done to stop severe soil erosion in Malawi, where 50 tons per hectare of soil are lost every year?

Capturing farmer perspectives

“One condition for success is to first ensure that farmers have a say in designing land restoration programs,” says Juliet Braslow, an agronomist from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).

Juliet has facilitated many farmer-led development consultation exercises in Malawi using participatory mapping and video. She knows that projects wanting to disseminate better soil conservation practices could easily fail if there is no input from the farmers. Discussions with Malaswa farmers about land restoration strategies revealed that, a decade ago, a tree plantation project failed to take hold due to lack of clear roles and responsibilities for tree care and the distribution of benefits.

Youth in Malawi discuss their water resources before mapping them.

Juliet Braslow/CIAT.

Farmers’ land use decisions, which may affect long-term soil health, depend on many social and economic factors. WLE and CIAT have developed the Evaluating Land Management Options (ELMO) tool to help communities and development practitioners better understand local perceptions and explanations of the advantages, disadvantages and trade-offs of different land management options. In combination with more traditional surveys like household questionnaires, using ELMO can help farmers and decision makers identify what factors will make sustainable land management a more viable, desirable and profitable option at the local level.

Ethiopia pioneers the potential of land restoration

Ethiopia has already started investing in land restoration; the goal is to restore 15 million hectares by 2030 with strong involvement from local communities. It’s ambitious, with aims to double agricultural production by 2023 in 3,000 watersheds.

For instance, in the Debre-Mawi watershed North West of Addis Ababa, farmers were mobilized to build soil bunds with 50cm deep infiltration ditches in order to conserve soil and water. WLE scientists evaluated the impact of the watershed program 5 years later, and found remarkable results. Water run-off had decreased by up to 71% and sediment loss by up to 81% across the watershed. The impact of the intervention differed depending on the location within the watershed, clearly indicating that conservation techniques should be tailored to each landscape, soil type and farming system.

In drier Amhara Regional State, in the 7,500 ha Yewol watershed, severe soil erosion has been successfully slowed, thanks to an integrated community-based watershed management program started in 2011 and piloted by WLE and its partners ICRISAT, Wollo University and the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR). Youth mobilization, terrace landscaping with rock hedges and greater legume cultivation have reduced erosion from the upstream to the lowlands.

ICRISAT scientist Tilahun Amede describes the step-by-step process that was undertaken to gain the approval and trust of the community and all key stakeholders.

“We started by collecting baseline evidence and supporting quick impact solutions, like introducing improved crop varieties and sheep breeds. We then moved on to tackling more complex research issues. Gradually, seeing results on the ground, the regional government came on board and has since recognized Yewol as a learning site for the 14 other districts of Amhara.”

Sharing the benefits of ecosystem services can mean healthier landscapes for all

Participatory action research on the status of ecosystem services at the landscape level could contribute towards solving challenging socio-political situations. In Myanmar, for example, a WLE project initiated a dialogue to assess how the (mis)use of natural resources in Kachin State – a conflict zone in the upper Ayeyarwady river basin – directly impacted the livelihoods of the local population. By conveying this evidence to local decision-makers, the project team hopes to promote more equitable benefit-sharing of land, water and other natural resources.

The launch of the first African Water Fund, the Tana-Nairobi Water Fund, in 2015 shows that different water users along a river basin can collectively define a reward system based on ecosystem services to promote sustainable basin management. Large water users downstream (like beverage companies) pay for upstream farmers to scale up good soil conservation practices so that the water quality is preserved. In this scheme, research plays the important role of monitoring the impact of the intervention on sedimentation so everyone sees and understands the value of the land restoration efforts, and the fund remains operational in the long term.

The Tana River watershed is Kenya's life blood. CIAT and partners are exploring ecosystems trade-offs to benefit both the environment and improve farmer incomes and livelihoods.

Georgina Smith/CIAT.

Back in Malaswa, it’s the final day of the video workshop. Eliasi, Maria and the crew have chosen to call their film “Let's conserve the environment by finding solutions to end poverty” to show the intimate link between land degradation and development. The film screening in front of the community is well received, and has fueled a conversation between farmers and the Forestry Department. Maria speaks for the group:

“We are eager to invest more time in replantation projects but the timing for receiving seedlings is not correct. We also want more of a say in the type of tree we plant.”

The Forestry district officials are listening to her. Hopefully, next time a forestry project is implemented in Malaswa, tree seedlings will flourish and help combat soil degradation.

Acknowledgments

• BMZ-funded AGORA project ‘Acting Together Now for Pro-poor Strategies Against Soil and Land Degradation’, carried out by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) of Germany, Selian Agricultural Research Institute (SARI) of Tanzania, and Lilongwe University of Agricultural and Natural Resources (LUANAR) and Total Land Care (TLC) of Malawi.
• Participatory mapping and video, and development of ELMO tool has also be done through EC-IFAD funded project Restoring degraded landscapes through selective investments in soil quality in West, East, And Southern Africa; and WLE Focal region projects in Malawi, Tanzania, Ghana and Kenya.
• Methods for sustaining soil and water conservation measures in Ethiopia, impact study of Debre-Mawi watershed land restoration program: Lead center: IWMI; this research has been supported by USAID (AID-OAA-A-11-00012),  IFS (W/5565-1), Higher Education for Development (HED), USDA,  Cornell University, the  Norman  E.  Borlaug  LEAP 2015,  UC  Davis,  the  First Presbyterian Church in Ithaca, the Blue Nile Water Institute, the Quarit Woreda office of Agriculture and the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystem’s East Africa focal region program.
• Facilitating watershed management in Yewol Watershed of the Nile Basin, Ethiopia and Angonia-Moatize transect of Zambezi Basin, Mozambique for Improved Food Security and Ecosystem Services; Lead center: ICRISAT with Wollo University and Amhara Regional Agricultural Research Institute, Ethiopia as partners.
• MK 29: Working together for a better Kachin landscape - A landscape approach to the upper Ayeyarwady river basin: Building inclusive governance processes to address resource conflicts; Lead center: IWMI. Partners: Water Security Research Centre, School of International Development, University of East Anglia (UK), Friends of Wildlife, Yangon / Myitkyina, IUCN Myanmar, Yangon, London School of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, Shalom Foundation.
• WLE has contributed to the work on the Tana-Nairobi Water Fund, led by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture and The Nature Conservancy.