Joint watershed management: new evidence from the New Horizons project

Rural development policies and practice have traditionally seen farmers as mismanagers of soil and water. They have been advised, lectured at, paid and forced to adopt new soil and water conservation practices. Ironically, though, many of these programmes have actually increased the amount of soil-eroding farms. This article provides a list of beneficial and lasting impacts that can be achieved as local people and local knowledge are put at the core of programmes. It also outlines the implications for future watershed programmes if these successes are to be replicated.

Introduction
For close to a century, rural development policies and practice have taken the view that farmers are mismanagers of soil and water. Farmers have been advised, lectured, paid and forced to adopt new soil and water conservation measures and practices. Many have done so, and environments and economies have benefitted for a time. But many problems have undermined these efforts in the name of conservation, with financial and legal incentives bringing only short-lived conservation. Many efforts have been remarkably unsuccessful, often resulting in more erosion, and so undermining the credibility of conservation.

A new era for soil and water conservation must avoid these contradictions. It must consider farmers as the potential solution rather than the problem, and so put the value of local knowledge and skills at the core of new programmes. It must reinforce local organizations through participatory processes, and this participation must be interactive and empowering. For widespread impact, efforts must be made at policy and project formulation levels to encourage the dissemination of sustainable practices.

The New Horizons**1 workshop held in Bangalore (India) from 28 November to 2 December 1994 and jointly hosted by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and ActionAid India, brought together 75 participants from 19 countries to investigate recent innovative programmes in watershed management and soil and water conservation. The workshop was the culmination of two years of collaborative investigation of successful participatory programmes. Case study groups in 12 countries used participatory methods for self-evaluation, in order to measure impacts as well as to learn more about the processes necessary for success.

The contradictions of conventional soil conservation projects
Despite decades of effort, soil and water conservation programmes have had surprisingly little success in preventing erosion (Pretty, 1995; Pretty and Shah, 1994). The quantitative achievements of some programmes appear impressive. In Lesotho, all the uplands were said to be protected by buffer stripping by 1960; in Malawi (then Nyasaland), 118,000 km of bunds were constructed on 416,000 ha between 1945-60; and in Zambia (then North Rhodesia), half the native land in Eastern Province was said to be protected by contour strips by 1950 (Stocking, 1985). In Ethiopia, during the late 1970s and 1980s, some 200,000 km of terracing were constructed and 45 million trees planted (Mitchell, 1987).

But many of these achievements have been short-lived. Because of a lack of participation, local people whose land is being rehabilitated find themselves participating for no other reason than to receive food or cash. Seldom are the structures maintained, and so conservation works rapidly deteriorate, causing gullies and accelerating erosion. The results have been extraordinarily poor for the amount of effort and money expended (Shaxson et al, 1989; Hudson, 1991; Reij, 1991; IFAD, 1992; Ahmad and Ahmed, 1994).

Sometimes successes are reversed almost immediately. In an evaluation of conservation in Ethiopia supported by the World Food Programme, the extent of the terracing was said to be 'impressive', yet monitoring in one sub-catchment found 40% of the terracing broken the year after construction (SIDA, 1984). The technologies were inappropriate and the local people were expected to bear all the costs of maintenance. Another example comes from the Yatenga region of Burkina Faso, where 120,000 hectares of earth bunds constructed at high cost with machine graders in the early 1960s have now all but disappeared (Marchal, 1978 and 1986). In the Majjia and Badéguicheri valleys of Niger, most of the 6000 hectares of earth bunds constructed between 1964-1980 are in an advanced state of degradation (Reij, 1988). In Sukumuland (Tanzania) where contour banks, terraces and hedges were forced upon farmers, almost no evidence remained of these conservation works by the early 1980s, and now erosion is extremely severe (Stocking, 1985).

Contour bunds developed for large-scale farming in the USA are widely applied in soil and water conservation programmes in India. But even when heavily subsidized, most small farmers reject them (Kerr and Sanghi, 1992). These bunds leave corners in some fields, so that there is a risk of losing the piece of land to a neighbour. Contour farming is only suitable where the holding is large and tractors are available. It is, therefore, not uncommon for entire bunds to be levelled as soon as project staff move on to the next village (Sanghi, 1987).

In Oaxaca (Mexico) a large-scale government soil conservation programme is still establishing contour bunds based on the US models. It is an area noted in the 1970s and 1980s by various 'expert' missions as having 'massive soil erosion' and 'the world's worst soil erosion'. But recent evidence suggests that erosion has become more serious following the imposing of terraces and bunds (Blackler, 1994). Erosion has been recorded within one year of their establishment and degradation has been so severe that less than 5% of the bunded area is cropped.

A failure to involve people in design and maintenance can create considerable long-term problems and widespread disenchantment amongst local people with respect to all conservation projects (Reij, 1988). Such attitudes are a critical constraint for many current soil conservation programmes. Local people come to expect direct payment of other incentives for conservation.

Key findings of New Horizons cases
Despite differences in the cultural and political context of the case studies of joint watershed management presented at the international workshop, there were important common elements. All emphasized the use of locally adapted resource-conserving technologies that provide immediate returns to farmers, focused on encouraging action by groups or communities at the local level, and involved the presence of supportive external government and/or non-government institutions working in partnership with each other and with farmers.

The improvements as a result of the involvement of local people in watershed programmes at community level can be remarkable, and include:

• economic benefits: increases in land value, enterprise development and demand for labour. Substantial increases in crop and livestock yields (on average cereal yields doubled, with no additional use of external inputs);
  
• social benefits: greater self-confidence and a sense of cohesion in communities, fewer conflicts over resources, reduced out-migration, and a new rapport between local people and external professionals; and
  
• environmental benefits: recharge of aquifers, reduced soil erosion, increased number of trees, reduced salinity, reduced use of fertilizers and pesticides, and the return of birds and other wildlife.

Implications for soil conservation and watershed programmes
Due to the lamentably poor performance of almost all soil and water conservation projects, there is a need for a thorough reassessment of existing soil conservation practices and professional norms. The practice of designing and implementing interventions without involving local people can only succeed with coercion. Such enforced technologies may appear technically appropriate, but are commonly rejected by local people when the external pressure is removed. Projects and programmes must find ways of building on the skills, enthusiasm and knowledge of farmers.

Participants at the workshop analyzed the findings of the 22 impact studies with respect to five cross-cutting themes, namely technologies, process and methods, impacts and indicators, inter-institutional arrangements, and policies. A selection of the immediate implications for all institutions and professionals concerned with soil and water conservation follows.

Technologies:

• The linkage of direct financial and food inducements to pre-selected conservation measures must cease, as these encourage farmers to permit or engage in the construction of conservation measures that they neither agree with nor feel any responsibility to maintain. When these incentives stop, so does the conservation.
  
• It is impossible to predict the technologies that may be appropriate for a particular time and place. Technologies themselves are not sustainable, and today's good technologies will be superseded by others in the future. What needs to be made sustainable is the process of innovation itself. The capacity of individuals and institutions to innovate and experiment must be openly encouraged.
  
• A greater emphasis is needed on biological measures for soil and water conservation, such as green manures, cover crops, mulching, composting and reduced tillage. These are favoured by farmers because they can improve productivity as well as reduce labour needs.
  

• There is a need to strengthen the capacity of farmer- and community-level organizations for experimentation and extension. Group approaches are essential for creating common platforms for action on watershed development and soil and water conservation. Conflict resolution and negotiation methodologies can help diverse individuals and institutions to develop common platforms.
  
• A pre-planned and carefully designed project is not a good project. No one can predict what a particular farm requires and how needs will change over time. Every farm has its own signature, and external institutions must be flexible and responsive, and ready to learn along with farmers.
  
• The pace of programmes and projects must be slow if there is to be a gradual build-up of motivation, confidence and rapport amongst all the interested groups. If the 'software' is taken care of first, then there is a better chance of developing successful 'hardware'.

• In a process of impact analysis, it is essential that the indicators of different interest groups are made explicit and shared. This process of negotiation increases mutual understanding and improves the likelihood of joint action.
  
• There will always be a need for a clear focus on equity if the poorest and most marginalized in any society are not to be left out. Some indicators are very difficult to define, and thus are easily forgotten.
  
• An intensive and more sustainable agriculture developed through participatory processes can lead to micro-economic booms whilst safeguarding or even regenerating natural resources. As well as stopping involuntary out-migration, such booms attract people back from cities.

• There is a need to invest in new attitudes and values for joint watershed management. Widespread training and competence-building is needed, especially in bureaucracies and universities. There is a particular need for more training in participatory methods that focus on joint learning leading to action.
  
• Joint approaches increase the contacts and linkages between farmers and external institutions, improving the likelihood of policies and practices emerging that are satisfactory to all actors. The case studies highlighted many creative approaches to developing partnerships between farmers on the one hand, and extensionists, researchers, markets, private companies, local authorities and education systems on the other.
  
• Self-evaluations improve the process of learning in institutions. They lead to greater honesty about what does and does not work, particularly if they use local people's measures of what constitutes success. What is needed is a widespread transition towards 'learning organizations'.

• There is a need for widespread national and international policy reform, as most agricultural and rural policies discriminate against the processes that lead to successful economic and environmental regeneration.
  
• There is a need to involve political leaders in these joint processes, so that they do not hinder new alliances and linkages.
  
• There is a need to avoid the trap of authorities handing responsibility for complex, costly and conflict-ridden projects back to local people, with-holding adequate financial and institutional support, and then dressing it all up as 'empowerment'.

Jules N. Pretty
Irene Guijt
Parmesh Shah
Fiona Hinchcliffe
All authors can be reached through:
International Institute for Environment and Development
3, Endsleigh Street
London WC1H 0DD
UK

References
Ahmad, S. and Ahmed, J. 1994. 'An impact study of the Mangla watershed management project.' Paper presented at New Horizons: The economic, social and environmental impacts of participatory watershed development. Bangalore (India).

Blackler, A. (1994) 'Indigenous versus imposed: soil management in the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, Mexico.' Paper presented at the Rural History Centre Conference, University of Reading.

Hudson, N. (1991) A study of the reasons for success or failure of soil conservation projects. FAO Soils Bulletin 64. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organisation.

IFAD (1992) Soil and water conservation in Sub-Saharan Africa: Towards sustainable production by the rural poor. Rome: International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Kerr, J. and N.K. Sanghi (1992) Soil and water conservation in India's semi-arid tropics. Sustainable Agriculture Programme Gatekeeper Series SA34. London: IIED.

Marchal, J-Y. (1978) L'espace des techniciens et celui des paysans. Histoire d'un périmètre antiérosif en Haut-Volta. In ORSTOM. Maîtrice de l'Espace Agrarian et Développement en Afrique Tropicale. Paris: ORSTOM.

Marchal, J-Y. (1986) Vingt ans de lutte antiérosive au nord du Burkina Faso. Cahiers ORSTOM, Série Pédalologique, XXII(2)173-180.

Mitchell P. (1987) Letter to the Herald Tribune dated 6 January, page 27.

Pretty, J.N. (1995) Regenerating agriculture: Policies and practice for sustainability and self-reliance. London: Earthscan Publications Ltd.

Pretty, J.N. and P. Shah (1994) Soil and water conservation in the 20th Century: A history of coercion and control. Rural History Centre Research Series No.1. Reading: University of Reading.

Reij, C. (1988) 'The agroforestry project in Burkina Faso: an analysis of popular participation in soil and water conservation' pp. 74-77 Conroy, C. and M. Litvinoff (eds) The greening of aid. London: Earthscan Publications Ltd.

Reij, C. (1991) Indigenous soil and water conservation in Africa. Sustainable Agriculture Programme Gatekeeper Series SA27. London: IIED.

Sanghi, N.K. (1987) 'Participation of farmers as co-research workers: Some case studies in dryland agriculture.' Paper presented to the IDS Workshop on 'Farmers and agricultural research: Complementary methods'.

Shaxson, T.F., N.W. Hudson, D.W. Sanders, E. Roose and W.C. Moldenhauer (1989) Land husbandry: A framework for soil and water conservation. Ankeny (Iowa): Soil and Water Conservation Society.

SIDA (1984) Soil conservation in Borkana catchment: Evaluation report. Final Report. Stockholm: Swedish International Development Authority.

Stocking, M. (1985) 'Soil conservation policy in colonial Africa', Agricultural History 59(148-161)

Endnote
**1 The New Horizons collaborative project was funded by the Swedish International Development Authority (SIDA), the Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), the Ford Foundation, the British Overseas Development Administration and the Australian International Development Aid Bureau (AIDAB).