Economics of Land Degradation in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has experienced the most severe land degradation in the world. Given that livelihoods of the majority of the rural poor heavily depend on natural resources, countries in the region have designed a number of policies and strategies to address land degradation and to enhance productivity. However investment from both countries and their development partners has remained low, especially for livestock, which accounts for the largest area degraded. Our results show that conversion of grassland to cropland and deforestation are the major factors driving land use/cover change (LUCC). One of the major reasons leading farmers to convert grassland to cropland is the low livestock productivity. The increasing demand for livestock products provides an ample opportunity to the value of grasslands and in turn livestock productivity. Given that donor funding accounts for the largest share of expenditure on agriculture and natural resource management in most SSA countries, econometric analysis showed that donor funding reduces the cost of land degradation. This positions donors in a position of influencing efforts to combat land degradation in SSA. The fact that SSA has poor marketing infrastructure suggests that its improvement will enhance efforts to address low productivity and land degradation. Econometric analysis showed that access to market leads to a reduction of the cost of land degradation related to LUCC. Improvement of market infrastructure will achieve a win-win benefit as it will improve natural resources and reduce poverty. Consistent with results from other regions, improvement of government effectiveness reduces cost of land degradation and cropland expansion. This illustrates the key role played by governance in mediating the drivers of land degradation. Efforts to increase adoption of integrated soil fertility management will require improvement of access to markets, advisory services and retraining of agricultural extension services. There is also need to find practical and amenable strategies for incentivizing farmers to use ISFM. For example, conditional fertilizer subsidy could provide incentives for farmers to adopt nitrogen fixing agroforestry trees and improve significantly the current subsidy programs in several SSA countries. Overall, our results show that SSA has the potential to become the breadbasket of the world but it has to significantly improve its market access and government effectiveness to create incentives for land holders to invest in land improvement. The increasing demand for land, urbanization, and other global regional changes are creating a conducive condition for taking action against land degradation. These opportunities should be exploited effectively as they lead to win-win outcomesreducing poverty and achieving sustainable land management.

Exclosures for landscape restoration in Ethiopia: business model scenarios and suitability. Agricultural Water Management – Making a Business Case for Smallholders

“…Although the drivers of land degradation vary from region to region, major causes across different regions include the conversion of (i) forests to grazing lands, (ii) grassland to barren land and shrublands, and (iii) grassland to cropland (Eswaran et al 2001;UNCCD 2013;Nkonya et al 2016).…”

Simultaneous adoption of integrated soil fertility management technologies in the Chinyanja Triangle, Southern Africa

“…A typical farm household would be adopting one or more of the components of ISFM if and only if the expected benefit is higher than otherwise. Although the ISFM components are framed on the assumption that synergistic results can be obtained when complementary technologies are co‐implemented (Nkonya et al, ), there is also an array of similar technologies within the subset of components that can be substituted (Lambrecht et al, ). The equation for multivariate probit model is structured following Kassie et al .…”

“…It is projected that by the year 2050, ISFM technologies could increase maize yields in the Sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) region by 21.5% (Rosegrant et al, ). From an economic standpoint, studies have also revealed that the cost of implementing ISFM technologies is lower than the opportunity costs associated with not investing resources in soil fertility management (Nkonya et al, ). In their study, based on data from seven countries in Sub‐Saharan Africa, Nkonya et al .…”

“…In their study, based on data from seven countries in Sub‐Saharan Africa, Nkonya et al . () found that farmers who integrate inorganic and organic soil fertility management technologies get higher profits in the range of 50% compared to sole fertiliser users, 600% over sole manure users, and 2,000% more than farmers currently not applying any soil fertility measure. The key concern is that the number of those not practising is higher, ranging between 27–95% of farm households, while those practising integrated technologies are much lower (0–18%) (Nkonya et al, ).…”

“…Recent studies in the region have shown that most of the farmers are stagnating at the lower end of the ISFM ladder, and slowly adopting improved germplasm and inorganic fertilisers (Jha and Hojjati, ; Denning et al, ; Mponela et al, ). The incorporation of locally available organic resources and the adaptation of globally/regionally proven technologies to local socioeconomic and biophysical conditions have faced low adoption rates (Nkonya et al, ).…”