‘Mind the Gap’: Reconnecting Local Actions and Multi-Level Policies to Bridge the Governance Gap. An Example of Soil Erosion Action from East Africa

Abstract

Achieving change to address soil erosion has been a global yet elusive goal for decades. Efforts to implement effective solutions have often fallen short due to a lack of sustained, context-appropriate and multi-disciplinary engagement with the problem. Issues include prevalence of short-term funding for ‘quick-fix’ solutions; a lack of nuanced understandings of institutional, socio-economic or cultural drivers of erosion problems; little community engagement in design and testing solutions; and, critically, a lack of traction in integrating locally designed solutions into policy and institutional processes. This paper focusses on the latter issue of local action for policy integration, drawing on experiences from a Tanzanian context to highlight the practical and institutional disjuncts that exist; and the governance challenges that can hamper efforts to address and build resilience to soil erosion. By understanding context-specific governance processes, and joining them with realistic, locally designed actions, positive change has occurred, strengthening local-regional resilience to complex and seemingly intractable soil erosion challenges.

Building Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience through Soil Organic Carbon Restoration in Sub-Saharan Rural Communities: Challenges and Opportunities

“…Management practice is focused upon restoration of native vegetation cover by improving mobility across varied grazing lands or through enclosure schemes, which may be combined with reseeding of native species. Exclusion zones can be implemented by physical barriers, an agreed set of communal rules or, in some cases, established bylaws in more extensive grazing lands (often hundreds of hectares) [15]. Mixed systems may also effectively combine stall feeding with soil-stabilising plants used on hillslope cropland [51].…”

“…Land degradation in SSA has many drivers [74] and, in the past, a top-down approach to SLM has led to failures in effective implementation often owing to a lack of consideration for differing community structures and the environment at the local level. It is now generally recognised that SLM must be targeted to specific communities in participatory approaches, which consider the unique socio-economic and governance contexts as well as environmental factors [15,17,24]. These approaches focus on empowering local communities to identify, manage and ultimately reverse land degradation practices to restore soil health and boost resilience to climate change.…”

“…Kessler et al [89] make a distinction between extrinsic motivation, relating to externally derived incentives, and intrinsic motivation, which is a self-driven appreciation for natural systems. Whilst extrinsic motivation can play an important role in the protection of soil resources (e.g., Kelly et al [15]), the Jali Ardhi project also aims to build intrinsic motivation by reducing awareness barriers and highlighting landscape-people connections at the village-scale. The preceding sections have described the importance of SOC in underpinning soil health and, in turn, healthy functions and services, which support community resilience.…”

“…Efforts to reduce erosion by water must consider landscape connectivity in a holistic manner, which considers social and economic frameworks alongside an understanding of landscape hydrology [8][9][10]. Crucially, assessment and development of sustainable land management (SLM) must be embedded within a participatory approach, drawing on local knowledge and building practical systems of change from within the local community, ultimately fostering community-led management, which is not reliant upon but supported by external services [10][11][12][13][14][15].…”

“…Against that background we explore the role of SOC in underpinning climate change adaptation and resilience in SSA. We focus on Tanzania as an exemplar national case in the context of a continuing research programme, the "Jali Ardhi" (Care for the Land) Project [13,15,24], which adopts a participatory and interdisciplinary approach to agropastoral land management assessment. Herein, this contribution aims to provide an overview of the importance of SOC components for soil functioning followed by methods to improve and maintain SOC.…”