Poverty and Environmental Degradation in Southern Burkina Faso: An Assessment Based on Participatory Methods

Abstract

Abstract:The poverty and environmental degradation vicious circle hypothesis considers the poor as agents and victims of environmentally degrading activities. Despite some studies, however, there still has not been a sufficient empirical examination of the poverty-environment nexus. Based on participatory poverty assessment (PPA) methods with two hundred farm households categorized by wealth status in southern Burkina Faso, six indicators of environmental degradation and a set of land management practices were examined to answer the following questions: (i) Which households (non-poor, fairly-poor, or poorest) are responsible for environmental degradation? (ii) Does poverty constrain adoption of land management practices considered to improve the land? Results indicate deforestation is highest for non-poor farmers, and non-poor and fairly-poor farmers have higher rates of overgrazing. In addition, the entire non-poor group, mainly recent migrants to the area, occupy borrowed lands with tenure perceived as insecure, considered by farmers to be a disincentive for assisted natural regeneration of vegetation. Thus, non-poor and fairly-poor farmers participate most in activities locally identified as environmentally degrading, and the former contribute more than the latter. On the other hand, adoption of land management practices considered to improve the land is relatively low amongst the poorest farmers.

Smallholders’ Tree Planting Activity in the Ziro Province, Southern Burkina Faso: Impacts on Livelihood and Policy Implications

“…Household wealth categories were developed through participatory methods using twelve local livelihood indicators and included in the questionnaire. Three wealth categories, based on a detailed methodology, are identified amongst farmers in the study region and include non-poor, fairly poor and poorest [36]. The silvicultural questions included farmers' reasons for planting or not planting trees, attitudes towards tree planting, challenges related to tree planting, and farmers' willingness to continue tree planting under their existing tenure arrangements.…”

Introduction: The Continued Importance of Smallholders Today

“…Agriculture and forestry expert Daniel Etongo and colleagues [58] test the poverty and degradation vicious circle hypothesis through a case study approach in southern Burkina Faso. Drawing on participatory poverty assessment methods, the team created indicators to categorize wealth status, environmental degradation, and land management practices.…”

“…Several of the contributions do consider the question of ethnicity, through an examination of how different ethnic groups are positioned differently within local land systems ( [58], this volume) or socioeconomic systems ( [60], this volume). In many smallholder studies, ethnicity functions as a more naturalized and therefore often unexamined category of constructed difference.…”

Land management in rural Burkina Faso: the role of socio‐cultural and institutional factors

“…There are a number of land management practices – such as zaï (Roose et al ., ; Kaboré and Reij, ; Biazin et al ., ), composting (Ouédraogo et al ., ; McClintock and Diop, ), stone bunds (Gebrernichael et al ., ), live hedges (Ayuk, ), and improved fallow (Buresh and Tian, ; Ajayi et al ., ; Mando et al ., ) – that have been tested and been proven to be sustainable. Despite their availability in Burkina Faso, farmlands are still undergoing degradation (Batta and Bourgou, ) because of the differences in household and farm characteristics and local institutions that have not allowed farmers to effectively engage in these practices (Etongo et al ., ). Socioeconomic circumstances, farm characteristics, and institutional factors that have been documented to influence smallholders’ adoption of land management practices include farmer's age, farm age (years of operating the present farm), household labour force, education, size of farm, land and tree tenure security, technical and financial assistance received by farmers, and membership in a farmers’ group (Amsalu and de Graaff, ).…”

“…Therefore, the aim of this study is to assess the factors that influence the adoption of improved fallows, zaï (planting pits), stone bunds, composting, and live hedges among 220 farm households across four villages in southern Burkina Faso. These five SLM practices are considered in this study because they were identified in an earlier study conducted in the study area (Etongo et al ., ). A major novelty of this paper is that it deals with a variety of land‐related aspects affecting the adoption of SLM.…”