Are Landscape Restoration Interventions Sustainable? A Case for the Upper Tana Basin of Kenya

Fred Kizito,Kennedy Nganga,Jane Gicheha,Lulseged Tamene,Abdul Rahman Nurudeen,Nicholas Koech

doi:10.3390/su131810136

Abstract

Landscape restoration initiatives often have the potential to result in environmental gains, but the question of whether these gains are sustainable and how they are linked to other community needs (social, productivity and economic gains) remains unclear. We use the Sustainable Intensification Assessment Framework (SIAF) to demonstrate how environmental benefits are linked to productivity, environment, social, human, and economic components. Using the SIAF, the standardization of relevant indicators across multiple objectives provided a contextual representation of sustainability. The study assessed the overall gains resulting from the measured indicators of sustainable land management (SLM) practices and their relationship to the multiple domains of the SIAF. We present a unique case for SLM options using a combined-methods approach where biophysical, socio-economic, and citizen science help assess the sustainability of the interventions. Using a participatory approach with farmers, land restoration options were conducted in four target micro-watersheds for 3 years (2015–2017). Co-developed restoration measures at the landscape level within the four micro-watersheds (MW1-MW4) resulted in a substantial increment (50%) for all treatments (grass strips, terraces, and a combination of grass strips and terraces) in soil moisture storage and increased maize and forage production. We demonstrate that SLM practices, when used in combination, greatly reduce soil erosion and are profitable and sustainable while conferring livelihood benefits to smallholder farmers.

Highlights

Sustainable land management (SLM) is critical for maintaining the environmental integrity of landscapes, which translates into improved livelihood benefits for farmers in the Upper Tana Basin of Kenya
We present the disaggreproductivity levels, this translated into economic gains, as depicted by the net income and gated resultscost by domains for the Sustainable Intensification Assessment Framework (SIAF) at the no
The main conclusions are that, depending on the management regime, crop type, rainfall, local soil, and terrain, SLM practices: Increase soil retention in the landscape by about 20–45% (0.3–1.5 million ton/year); Improve water infiltration within cropland by 27–45% (108–180 mm per year), and reduce the unproductive evaporation of water from the soil surface by up to 15% (70 mm/year), translating into a water gain of about

Summary

Introduction

Sustainable land management (SLM) is critical for maintaining the environmental integrity of landscapes, which translates into improved livelihood benefits for farmers in the Upper Tana Basin of Kenya. A review of the status of the erosion in the Upper Tana Basin of Kenya [3] highlights estimates of erosion under different land management scenarios where SLM options resulted in environmental benefits. This region has undergone substantial changes, and large areas of forests were replaced by agricultural fields since the 1970s [4]. The conversion of forest to agricultural land, leads to changes in hydrology [5]. Maingi and Marsh [6]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion