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.
Highlights
Initial discussions during the workshop focussed on awareness of existing policies and the applicability and utility of those policies before moving on to identify community-specific policy needs
In terms of existing policies and policy instruments, there were differences between the three communities; some already had specific byelaws related to land management and resource conservation in place, whilst others did not
Fines were applied to those breaking local byelaws aimed at limiting herd sizes
Summary
Soil erosion are part of a suite of ‘wicked’ problems that appear on the surface to be natural resource issues but which are, in reality, largely driven by complex interactions between environmental, institutional, socio-economic, and cultural processes [1,2,3].Successfully tackling intractable soil erosion problems requires all stakeholders to step outside of the well-trodden pathways of looking for natural resource management solutions; and instead to look for ways to understand the wider, less obvious reasons for how and why these issues have occurred [3,4].Often, responding successfully to degradation and building resilience to future shocks means finding ways to strike a balance between potentially competing environmental, social, cultural, economic andLand 2020, 9, 352; doi:10.3390/land9100352 www.mdpi.com/journal/landLand 2020, 9, 352 institutional needs and priorities [5]. Soil erosion are part of a suite of ‘wicked’ problems that appear on the surface to be natural resource issues but which are, in reality, largely driven by complex interactions between environmental, institutional, socio-economic, and cultural processes [1,2,3]. Village-specific round table discussion—1 table for each villageFacilitators recount discussion summary from each community back to all. A District Council rep A champion A facilitator This exercise is a combination of group discussion and individual work. Facilitators recount discussion summary from each community back to all Following the morning discussion, the facilitators and champions encourage participants to note down what (information, resources, and policies) they would keep, what existing things they think need to stop and what new actions they think should start.
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