Enabling Policy Environment Research Articles

Crop diversity and livelihood security in the andes

Andean farmers have traditionally adapted and selected varieties of quinoa and potatoes to reduce their vulnerability to a range of environmental risks. Data suggest that this strategy is being undermined. Market pressures, particularly the requirements for consistency and quantity along with the import of subsidised wheat products, are leading to the displacement of quinoa and indigenous potato varieties. This paper explores the feasibility of maintaining crop diversity while ensuring that farmers benefit from market opportunities. For potato, the most promising approach is one of ‘conservation through use’, whereby development practitioners identify market niches for local rather than cosmopolitan varieties. Meanwhile, quinoa production and consumption has been enhanced by government-sponsored initiatives that use quinoa in food-support programmes. The success of these efforts to enhance livelihood security requires an enabling policy environment that encourages extension approaches, where the emphasis is on farmers' active participation, and supports public and private interventions in remote rural areas.

The case against direct incentives and the search for alternative approaches to better land management in Central America

Land shortages are forcing smallholder farmers to cultivate steeplands. Resulting accelerated soil erosion is being addressed by the promotion of soil and water conservation (SWC) technologies, such as cross-slope barriers. These are designed to reduce soil and water loss and increase productivity. Farmer adoption rates, however, are low and many development organisations have reverted to using direct incentives, such as cash payments and food-for-work, to attract participating farmers. Research in Central America shows that whilst these incentives stimulate implementation of SWC technologies, many of the farmers abandon the technologies once the direct incentives are withdrawn. Field research from 1996 to 1998, involving farmed test plots on slopes greater than 33° sought to test a priori assumptions about the impact on soil loss and maize production following adoption of SWC technologies. Research demonstrates that at least one typical SWC technology—live barriers of Vetiveria zizanioides (vetiver grass)—has little or no impact on reducing soil loss or contributing to increased maize yields. This explains why, in the absence of direct incentives, few farmers adopt official recommendations: farmers see little benefit from their investment in the implementation and maintenance of SWC technologies. However, there are major off- and on-farm benefits to reduced soil loss and the research suggests that these benefits can be attained without the use of direct incentives, which are neither sustainable nor contribute to farmer empowerment. An alternative approach is to promote strategies that seek to combine farmers’ concerns about productivity with conservationists’ concerns about reducing soil erosion, often via soil cover management and an improvement in soil quality. The alternative approach poses a challenge to development practitioners, politicians, and society in general. Firstly, a new professionalism is needed in which the interests of farmers are put first and where farmers’ active participation in decision-making is encouraged. Secondly, farmers are more likely to practice better land management if they have secure access to land and receive favourable prices for agricultural products. These so-called indirect incentives are only likely to come about in the context of an enabling policy environment, created, in turn, by pressure from public and private institutions.

Smallholder Cacao (Theobroma cacao Linn.) cultivation in agroforestry systems of West and Central Africa: challenges and opportunities

The cultural features, management practice, environmental sustainability, and economic profitability of smallholder cacao (Theobroma cacao)production in West and Central Africa are reviewed. The aim is tohighlight factors affecting the cacao production and marketing sectorand to propose appropriate strategies to ensure sustainable and profitable cacao production in the region. The cacao cultivation system causes minimum damage to soil resources. In terms of carbon sequestration and below- and above-ground bio-diversity, the cacao agroforest is superior to the alternative food crop production land use. The food crop production system is based on the practice of slash-and-burn farming, which, due to population pressure and reduced fallow cycle, is no longer sustainable. Economic profitability analysis of this system in Cameroon showed that, at current prices, even with no value assigned to the tree species, the sector could still be profitable. Based on the current review and our knowledge of West and Central Africa, there is an urgent need to: (a) rationalize and optimize arrangement of the various components in cacao agroforest, (b) domesticate high value and shade tolerant indigenous species such as Gnetum africanum and integrate into the system in order to enhance the system's diversity and profitability, (c) develop shade-tolerant and disease-resistant cacao varieties, (d) integrate small-stock production into the system, and (e) develop an enabling policy environment addressing cacao marketing, plant protection, land tenure and transformation of non-cacao primary products from the cacao agroforests.

Policy and strategy options for small‐scale mining development in Zambia

Abstract Increasing populations compounded by limited formal sector employment have made small‐scale mining an important economic livelihood option for thousands of people in developing countries. Low barriers to entry, the principal economic characteristic of the sub‐sector, will ensure that small mining operations will continue to provide a livelihood for numerous unskilled workers in rural areas, where few alternative job opportunities exist. In addition, with correct policies and strategies in place, the sector has the potential to generate more employment and foreign exchange earnings. The successful evolution of small‐scale mining requires an enabling policy environment that recognizes its specific needs. In this paper small‐scale mining in Zambia is discussed by tracing the impact of changing policies on this sector.

Land use transformation in Africa: three determinants for balancing food security with natural resource utilization

The continued threat to the world's land resources is exacerbated by the protracted food crisis in sub-Saharan Africa. Per capita food production continues to decrease even though this region compares favorably with other tropical regions in terms of climate and soil resources. The main determinant of this situation is the widely recognized need for an enabling policy environment that favors smallholder rural development. However, there are two other key determinants to food security and environmental sustainability in Africa that have not received sufficient attention in the past and are the focus of this contribution: (1) the need to tackle soil fertility depletion as the fundamental biophysical constraint to food security and (2) the need for more intensive and diverse land use, based on the domestication of indigenous trees to produce high value products while increasing agroecosystem resilience. Approaches that include these three issues will transform smallholder farming in Africa into productive and sustainable enterprises and will contribute greatly to food security and environmental conservation, in a win-win situation.

Trees, soils, and food security

Trees have a different impact on soil properties than annual crops, because of their longer residence time, larger biomass accumulation, and longer–lasting, more extensive root systems. In natural forests nutrients are efficiently cycled with very small inputs and outputs from the system. In most agricultural systems the opposite happens. Agroforestry encompasses the continuum between these extremes, and emerging hard data is showing that successful agroforestry systems increase nutrient inputs, enhance internal flows, decrease nutrient losses and provide environmental benefits— when the competition for growth resources between the tree and the crop component is well managed. The three main determinants for overcoming rural poverty in Africa are (i) reversing soil fertility depletion, (ii) intensifying and diversifying land use with high–value products, and (iii) providing an enabling policy environment for the smallholder farming sector. Agroforestry practices can improve food production in a sustainable way through their contribution to soil fertility replenishment. The use of organic inputs as a source of biologically–fixed nitrogen, together with deep nitrate that is captured by trees, plays a major role in nitrogen replenishment. The combination of commercial phosphorus fertilizers with available organic resources may be the key to increasing and sustaining phosphorus capital. High–value trees— ‘Cinderella’ species, can fit in specific niches on farms, thereby making the system ecologically stable and more rewarding economically, in addition to diversifying and increasing rural incomes and improving food security. In the most heavily populated areas of East Africa, where farm size is extremely small, the number of trees on farms is increasing as farmers seek to reduce labour demands, compatible with the drift of some members of the family into the towns to earn off–farm income. Contrary to the concept that population pressure promotes deforestation, there is evidence that demonstrates that there are conditions under which increasing tree planting is occurring on farms in the tropics through successful agroforestry as human population density increases.

Government-NGO Relations in Asia: Prospects and Challenges for People-Centered Development. Edited by Noeleen Heyzer, James V. Riker and Antonio B. Quizon. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995. xiii, 247 pp. $65.00 (cloth).

Acknowledgements - List of Contributors - List of Acronyms - List of Tables and Figures - Toward New Government-NGO Relations for Sustainable and People-Centred Development N.Heyzer - Contending Perspectives for Interpreting Government-NGO Relations in South and Southeast Asia: Constraints, Challenges and the Search for Common Ground in Rural Development J.V.Riker - Challenges and Future Directions for Asian NGOs C.de Fonseka - Asian NGOs in Development: Their Role and Impact A.Bhatt - From Cooptation to Cooperation and Collaboration in Government-NGO Relations: Toward an Enabling Policy Environment for People-Centred Development in Asia J.V.Riker - Government, NGO and International Agency Cooperation: Whose Agenda? D.C.Korten & A.B.Quizon - Steps Toward People-Centred Development: Vision and Strategies D.C.Korten - Reflections on Government-NGO Relations in Asia: Prospects and Challenges for People-Centred Development J.V.Riker - Bibliography - Appendix 1: The Legal Framework for NGOs and the Voluntary Sector: Recommended Principles - Appendix 2: Strategies for Improving the Policy Environment for NGOs -Index