Desire for Greener Land

No. of case studies
Land Ownership
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Cropping
management
Water
management
Cross-slope
barriers
Grazing land
management
SLM technology groups
state
communal / village
individual, not titled
individual, titled
barriers, where all except one SLM technologies have individual
and, for the most part, titled ownership. The expensive
water management group has more than one third of
the SLM practices in communal and state ownership. Water
management technologies, such as dams and water supply
systems, might be large-scale projects carried out by state
or communal bodies on public land. An example of this is
the case study in Tunisia where the well technology used to
recharge the deep groundwater aquifers is mainly exploited
by the government agencies. Private irrigated farms are also
benefiting indirectly by increased groundwater availability.
Grazing land degradation is often attributed to the ‘tragedy
of the common’, i.e. state or common ownership and the
open access rights lead to irresponsible overuse. Both grazing
land examples in this study, however, have individual
ownership and rights. As a result, these two examples are
special. This supports the assumption that it is difficult to
find good examples of SLM on communal and state land
without private rights. There is a stark contrast between the
ownership of cropping land and forest land; whereas cropping
land is all individually owned, forest land is almost all
communally or state owned. On forests that are not privatized,
there also seem to be good management options.
Water use rights are generally regulated to a lesser extent
than land use rights. However, almost half of the case studies
within DESIRE are based on individual or leased water use
Forest
management
DESIRE - WOCAT 2012
Figure 12: Land ownership in relation to the SLM technology
groups.
open access (unorganised)
communal (organised)
leased
individual
rights, as illustrated in Figure 13. The most difficult situations
are open access regimes, both for land and water use. This is
the case for seven of the DESIRE case studies, none of which
are in the water management group, which would probably
cause conflicts over water use. It should however be noted
that most technologies concern rainfed agriculture, where
water use is less of an issue than with irrigation systems.
The relative level of wealth is classified according to local rather
than international standards. Poverty and well-being can
be causes as well as impacts of land degradation. Looking at
Figure 14 shows that 60% of the land users applying the SLM
technologies are of average wealth; only a few are either very
poor or very rich. The technology group of cross-slope barriers
has mainly rich and average land users, which makes sense
because of the higher costs associated to this technology.
Figure 15 illustrates the high importance of off-farm income
for most of the land users applying the documented technologies.
Almost half of the land users (43%) depend on an
income of more than 50% from additional activities outside
farming. This is especially the case for rainfed systems, for
example; for the Cape Verde Aloe Vera Living Barrier technology
the dependence on off-farm income is reduced from
over 50% to 30-40% if irrigation water is used. Access to
employment is generally considered low and it can therefore
be assumed that the rate of off-farm employment would
48
DESIRE – WOCAT Desire for Greener Land
No. of case studies
Water use rights
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Cropping
management
Water
management
Cross-slope
barriers
Grazing land
management
SLM technology groups
Forest
management
DESIRE - WOCAT 2012
Figure 13: Water use rights in relation to the SLM technology
groups.
Italy, Erik van den Elsen Morocco, Erik van den Elsen