Desire for Greener Land

No. of case studies
Increased farm income
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Cropping
management
Water
management
Cross-slope
barriers
ers and water management are rather costly. However, they
show the whole range from “high” (meaning the investment
resulted in much higher benefits), to “no”, where there was
no additional gain (meaning that the investment did neither
reduce nor increase the overall farm income). This indicates
that if investments can be made, the benefits can be
increased. External inputs and subsidies might be justified in
such cases, especially where establishment costs go beyond
the means of the local land users. Such issues are covered by
the approach questionnaire.
In general, socio-economic disadvantages were not often
mentioned. Nine technologies increase the land user’s expenses
on agricultural inputs, mainly in the cropping management
group due to investments in special machinery (e.g. no tillage)
or in seeds (e.g. leguminous). Still, these all report about a
net farm income increase. The highest increased expenses are
reported from the two Botswana case studies (biogas and roof
rainwater harvesting) as both of them require high investments.
These two technologies can therefore only be implemented
with subsidies, especially for poor land users.
Socio-cultural impacts
Grazing land
management
SLM technology groups
none / n.a.
little
medium
high
The socio-cultural benefits most often mentioned are
‘improved conservation / erosion knowledge’; see Figure 18.
Other socio-cultural benefits were only mentioned for specif-
Forest
management
DESIRE - WOCAT 2012
Figure 17: Increased farm income across the SLM technology
groups.
ic cases, such as increased recreational opportunities for the
two ecological production examples in Spain. Community
or national institution strengthening is a benefit primarily
reported by forest management technologies, for which
this seems to be an important issue. Conflict mitigation was
reported for seven technologies from all groups except cropping
management. This is probably due to the fact that the
technologies in this group are usually applied on individual
land where the potential for conflicts is reduced, except
where neighbours are suffering e.g. by too much withdrawals
of irrigation water from rivers.
On the other hand, four of the five forest management
technologies seem to increase socio-cultural conflicts, albeit
only a small amount. For the land reclamation with agave
forestry, a significant increase in conflicts is expected due
to the high economic benefits and the alcohol problem,
although these disadvantages have not yet been witnessed.
Ecological impacts
Water issues
Reduction of uncontrolled runoff is a benefit particularly
related to erosion control and downstream flooding.
Furthermore, in drylands, surface runoff is a great loss of
precious rainwater, especially during the short periods of
heavy rain storms. Where storm water cannot be retained
50
DESIRE – WOCAT Desire for Greener Land
No. of case studies
Improved conservation / erosion knowledge
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
no
little
medium
high
DESIRE - WOCAT 2012
Figure 18: Improved conservation / erosion knowledge across
the SLM technology groups.
Cape Verde,Gudrun Schwilch Italy, Rudi Hessel