The challenge of HIV/AIDS: Where does agroforestry fit in? - World ...

72World Agroforestry into the Futureextent of land management problems, theirproximate and root causes, and their consequencesfor society. The third section willthen examine how past and current policieshave contributed to such land managementproblems. The fourth section of the chapterdiscusses positive policy reforms that havetaken place along with those that requirefurther attention. Finally, the contributionof research to the process of policy reformis discussed, and priorities for natural resourcemanagement (NRM) and agroforestryresearch centres are proposed.Land degradation as a publicpolicy issueExtent of land degradation in theworldMany researchers, for example Oldemanet al. (1991), estimate that severe land degradationis already pervasive. Significantdamage has been observed in the Balkans,eastern Europe, much of Southeast Asia,the farming areas bordering the SaharaDesert, and the central United States, whilethere is substantial but patchy degradationin areas of South Asia, eastern andsouthern Africa, and the eastern Amazon.In their paper, Oldeman et al. estimatedthat around 25 percent of land in developingcountries is degraded, rising to 65percent when focusing solely on Africanagricultural land. However, the severity ofsuch large-scale land degradation is contentious.A recent study by Kaiser (2004)for example, supported by Wiebe (2003),has tempered some of the earlier alarmingnational and global rates of soil loss.What can be said is that land degradationis found throughout the world, but it isa more complex problem in developingcountries where it tends to reinforce and bereinforced by poverty.Why land degradation is a publicpolicy issueThe vast extent of degradation indicatesthat it is a major problem, but does not byitself imply that it is a public policy issue.However, there are complementary reasonsthat clearly make it a policy issue ofimportance at local, national, regional, andglobal scales. Firstly, there are significantsocial costs and benefits (externalities) associatedwith bad and good land management(for example, more dust or carbonsequestration respectively). Externalitiescan have local/regional effects, such asthe sedimentation of Lake Victoria fromdegraded upland agricultural communities,or global impacts, such as dust cloudsmoving from the desertified Sahel to NorthAmerica. Secondly, poverty reduction andfood security are the major goals of mostdeveloping-country governments, and thepoor are overwhelmingly rural. Helping thepoor, which is a public policy issue, thereforemust involve some attention to theland resource. This is important for overalleconomic growth as well as for equity considerations.Finally, future generations haverights to a viable soil resource and governments,as ‘custodians’ of the land (and,indeed, as owners of much of it), have anobligation to ensure that this happens.Reasons for land degradation insmallholder farming systemsThere are some causes of land degradationthat are either not possible to prevent orare too costly to prevent at farm or landscapescales. These include climatic catastrophessuch as major storms that bringforth massive rain and wind erosion, environmentallyinduced droughts, fires, majorpests or diseases that destroy vegetativecover, and human-induced or perpetuateddegradation such as massive health calamitiesor wars.But many other types of degradation canbe prevented or at least mitigated throughland management. Under similar physicaland climatic conditions, some communitiesare found to manage their land resourcesmuch better than their neighbours(see Pretty 1995 for a number of examples).Likewise, within the same villagelocation, some farms will have intact soilswhile others exhibit considerable types oferosion. So what explains the differences inland degradation or, more specifically, whyare large areas of lands not being investedin and managed sustainably?In their 1994 paper, Scherr and Hazell offeredsix main reasons why smallholderfarmers may not invest in NRM or adoptNRM technologies. These reasons are listedin a similar order to a decision-makingprocess, from first consideration to last:1. Lack of recognition of a natural resourceproblem2. Lack of importance of the natural resourceor its problem3. Lack of willingness to invest in the resource4. Lack of capacity to invest in the resource5. Lack of economic and other incentivesto invest in the resource6. Lack of information and support servicesthat are necessary to implement investments.We will now briefly discuss these reasonsspecifically in terms of land managementby smallholders (although these reasons arealso quite valid when considering collectivemanagement of landscapes).Lack of recognition of a naturalresource problem. Resource degradationprocesses, such as nutrient leaching ormore subtle sheet erosion of topsoil,are not always easy to detect. Even if