Up-Scaling Sustainable Land Management in Malawi-The Pathway

Abstract

Land degradation in the Shire River Basin has resulted in reduced productivity of the land, flooding and siltation of rivers which, in turn increases the cost of electricity generation and water purification. The Shire River basin occupies about 3.1 million hectares and is home to more than 5.5 million peopleThe SLM project having worked for three years in this area has reached a point where it has achieved some reasonable success in certain areas towards addressing the dramatic land degradation that is driven by poor agricultural practices and deforestation for charcoal and opening new agricultural lands. The project felt it was opportune to zero down on a few successful technologies and approaches and to scale them up in order to reach the target figure in the in the project support document.The concept of up-scaling SLM activities mainly focuses on area coverage and maximizing impacts. It intends to achieve a shift from dots on the map to Visible Blocks; a shift from demonstration or trial plots to implementation phase.  In other terms it is the propagation of what we are convinced works–(communicating lessons learnt), Standardizing Approaches (stop confusing farmers) splashing the best practices. The strategies which have worked well and yielded desirable results are: i) the systematic approach to Land management or reviving local governance structures then bushfire control then natural forest regeneration/indigenous woodland management which normally gives about 60% to 70% of the expected land improvement. These key activities can then be followed by complimentary activities like ridge alignment of cropland blocks, micro catchment/watershed management, gully reclamation, tree planting, Conservation agriculture and Livelihoods engagement. Another approach could start with local governance, bushfire control then land-use planning and then fitting the complementary activities into the land-use plan. Another approach can use the human-face approach or livelihoods approach to SLM, where one looks at the opportunistic entry activity into the community like beekeeping, fishponds, mushroom production. By giving people the benefits, the land and natural resources will benefit and be enhanced. The achievements from these approaches are huge as we move from achieving 10 ha to 2000 or 3000 hectares at a time. The strategy used was to use a Government –NGO Blend approach, is achieving remarkable gains by putting government and NGOs into competition and NGO to NGOs competition