Terracing, agroforestry, dams or basins? Which of the available soil or water conservation strategies should local residents choose to combat land degradation? Policymakers, NGOs and 28 research institutes, including ISRIC, have developed a roadmap to answer this question. They gathered for their final plenary DESIRE project meeting in Almeria, Spain in October.
DESIRE, a € 9 million EU-project, was initiated by Alterra, Wageningen UR in 2007. The aim was to come up with alternative land-use strategies to combat land degradation and desertification caused by climate change, erosion, mining, fires, pollution, salinization or, for instance, soil depletion. Many countries are aware that all these types of degradation lead to major problems: reason why 193 countries have signed the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Using the new roadmap, policymakers, planners and local communities can now systematically choose the land use strategies that are most suited to their region.
At 16 vulnerable ‘hot spots’ in southern Europe to Chile, Botswana and China, the partner institutes first inventoried the types of land degradation. They then assessed how effective the current soil- and water conservation techniques are at each site. These findings can now be checked in an open DESIRE database, which can be viewed with Google Earth. Together with local stakeholders, the researchers selected suitable land use strategies. Then they tested and evaluated alternative strategies in the field. Finally they used computer models to assess what would happen if a successful strategy were to be adopted in a larger region.
The selected conservation practices – the roadmap outcomes – are the result of negotiations, explains project coordinator Coen Ritsema of Alterra (Wageningen UR). Stakes such as water quality and combating land degradation have to be combined with local residents’ stakes such as income and labour availability. Culture also plays a role, Coen Ritsema adds. ‘Large-scale terracing can be effective in China because Chinese people can be more easily mobilised for large scale and labour-intensive works. In less hierarchic cultures, small scale measures, such as vegetative strips or water-trapping basins will probably work better.’
ISRIC’s contribution consisted of reviewing existing global literature and datasets, also using the outcomes of two other international programs in which it participated: the LADA program, that identified land degradation hot spots at risk throughout the world, and the WOCAT program, which has been documenting soil and water conservation strategies worldwide for 20 years. In addition, the institute identified drivers for land degradation and potential stakeholders in the participatory process. ‘The outcomes of the previous programs were datasets ’, says ISRIC researcher Godert van Lynden. ‘DESIRE goes further – we’ve also tested and evaluated strategies and we’ve made recommendations.’
DESIRE is formally coming to an end, but some participants have already said they will continue their research. Next step is to write a book with analyses and recommendations for the 16 hot spots. That, Godert van Lynden expects, will increase the chance that other land management programs start using the bottom-up approach developed in DESIRE.
