Food Assistance for Assets (FFA) Manual

ANNEX C-3
ANNEX C-3: HIGH CAPACITY CONTEXTS - SUSTAINABLE
LAND MANAGEMENT (SLM) AND COMMUNITY-BASED PARTICIPATORY WATERSHED DEVELOPMENT (CBPWD)

ODXP PREVENTION & RECOVERY World Food Programme

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FFA and Participatory Planning in High Capacity Contexts

FFA Manual Annex C-3 (2011): version 1. This Annex was published and made electronically available in July 2011. Where relevant, this module supersedes previous guidance on FFA interventions. Please inform ODXPs Prevention and Recovery team if you identify outdated information that causes confusion with the information presented here. Any updates to Annex C-3 will be outlined below (and include page numbers) to allow FFA practitioners with an older version to identify where changes have occurred: No changes as yet.

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FFA and Participatory Planning in High Capacity Contexts

ANNEX C-3: HIGH CAPACITY CONTEXTS - SUSTAINABLE LAND MANAGEMENT (SLM) AND COMMUNITY-BASED PARTICIPATORY WATERSHED DEVELOPMENT (CBPWD)
In high capacity contexts, more sophisticated and integrated approaches can be considered. Sustainable Land Management (SLM), for example, is a comprehensive concept that integrates ecological and social approaches through a set of land management principles and interventions encompassing community-based approaches with households, groups and communities, within defined landscape units. Similarly, watershed planning bring people and their livelihoods together with the natural environment by focus on water catchments as the focus of planning of activities, working beyond simple administrative boundaries that often cut across watersheds and hence the natural resource base on which livelihoods are built.

Sustainable Land Management (SLM) is a comprehensive concept that attempts to reconcile ecological and social imperatives through a set of land management principles and interventions that encompasses household, groups and community needs and priorities over defined landscape units. This occurs through a combination of integrated efforts that while supporting community based approaches and their related hydrological units (watersheds and sub-watersheds) consider landscapes and social interactions as key elements to identify sustainable land management solutions. This is critically important for FFA as they are often planned and implemented to restore or rehabilitate social and agricultural infrastructure and natural resources in degraded environments. To this effect, FFA can support the efforts of local governments and agencies such as FAO, GTZ and other NGOs to treat participatory watershed development as a central element of SLM, and directly link such efforts to tackling aspects of vulnerability and food insecurity. These basic highlights also provide WFP staff and partners not particularly familiar with participatory watershed planning and SLM to grasp a few fundamental concepts and key features of such approaches. The landscape approach draws on the principle that land resources need to be managed not only on the basis of commodities and market needs, but also and above all, on the basis on the local ecological and socio-economic conditions It relies very much on the combination of land management principles at plot, farm or village level, with natural resources management and planning at a broader landscape level. Landscape management adds a wider dimension to farm level management, through a collective understanding of all land resources, practices, and tenure arrangements, within a landscape, including forests, water resources and cycles, biodiversity, soils and erosion control, microclimates, land access and rights, sharing of the use of rural and agriculture infrastructures (communication, water, storage) Global Drylands: a UN Response 2011, UNEP

Watershed planning allows linking, complementing, and harmonizing up- and down-stream project activities aimed at supporting and enhancing livelihoods, building resilience, and strengthening disaster risk preparedness and mitigation. They bring people and their livelihoods together with the natural environment in ways that might not be possible with other forms of planning such as planning along administrative boundaries that cut across watersheds and hence the natural resource base on which livelihoods are built. In most of the contexts where WFP provides food assistance, the understanding of sub-watershed interactions within and between communities is a major step in selecting and designing sustainable FFA interventions. In each community there may be one or more sub-watershed units that need to be identified for planning. For example, a number of conservation and reforestation measures on sloping parts of a

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FFA and Participatory Planning in High Capacity Contexts

watershed can protect downstream areas from floods. Rural people and farmers interact differently in different portions of a watershed, and A watershed (also called a water catchment, or basin) is sometimes very complex arrangements are made up of a number of smaller catchments within the required to ensure that a given land use can larger, overall watershed; some of these catchments may be treated with different measures. be degraded (e.g. deforested) while others are not. As people will live in different parts of a watershed, the In the ODXP PGM section explaining Risks and actions of one group can affect those living somewhere else Context Pillar 2 How To, particular for example, deforestation of hill slopes for agricultural attention is provided to explain land production raises the of floods and landslides for those degradation, peoples and watershed living in the valleys. Degraded watersheds degrade interactions. The focus is about livelihoods and leave farmers exposed to shocks. The understanding the status of natural resource extent of land degradation in some countries demands for elements such as water, soil, and vegetation significant investments in terms of watershed based (cover), land use and how people interact participatory soil conservation and water harvesting with these natural resources from a sociomeasures over different land uses. The inability to ensure economic perspective. an adequate conservation and sustained protection of reforested and re-vegetated sites causes a rapid [Note: It is not the purpose of this note to acceleration of soil erosion and depletion of water tables as elaborate in detail on watershed planning well as of the level of soil moisture and nutrients available methodologies but to provide highlights on to crops. This translates into frequent crop failures. the relevance of planning approaches that include watershed principles within a broader approach of participatory planning. This is of relevance to WFP as in many countries participatory watershed management or approaches that consider watershed aspects will be those that will guide the selection, implementation and sustainability of several FFA. This is particularly relevant in many of the degraded landscapes where WFP beneficiaries reside. ]
Figure 1: Major watershed and land use dynamics (FAO), Nepal 2005)

A community-based and participatory approach (which includes households and groups interactions) for watershed planning considers not only the specific community but also the interactions between communities sharing specific territorial units or landscapes (SLM principles). Watershed planning approaches used in the past (particularly during the 1970s and 1980s) tended to have a strong administrative and technical focus and did not always reconcile the specific needs of small communities and farmers groups with the imperative of major watershed driven soil conservation and reforestation efforts1. This resulted in top-down planning and limited sense of ownership and participation of local populations in maintaining terraces or tree plantations created which were looked at more like impositions from the top rather than the result of robust and interactive negotiations with the communities concerned.

IIED Publication - Participatory Watershed Research and Management Shadow Falls, by Robert E. Rhoades : One solution to resolving the messy overlay of human activity and naturally defined watersheds is to combine watersheds with 'participation'; that is, full involvement of local populations in the identification of priority problems and potential solutions with teams of scientists, planners, and development specialists

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FFA and Participatory Planning in High Capacity Contexts

A central element of watershed planning is to explore to how people interact in different portions of a given watershed area (or catchment) surrounding their homes and village becomes a central element of planning. How rural people share and use degraded grazing lands, how they share and cultivate steep slopes, how they consider gullies and what ideas they have in terms soil erosion, deforestation, droughts and floods and what to do in terms of rehabilitation are all useful issues to examine. Understanding these dynamics between how people and sub-watershed interact can provide the most meaningful approach to FFA; such approaches have been developed and used in different parts of the world, notably in India, Nepal, China, Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia. Watershed interactions further breakdown at the sub-watershed and micro-watershed level ultimately up to each compound or crop field that belong to individuals. Small areas of a few hectares with steep slopes can be extremely important to stabilize if overlooking fields occupied by other settlers and that are cultivated. A number of guidelines and links related to participatory watershed planning are included in Table 2 of Module C, particularly the Community-based Participatory Development Planning (CBPWD) Guidelines (Ethiopia MOARD, 2005) to which WFP has significantly contributed to develop and practically implement on the ground.

Figure 2: Interaction between two catchments. The two communities share a portion of the sub-watershed area (the green zone, where community 2 has a portion of land that influences the hydrology and direction of runoff into the area used by community 1, The two communities share a common outlet (river) and large denuded range of steep slopes. Two community-based participatory watershed plans need to be developed, with their respective planning teams to also engage in dialogue and negotiate series of FFA able to fix the entire watershed.

Figure 3 Guidelines on CBPWD (Ethiopia)

A simple guidance note on low-tech & low-risk activities can also be developed in different contexts and rapid reference tool kits prepared based on the identification of what is possible to achieve at community level, during different periods of the year, that require only limited technical support and that largely rely on local knowledge and skills. In other words a number of possible low-tech & low risk interventions that require minimum external support.

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FFA and Participatory Planning in High Capacity Contexts

The Example below illustrates the range of potential FFA and self-help interventions possible to identify in each section of a micro-watershed. [Please note that this interpretation was discussed with farmers in the field and during a subsequent workshop. Photographs are herein used to facilitate interpretation of landscape features during training sessions.] Example Sub-watershed planning in semi-arid mountainous environment This example helps illustrates the range of potential FFA and self-help interventions possible to identify in each section of a micro-watershed. [Please note that this interpretation was discussed with farmers in the field and during a subsequent workshop. Photographs are herein used to facilitate interpretation of landscape features during training sessions.]

2 3

5 5 6
Figure 4: A sub-watershed in a semi-arid mountainous environment

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Table 1 below provides an approximate description of the possible assets that need to be established in order to fix the degradation and loss of productivity problems of this sub-watershed. A simple division of the area in more or less homogeneous blocks is roughly indicated for the purpose of this exercise (field surveys are clearly more accurate). What emerges from this simple example is the complexity of interactions between communal, groups and individual assets that are all interrelated and need to be considered in watershed and landscape planning. The range of possible solutions indicated would apply for a considerable part of the rest of the entire watershed not visible in the photo. These interventions also probably apply to parts of adjacent communities.

Table 1 Possible Community, Groups and Individual Assets based on land use and needs
Land use 1. Upper slopes (encroached patches, steep cultivation, depleted soils) Community assets 1. Hillside terraces + trenches + multipurpose tree planting 2. Area closure management 3. Bylaws established to stop any further encroachment NA (except if farmers agree to change its land use to reforestation/closu re) NA Groups assets Establishment of area closure users groups (linked to the bylaws) Individual assets NA Outcomes Reduced runoff, protection of homesteads and fields from floods

2. Steep and cultivated slopes

NA

3. Homestead area with steep slope

4. Lower sections of homestead cultivated fields (gentle slope)

NA

Joint work with neighbors on increasing thickness of the vegetative fence and to divert runoff with a small cutoff drain into a micropond built in lower part of the fields 1-2 neighbors may agree to support the construction and use of the micro-pond

Farmers build reinforced hillside terraces and bunds and stabilize them with cash crops and perennials Reinforce vegetative fence + soil bunds and cash crops + compost making and zero grazing within cultivated plots Vegetative fencing of the perimeter around the cultivated land + micro-pond construction and development of the area for vegetable and cash crops production + introduction of low cost small scale irrigation techniques

Reduction of soil loss and erosion + shift to more stable vegetated spots

Increased biomass production, safe diversion of runoff and increased production at household level around homestead Increased productivity and income expected from increased water availability and small scale irrigation

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FFA and Participatory Planning in High Capacity Contexts

5. Portions of cultivated lands on gentle to medium slope range

NA

Stone or stone faced terraces stabilized + farmland closure from livestock interference

Stone or stone faced bunds stabilized with fodder and cash crops Same as left in case of single owners

6. Portions of medium sloping lands with shallow soil depth and miscellaneous use (spot grazing, cultivation of low demanding crops, etc)

NA

Vegetative fencing and planting with improved or local grasses & legumes for forage development or agroforestry site using multiple trenches and eyebrow basins for multipurpose tree/shrubs planting

Increased moisture conservation and erosion control expected to generate increased crop production Micro-niches rehabilitated and developed for use by poorest households

Next steps: putting together your community-based watershed plan: A major difficulty for technicians and partners is often the question of from where to start in selecting planning units. A small planning unit (for example the sub-watershed indicated in the photo) misses many essential interactions with the rest of the community land use units. The focus on such a small area does not always generate significant environmental gains, and that may even be jeopardized by the pressure that continues unabated from adjacent farming units and members of the community using the upper ranges. It is thus imperative for field staff and partners to discuss at different levels (district, community and groups) to identify first the broader planning units that local people define as strongly linked one to another. Often, such communities are clustered along invisible lines that group them along specific territorial units (e.g. along a same range then interrupted by a major drainage line which then demarcates the next cluster, etc) or because they are connected by a feeder road to a market place or to a combination of all of these factors and unique cultural and social bonds. Once these broad planning units are identified, it is then easier to identify priority areas through negotiations with the different community representatives and undertake selected community based planning. Within each community jurisdiction, sub-watershed planning assumes major relevance from the logic of the different activities perspective. As indicated earlier, portions of specific land uses that belong to sub-watersheds shared between two communities and critical to fulfill a technically correct intervention need to be part of a joint planning exercise between two or more adjacent communities within the broader planning unit.

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FFA and Participatory Planning in High Capacity Contexts

Summary of community based watershed planning steps

Step 1

Getting started at district level: Prioritization and selection of watersheds and related communities, forming of district level watershed coordination and technical teams, reconnaissance visits, etc.

Step 2

Getting started at community level: forming and organizing community level watershed planning teams gender balanced, discuss functions and accountability at general assembly level, decide on frequency of meetings, etc.

Step 3 Biophysical and socio-economic survey: problem identification and ranking, transect walks,
completion of socio-economic surveys, village and watershed mapping, land use and erosion features descriptions, etc. This exercise allow to start looking at the relationship between biophysical and socioeconomic survey results, which then allows to focus on specific areas and peoples priorities.

Step 4

Identification and prioritization of interventions that bring change: selection of priority interventions at communal, groups and individual level, including those for most deprived households through deliberate FFA investments, solidarity efforts and other investments. Identification of integration aspects, sequence of various FFA, technical description of interventions (standards), and gender issues, etc.

Step 5

Getting the options and interventions discussed and approved by the General Assembly/community: presentation and review of plan prepared by planning team to the whole community, discussion and agreements reached with other communities on shared interventions, and final selection of different interventions.

Step 6 Development map, inputs and action plan: maps, inputs tables, work plans, including capacity
plan (e.g. technical support, training, materials, tools, etc).

Step 7 Implementation strategies agreed: resources mobilization (e.g. FFA, Self-help, combinations,
etc), capacity aspects agreed and timed, and responsibilities at all levels.

Step 8

Participatory monitoring and evaluation system established: participatory M&E plan, responsibilities and frequency, outputs and outcomes expected.