1.
Introduction
With globally 33% of soils considered degraded (UNCCD, 2017), stopping
land degradation while sustainably producing food is one of the biggest
challenges worldwide (Bouma & McBratney, 2013; Diamond, 2005; Webb et
al., 2017). This challenge is particularly pressing in a country like
Burundi, which depends on subsistence farming on often steep slopes, and
where the population size will double towards 2040. Already at present,
with a population density of 450/km2, high pressure on
the land combined with unsustainable agricultural practices is leading
to wide-scale deforestation, over-exploitation of the land, and soil
erosion (Eggers, 2006). Burundi scores second lowest worldwide on the
Global Food Security Index (2019), with more than 50% of the population
being chronically food insecure (WFP, 2019) and unable to meet their
dietary needs (Niragira et al., 2015). Although soil erosion and its
effect on crop yields are not new phenomena in this region (Dregne,
1990), current rates and scale of erosion are unprecedented, and urgent
action is required to prevent the permanent loss of ecosystem services
due to land degradation (Blake et al., 2018).
The question is what strategies can reverse land degradation and
declining food security? Burundi has received considerable international
development aid in the past decades, but hardly any progress was made in
alleviating poverty and food insecurity. The underlying reason is that
these interventions were often short-term, top-down and focused on
conflict-resolution or emergency aid (Uvin, 2010). Currently,
development programmes start paying more attention to agricultural
production and land degradation, but approaches often lack essential
elements of sustainability, such as building local ownership, capacities
and motivation. Tackling complex societal issues such as land
degradation cannot be done by top-down interventions or incentive-based
approaches (Hall‐Blanco, 2016); because “Only the self-reliant efforts
of poor people and poor societies themselves can end poverty…”
(Easterly, 2006).
Hence, development actors should become facilitators of bottom-up and
community-based development (Abrams et al., 2009), and enable farmers to
tackle land degradation themselves. This article presents such a
bottom-up approach, the Integrated Farm Planning approach, or PIP
approach (in French: “Plan Intégré du Paysan ”), which proposes
a different development discourse on how to tackle land
degradation in complex rural-oriented economies like in Burundi. After
conceptualizing the PIP approach in the next sections, the paper
discusses results and lessons learned, and concludes by reflecting on
the applicability of the PIP approach to stop land degradation and move
towards resilience-based stewardship.