2. Building a foundation for
sustainable
change
Burundi is endowed with abundant rainfall, fertile arable land, and
productive marshlands. With a population growth of 3.3% and with 87%
of the population living from small-scale agriculture, plots have
continuously become more fragmented (0.3 to 0.5 ha per household),
driving farmers to further intensify production and deplete soil
fertility to the limit. Farming is mainly rainfed, with staple crops
like maize, beans and cassava cultivated on steep slopes with
unsustainable farming practices. Expansion of farmland and dependence on
wood for fuel, has pushed deforestation, with forests currently covering
only 6.6% of the territory. Erosion rates in the highlands of Burundi
can reach 100 tons/ha (Ndagijimana, Kessler, & Asseldonk, 2019),
aggravated by increasingly more frequent torrential rains. The resulting
loss of soil fertility and its effect on food security make better land
stewardship by smallholders a top priority in Burundi.
It is in this context that the PIP approach was first introduced in
Burundi in 2013, aiming to build a solid foundation for sustainable
change towards enhanced food production and good land stewardship. The
PIP approach considers that first investing in the people and the land
they manage - before investing in anything else - is a precondition for
sustainable change. The household level is therefore central to motivate
farmers to invest in their land, but by facilitating farmer-to-farmer
trainings and knowledge exchange, tackling land degradation at community
and landscape level is one of the final goals (Kessler, van
Duivenbooden, Nsabimana, & van Beek, 2016).
How the PIP approach works can best be visualized as in Figure 1. Just
like a tree that needs fertile soil to grow strong, the PIP approach
builds a foundation for sustainable change based on three principles:
motivation, stewardship and resilience. This foundation, of genuinely
motivated stewards of the land and its natural resources, is essential
for the sustainability of any intervention or action. This is
illustrated by the arrow in the trunk of the tree, which points to
activities such as livestock improvement, reforestation, value chain
development, water projects, and micro-credit schemes. Where this
foundation is lacking, interventions will face limited ownership and
often fail to achieve sustainable results (Easterly, 2006; Oino, Towett,
Kirui, & Luvega, 2015).
Within the PIP approach ‘resilience-based stewardship’ is a key concept,
in which these three foundation principles come together. Based
on (Chapin et al., 2011), who use this concept as a framework for
stewardship strategies that can increase social-ecological resilience,
we define resilience-based stewardship as “motivated stakeholders who
feel responsible to be good stewards of the land and its natural
resources, and invest in social-ecological resilience of their
landscape”. Furthermore, the blue outer circle of Figure 1 presents the
three guiding principles of the PIP approach: empowerment,
integration and collaboration. During implementation of any activity it
is crucial (especially for project staff) to empower people, to foster
integration of activities, and to enhance collaboration to scale-up
faster. This mobilization of farmers to collaborate is essential to stop
land degradation, and is illustrated by the branches of the tree where
the process starts at household level, spreads to community level and
eventually covers a whole landscape.
Creating an Integrated Farm Plan (a PIP) at household level is a key
tool in the approach. This PIP creation, in which family members develop
a vision and an action plan together, is a flywheel for all other
changes that follow. Figure 2 gives an example of a PIP as drawn by a
family, with left the current situation and right the desired future
farm in 3-5 years, including erosion control measures, a diverse
crop-livestock system, compost pits, a vegetable garden, and
agroforestry. By creating a PIP together, awareness grows within
families about the importance of integrated farm planning and limiting
social and intra-household issues. These dialogues on possibilities to
improve, reach attainable goals, and how to define this in a PIP, lead
to better organized households with common objectives. What follows is
motivated action, because a PIP is based on households’ own capabilities
and knowledge, and not on project targets or objectives. These PIPs at
household level are the first pieces of the required foundation for
sustainable change, with further upscaling of PIP being essential to
stop land degradation at village and beyond.
At village level, upscaling PIP creation takes about 2 years, with a key
role for Farmer Innovators, who are (fe)male farmers – chosen by the
community itself – with a progressive mind-set and spirit to improve.
They are the first to create a PIP, then become PIP trainers, and
through farmer-to-farmer training – mainly in competitions between
organized groups – build capacities in the rest of the community; with
ever more households becoming motivated stewards of their land. This is
strengthened by exchange visits and the development of Village Visions,
which are concrete plans for diverse collective activities, better
access to markets, landscape restoration, and organized village
structures. Local institutions and extension workers are closely
involved in all activities, given that their motivation and genuine
engagement are essential for ownership of the key elements of the PIP
approach and for the sustainability of all actions.