“With the problem tree, I identified what was wrong in my
household: the lack of dialogue, mismanagement of household assets, lack
of vision and planning, and my husband who loves alcohol a lot and
leaves all activities to me. […] With the solution tree, [I
realize] we should improve family dialogue, break the fear of talking
to my husband, and share the new knowledge acquired with him, because
the PIP is not individual, it is a household PIP.”
6. Lessons learned for a different
discourse
Results from both studies show the enormous potential of the PIP
approach to mobilise farmers to stop land degradation and move towards
resilience-based stewardship. Widespread conservation practices, better
managed farms, enhanced food security, organized villages and farmers
who are motivated to invest in their farm; these are all signs that the
approach works. Results also suggest that the three foundation
principles of the PIP approach – if developed and given attention from
the start – mutually reinforce each other, with notably motivation
driving stewardship (Ryan et al., 2003). By envisioning the future,
planning activities together and seeing quick results, farmers realize
that good land stewardship improves yields and food security, and become
more resilient in all respects (knowledge, income, diversity, social
relations, etc.). This change in mind-set and the rapidly growing sense
of responsibility for better stewardship (Brown & Mitchell, 1998) is
the crux of the PIP approach, and explains why even in the
3rd and 4th generation PIP farmers
– who only recently created their PIP – effects are already visible.
Furthermore, the fact that everyone, even poor or illiterate families,
are able to envision, draw, plan and implement practices according to
their needs and capabilities, is an important reason for the fast uptake
of PIP creation. The same applies to women, who are often among the best
Farmer Innovators and trainers. Empowerment is the main guiding
principle during trainings, and makes farmers more self-reliant, creates
ownership and as such drives motivated action. Together with
collaboration, empowerment also works at group and village level,
triggering ‘conscientization’ which is essential in a process of
transformation (Freire, 1972). For instance, only facilitating that
information flows within the group of Farmer Innovators is already
sufficient to start action, as they learn from others, realize that
solutions are within reach, and feel able to do it themselves – and
even faster with others. This is also observed in the process of Village
Vision development, which is currently on-going in most PIP villages as
a follow-up step to PIP creation at household level. Collectively, all
kinds of action are undertaken to dig trenches, construct roads and
plant trees. This is in high contrast with the usual wait-and-see
mentality in Burundi, which is often due to incentive-based intervention
strategies that undermine the power and initiative of farmers to act.
Working along the guiding principles of empowerment and collaboration is
thus crucial. Farms in Burundi are extremely small, and as farmers
usually don’t see any option to make a living from their land, investing
in conservation practices is not a logical choice. This changes when the
so-called ‘PIP fever’ starts spreading in a village, with PIP farmers
telling others – thanks to enhanced social capital (Pretty, 2003) - how
they have improved their farms and living conditions with their own
means. These farmers have a different mind-set, are proud of what they
have achieved, and are eager to pass the message that good land
stewardship can actually enhance food production with relatively little
extra effort. This attitude, this sense of stewardship and motivation to
improve, are the core ingredients of a different development discourse
on how to mobilize the huge number of farmers needed to stop land
degradation at scale.
The third guiding principle, integration, is an inherent aspect of the
PIP approach. The results and testimonies show how PIP farmers currently
understand the importance of integration on their farm, and apply more
diverse land and crop management practices, keep different livestock,
and include cash crops and some income-generating activities. In all
generations does PIP creation result in more diversified and resilient
livelihoods, which is the essence of any integrated strategy (Ellis,
2000). Again, this goes along with enhanced collaboration, within the
household (as many testimonies show) but also within entrepreneurial
groups that have emerged and established market linkages to sell their
produce collectively. That integration is understood and acted on is
also visible in the initiatives that many villages are currently
undertaking to collectively manage whole slopes to stop erosion.
Several lessons learned for a different discourse on how to stop land
degradation in Burundi have already been mentioned in this paper. They
all relate to the importance of the guiding principles for any
intervention strategy, and the need to work simultaneously on all
foundation principles; if not all efforts will be in vain. The five key
lessons learned from the experiences in Burundi over the past six years
can be summarized as follows:
- Empowering people drives change : the PIP approach facilitates
that people become actors of change, by taking their capacities and
knowledge seriously, by telling them a different “story” than other
projects, and by changing mind-sets towards motivated action.
- Development starts at household level : the PIP approach
facilitates households to visualize their common vision in a drawing
and a plan, based on needs and aspirations of all family members, as
such stimulating equity, togetherness and concrete joint action.
- Tangible improvements on the farm are key : the PIP approach
generates visible effects and short-term gains, by facilitating that
knowledge flows from farmer-to-farmer, based on better planning and
integration of practices, as such stimulating good land stewardship.
- Mobilising people creates impetus : a crucial asset of the PIP
approach is its potential to scale-up and mobilise whole villages,
where collaboration, social cohesion and trust grow, and people
genuinely participate in PIP activities and collective action.
- Impact requires engagement at all levels : in order to achieve
impact, the PIP principles are equally needed in and applicable to
staff of (implementing) organisations and (local) authorities, who
need to become engaged and provide enabling conditions for impact.
7.
Conclusions
This paper started with the question how to tackle land degradation at a
wide scale in Burundi, and expressed the need to work from the bottom-up
with an inclusive approach that empowers and mobilizes farmers to
undertake action. A similar plea that “sustainable soil and water
conservation must not impose models or packages but rather become a
process for learning and perpetual novelty” was expressed already by
(Pretty & Shah, 1997), but has hardly been taken into account since
then. If only that had happened, because our findings show that the PIP
approach is able to empower and motivate up till 80% of the households
in a village to invest in conservation practices on their farms and
collectively at village level. These conservation efforts go hand in
hand with numerous other – often profound – changes in villages that
work with the PIP approach, with most PIP farmers having become more
self-reliant, proud, collaborative, and progress-driven. Visualizing a
more resilient and productive future farm in a drawing and planning
actions within the household, has given these families new purpose and a
clear direction for motivated action. Families and entire villages have
changed from being passive and aimless, to being active and motivated; a
clear sign of sustainable change.
Developing the three PIP foundation principles conceptualized in this
paper has driven this change, with motivation – next to stewardship and
resilience – being most crucial for creating ownership and genuine
engagement. This requires to refrain from the use of incentives like
cash and food for work, right from the start and at any time. This is a
major challenge for the modus operandi of most (development)
organizations, but in order to achieve sustainable impact they must
become facilitators of change. In Burundi this change started at the
household level, but quickly resulted in collective actions of all sorts
at village level. This potential of the PIP approach to achieve impact
at scale is essential to stop land degradation, with particularly the
farmer-to-farmer exchange of knowledge and passion for PIP creation
being the flywheel. Following Hall‐Blanco (2016), projects and
agricultural extension services must therefore abolish traditional
top-down intervention and incentive-based approaches, and must urgently
join efforts to build a foundation for sustainable action by farmers
themselves.
It is this change in attitude within staff and institutions that
underpins the different discourse on how to stop land degradation
that we propose in this paper. The challenge to empower and mobilize the
millions of smallholder farmers to undertake action, can only be tackled
once development organisations, institutional donors and government
agencies act upon this different discourse, and when all of them have a
clear vision about the need to move towards resilience-based
stewardship; from farms, to villages to landscapes. Although just
started, Burundi is on its way to stop land degradation, supported by
ever more institutional stakeholders who see that this is the way
forward. Our final plea is to learn from what is being done in Burundi,
because the core elements of the PIP approach are applicable wherever
there is an urgency to create more stewardship for the Earth and its
natural resources.