Introduction, scope and main objectives
Environmental degradation and the effects of climate change have a
particularly strong impact on poorer countries. Resource poor people
struggle to adapt to changing climatic conditions and poverty can
exacerbate the decline of natural resources. This also relates to the
state of soils. While declining soil fertility and top soil erosion are
not caused by poverty “soil degradation is accentuated by poverty”
(Lal, 2001). In contexts with limited state capacities, comprehensive
approaches to tackle the challenge of degrading soil are often missing.
The rural poor are commonly the first to suffer from dwindling
resources. There are indications that resource degradation can be the
consequence of weak, inadequate or eroding land tenure rights, making
this link a point of concern for international development actors (see:
USAID, 2007). Smallholder farmers with weak land rights are prone to
lose access to land if pressure on natural resources builds up. In
countries with high population growth and small surface area, such
pressure builds quickly. Small, landlocked countries like Rwanda and
Burundi experience growing scarcity of arable land. While Rwanda’s
government maintains strong control of governance in general and land
governance in particular, the political turmoil of the recent past in
Burundi also meant that land and environmental governance have suffered.
Farmers struggle to make a living while support by the government
remains limited and donor support decreased.
Burundi is globally among the twenty most vulnerable countries to
climate change and natural hazards and has recently experienced massive
rains and flooding, including devastating mudslides (UNOCHA, 2019). Soil
erosion is one of a number of serious challenges that Burundian farmers
face. Generally, “agriculture in Burundi is characterized by low food
production due to the shortage of arable land, minimal use of improved
seeds, a financial market with very limited access for farmers, the
depletion of soil fertility by erosion, and suboptimal fertilizer use”
(Ndagijimana et al, 2018). The country has very high population density
(reported at 423 p. sq. km in 2017, see: World Bank, 2019) which puts
additional pressure on natural resources. Moreover, the land governance
system is of limited functionality, and the influx of large numbers of
returnees from neighbouring countries led to a strong increase in
land-related conflicts over the past years. Among other challenges,
these factors have contributed to a lack of investment in the protection
of natural resources.
Other countries in the region and around the world are also trapped in
vicious cycles of weak land governance, insufficient protection of
smallholder’s land rights and rural poverty. This paper argues that such
contexts of weak land governance hamper global efforts to combat soil
degradation as formulated in the Sustainable Development Goals and the
Voluntary Guidelines on Sustainable Soil Management (FAO, 2017). While
land tenure and land governance might have a more indirect impact on
land management, land tenure and land governance should nevertheless be
key factors in strategies to tackle soil erosion.
It has long been realized that there are a range of factors that
determine if and how much people invest in the conservation and
restoration of resources (FAO, n.d.). People are more likely to invest
in land to which they have a strong claim and the access to which they
consider to be safe. Local institutions play a key role in facilitating
conservation and improving farming approaches and other environmental
practices. Both, individual and collective land rights as well as local
institutions need to be strengthened in order to support sustainable and
effective conservation practices to combat soil erosion. This paper lays
out two approaches that have been applied in the Burundian context and
that can lead to “wise governance of land resources in coupled
human-environment systems” which is needed to combat environmental
degradation (Briassoulis 2019: 2).
This paper sketches out one approach that facilitates the establishment
of functional local land administration systems, and a second one that
creates a system of peer-learning and support for increased agricultural
production and the application of conservation agriculture for soil
protection. Furthermore, the paper explains how these two approaches can
be combined to facilitate an integrated approach, which will provide for
a holistic way to combat soil erosion, improve land governance and land
use.