4.2 Catalyzing local governance decisions to increase landscape
resilience to erosion
The DEM and orthomosaic aerial photograph provided a unique
visualisation of the landscape connectivity for community members who
have little formal scientific training and normally have no access to
satellite imagery. One of the central aspects underpinning the workshop
discussion of hydrological connectivity on the ground was an implicit
understanding of the need for effective governance mechanisms (including
policy instruments) at both community and District levels, to enable
community-led actions to be implemented effectively and, more
importantly, consistently. Herein a key incentive (German, 2018) being
retention of soil and nutrients within the plot and reducing collective
impact on downslope common land. Two specific governance elements were
identified by participants: Committed leadership supported by the
majority of the community; and effective sanctions for policy
non-compliance. Previous co-designed community actions (Blake et al.,
2018; Rabinovich et al., 2019) included setting aside (and fencing
against livestock) an area of severely eroded and gullied communal
grazing land, as a demonstration plot to trial potential erosion
mitigation and rehabilitation solutions. The demonstration plot had been
established for three years and had been significantly expanded by the
community without further external support or materials. The
effectiveness of this area at slowing water and the speed of
revegetation was frequently commented on during the workshop.
Critically, the success of these plots (Figure 9) was recognised as
being largely a reflection not of their physical design but of the
quality of governance processes within this specific community. Despite
severe pressure for grazing land, community members (including those who
were not directly involved in the previous projects) were prepared to
respect the Village Leader’s decision to exclude grazing in this area
notwithstanding the resulting personal economic costs (loss of grazing).
Success rested on short term gain for a small number of community
members being deferred for longer-term gain for the wider community.
The connection between good governance mechanisms and mitigation
measures to slow water in high risk areas reflects the temporal and
spatial challenges of taking proximal actions to achieve distal benefits
(Wynants et al., 2019). Land management actions need to be taken upslope
and regularly maintained, at cost to individual land owners and users,
but the benefits are largely experienced downslope and across relatively
longer timeframes. Despite these challenges, this research demonstrates
that using images and other visual tools supports communities to
visualise actions, and associated changes in three dimensions; and
facilitates abstraction of impacts beyond individual costs, to reveal
wider societal benefits.
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Figure 9: evidence of recovery following livestock exclusion (comparing
March 2017 and November 2019)