Research

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Managing wetlands through a ‘Functional Landscape Approach’ (2020)

Wetlands are crucial to sub-Saharan Africa’s ecosystem, yet face increasing threats due to agricultural intensification. The NGO Wetland Action has worked with communities to develop a ‘Functional Landscape Approach’ (FLA) that simultaneously supports people’s livelihoods, wetland ecosystems, and climate change resilience. This paper discusses a FLA that was implemented using a community-based social-ecological approach between 2015-2018 in Kankhulukulu catchment, northern Malawi, where Tiyeni was delivering training and support in Deep Bed Farming.

The project began with a series of consultations and group discussions with stakeholders, which included local government agricultural extension staff, Tiyeni staff, traditional village chiefs, and approximately farmers from Kankhulukulu. Key issues identified included:

• farming
• unreliable markets and control of prices
• lack of farmer-to-farmer knowledge exchange
• natural resources
• climate change
• burning of vegetation

The expanded adoption of Deep Bed Farming was one of the potential solutions proposed by farmers to address these challenges. Initially only a handful of farmers converted part of their land to DBF, but by 2016 all farmers were experimenting with it - having observed the benefits from early adopters. Less than half a year later, all FLA farmers had adopted at least some elements of Deep Bed Farming.
The community-based social-ecological approach, which gave the community ownership of the project from its inception, was successful in many areas. Community members were collectively able to address many of the issues identified during initial consultations and group discussions. Notable achievements included:

• self-organisation into committees responsible for governing distinctive social-ecological components
• development of low-tech methods to monitor environmental conditions
• widespread adoption of innovative approaches to farming and land management (such as Deep Bed Farming)

Because these innovations were rooted in community-led decision-making and institutions, they led to sustainable improvements in food security, income generation, and social-ecological resilience.  Read the full article here.
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Reference: Dixon, A., Mvula, A. and Carrie, R. (2020) A Functional Landscape Approach to managing wetland social-ecological systems: Experiences from the Kankhulukulu project in Malawi. University of Worcester Working Paper