Crossing the Internal Frontiers - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 184

catchment level, and state suspicion of local people's lack of knowledge
meant that these decisions imposed upon farmers. In the long run, this
approach simply does not work, as people do not maintain the structures
over which they feel no ownership. By the end of the 1980s, it had become
painfully clear that the conventional approach to soil and water conserv-
ation was not conserving soils.
However, a group of soil conservation officials, led by J K Kiara,
Maurice Mbegera and M Mbote, recognized that the only way to achieve
widespread conservation coverage was to mobilize people to embrace soil
and water conserving practices on their own terms. All financial subsidies
were stopped, and resources were allocated, instead, to participatory
processes, good advice and training, and farmer trips. The catchment
approach was adopted in 1989, and was seen as a way of concentrating
resources and efforts within a specified catchment, typically 200-500
hectares, for generally one year, during which all farms are laid out and
conserved with full community participation. Small adjustments and
maintenance are then carried out by the community members themselves,
with the support of extension agents.
But these participatory methods imply shifts of initiative, responsibility
and action to rural people themselves, and this is not easy for government
officials who are used to getting their own way. Moreover, cross-disciplinary
teams are drawn from various government departments, such as those with
responsibility for education, environment, fisheries, forestry, public works,
water and health, in order to work together with local people. A catchment
conservation committee of farmers is elected as the institution responsible
for coordinating local activities. Quietly, and with little fuss, some 4500
committees have been formed over the decade, and by the late 1990s,
about 100,000 farms were being conserved a year. This was more than
double the rate, and with fewer resources, than in the 1980s, a time when
much of the long-term benefits of conservation were in doubt because
of local disapproval of the imposed approach.
The process of implementing the catchment approach itself has, of
course, varied according to the human resources available and differing
interpretations of the degree of participation that is necessary to mobilize
the catchment community. Some still feel that farmers should simply be
told what to do. This approach inevitably fails. Others do not invest
enough time in developing relations of trust. But where there is genuine
participation in planning and implementation, the impacts on food
production, landscape diversity, groundwater levels and community well-
being are substantial.