Research theme coordinator: Centre for Development and Environment, University of Berne

APPRAISING AND SELECTING SUSTAINABLE LAND MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES: A methodology based on stakeholder participation and global best practices

Imagine you are an agricultural advisor and you need solutions to:

improve water availability or prevent dam siltation or adapt to climate variability and change or combat desertification and land degradation.

How and where can you find best practices, proven strategies, new ideas?   How can you proceed in appraising and selecting strategies?

We have developed a three-part procedure for identification, assessment and selection of strategies.

»1: Identifying sustainable land management strategies

Identify existing and potential sustainable land management strategies using a participatory learning approach (Stakeholder Workshop 1)

Identifying land degradation and conservation measures with the help of photographs and the water and biomass cycles		Learning together in the local context and selecting promising technologies and approaches for further assessment

»2: Evaluating strategies

Evaluate, document and share strategies with standardised questionnaires

Interaction between land users and experts using WOCAT questionnaires which help to understand the reasons behind successful local experiences.		Standardisation allows adding to and sharing of experiences worldwide through the WOCAT database.

»3: Selecting strategies for field testing

Select the most promising strategies with a decision support tool (Stakeholder Workshop 2)

Selection of options is based on a search of the WOCAT database, leading through a series of key questions.	Setting criteria, scoring, and the decision-making process are supported by software for multi-objective decision support (MODSS)		Both tools are embedded into a stakeholder workshop, continuing the "learning for sustainability" approach.

This is a coherent and comprehensive process

• from initial co-learning among main stakeholders
• to participatory appraisal of existing field experience and
• to the selection and decision-making for implementation.

With the approach proposed here, it can be hypothesised that the measures selected are ecologically effective, socially acceptable, and financially viable, and thus have a high chance of successful implementation!