Institutional and political setting
Soil Management in the study area is mainly achieved by the branches of several state organizations (General Directorate of Rural Services, Soil and Water Research Institute, Provincial Agricultural Directorate). The former organization is recently officially bound to local governors and its efficacy is very low. Soil and water Research Institute is directly authorized to combat wind erosion and this has been successfully done until recently. But decreasing official research funds allocated to this company restrict conservation and protection activities.
Within the boundary of the municipality, the land use decision-maker is the municipality board elected by the city's people. There is a wealth of farmer organizations on the issues of funding, irrigation, fertilization etc. A recently installed local soil analysis facility is also available.
TEMA is the only countrywide NGO in terms of desertification that paying significant education efforts of different levels (for pupils, villagers etc.). She sometimes leads for reforestation activities and other social projects too.
The existing law (no: 5403) on soil preservation and land use is effective since 2005. According to this law and related regulations, a soil protection board headed by local governor (vali) was formed in each province to provide all kinds of insights on the issues of land use and soil preservation. This structure also is authorized to decide and make researches on land degradation processes and new soil preservation projects. As a general view of existing legislative situation, main gap is in the coordination of various institutions and structure related to land use and soil protection. Low capacity of the country in creating multidisciplinary studies, as well as lack of base data and maps on land use and soil protection forms other major bottlenecks.
Extension and training services in the Karapınar study site is extremely scarce. Villagers indicated, similarly to the other Turkish study site at Eskişehir, that there is no periodic information flow given by related state institutions. As with those institutions, availability of suitable (number, quality etc.) personnel is very rare, mostly due to existing state personnel regime (i.e. trend to decrease number of officials). In our opinion based on the experience local staff for the DESIRE project at the beginning, long lasting political turmoil alters technical staff too. Villagers frequently complain that the extension staff prefer staying at offices instead of informing farmers in the field.
