Report and synthesis of Stakeholder Workshop 1

Table of Contents

1. Authors
2. Introduction
   1. Background
   2. Objectives
3. Workshops
   1. How the methodology was used
   2. Participants
   3. Duration
4. Results from the single exercises
   1. Causes and effects of land degradation identified through the water and biomass cycles
   2. Local indicators
   3. Stakeholders' influence on, and motivation for sustainable land management
   4. Assessment of locally applied technologies and approaches
   5. Outline of an overall strategy for sustainable land management
5. Workshop evaluation
   1. Stakeholder involvement and participation
   2. Atmosphere
   3. Methodology
   4. Mutual learning
   5. Objectives and results
   6. Recommendations from study sites
6. Overall conclusions
   1. Have the objectives been attained?
   2. Strengths, weaknesses and challenges
   3. Limitations and problems
7. Annex: List of stakeholder workshop reports

Assessment of locally applied technologies and approaches

Analysis made on 15 study sites (all except Mexico), as the list of technologies was a deliverable. See also DESIRE deliverable 3.1.1.

Exercise 7 was the first exercise conducted together with the external stakeholders, at least in those study sites who invited the external ones only for the 3rd workshop day. The objectives of exercise 7 are:

• To identify technologies and approaches or other strategies not yet applied but potentially suitable for the local context.
• To integrate the perspective, knowledge and experience of external stakeholders.
• To briefly assess already applied and potential solutions.

A predefined table had to be filled by local and external stakeholders separately, assessing the previously identified solutions regarding labour and cost requirements (initial and maintenance), regarding expected economic, ecological and socio-cultural impacts / effectiveness, regarding limiting factors / constraints, and regarding their overall potential for the local context.

In the workshop, fields on 'who already implements?' and on 'what is required that more people will implement' were filled as well, but not documented in the workshop reports. It is therefore not known how much this was actually done.

In the thereafter plenary session participants agreed on the 2-5 most important local and potential solutions, i.e. those with a high potential for the local context. This was sometimes done by voting. The aim was to get a selection of those solutions which would need further assessment with the help of the WOCAT questionnaires on technologies and approaches in WP3.2.

Prioritized solutions

This first rough assessment of SLM measures made in exercise 7 already gives a quite clear understanding of the importance and benefit of the various measures. From a total of 60 priority measures of all study sites, 39 are already applied solutions, whereas 21 are potential solutions. It is noticeable that in some study sites, all promising measures are already applied and in others all are potential measures. Among the first group (all applied) are the study sites of Portugal, Nestos Greece, Crete Greece, Morocco, Tunisia and China, and among the latter (all potential) Djanybek Russia and Chile. Whether this corresponds to countries with a tradition in soil and water conservation or not, is non-conclusive.

Looking at the type of measures selected, results in 19 agronomic, 10 vegetative, 23 structural and 25 management measures, whereas in 17 cases two types of measures are combined. Some conservation technologies were mentioned in several study sites, such as drip irrigation in both Russian, both Turkish and the Crete Greece study sites, but being applied so far only in Konya Karapinar (Turkey) and Crete (Greece). Other measures can also be grouped into similar categories, as presented in table 15, which serves as an overview of the identified measures.

Table 15: Applied and potential measures identified at DESIRE study sites

Table 15 indicates a high variety of measures represented. This variety is also reflecting the diversity of degradation and desertification problems prevalent in the study sites. Most of the identified measures are on cropland (66%), 16% on grazing land and 5% on forest land. The rest is on a combination of two of these land use types.

Following some details regarding selected measures groups and their distinct potential and limiting factors in the study sites:

Table 16: Conservation agriculture

Conservation agriculture, entailing minimum soil disturbance, crop rotation and a degree of permanent soil cover, is a widely propagated land management practice in many countries nowadays. In the practices listed above only no or minimum tillage was considered, and only in 3 study sites. This might surprise, but the limiting factors mentioned, indicate that more training, awareness raising and research are required. This is probably also the reason why its potential was not considered in other study sites.

Table 17: Soil nutrient / management

Soil management is a major concern in salinization prone study sites, such as Nestos (Greece), Djanybek and Saratov (both Russia). Vegetative measures are applied or identified as having a potential to improve soil characteristics. Spain identified a potential technology of converting liquid manure into fertilizer through a process where under anaerobic fermentation methane gas is produced and a non contaminating fertilizer. Surprisingly, other study sites did not identify soil fertility improving technologies, although this is often a major concern of land users.

Table 18: Terraces

Terraces are perhaps the best-known and most spectacular group of SLM technologies, but they are also expensive. They have extensively been applied in the Loess Plateau in China for the last 50 years, where their potential is still assessed positively, but related to high necessary investments of funds and labour.

Table 19: Forest protection and afforestation

Forest protection is a major concern in Portugal, which is affected by forest fire.

Remarkably, in all but one study sites where afforestation has been identified as a possible solution, it is already applied and assessed to be positive, except for Morocco, where it is considered to be difficult due to a weak cultivation tradition of the pastoral peasants.

Agroforestry is a land use system where trees are grown in association with agricultural crops, pasture or livestock. This system was only mentioned in Morocco and assessed as being difficult due to the same reason as for the cork oak plantations. Agroforestry systems are often not perceived as SLM technologies, especially in areas having a long tradition in it. This might explain their low representation here. However, water availability and competition are also considerable constraints.

Table 20: Livestock and pasture management

Livelihoods of many rural people, especially in dryland areas, are primarily based on pastoral livestock production. Improved management of pasture and livestock relates to changing control of grazing land, regulation of grazing pressure and production of fodder crops. The rotational fodder cultivation practiced in Morocco partly belongs to this group of conservation measures as well. Its main limitation is the consumption of space normally used for grain production.

Table 21: Drip irrigation

Drip irrigation has a high potential in traditional irrigation areas as well as in so far rainfed agriculture systems. Due to its water saving impacts it is suggested as a potential measure in both Russian study sites, where irrigation and salinisation problems prevail. It was not mentioned in the third salinisation study site, which is Nestos, Greece. Limiting factors are low water quality, high initial costs of implementation, and lack of training. Despite these problems, the stakeholders in Karapinar, Turkey, where they already have experience with the technology, assessed the overall potential as very high.

Table 22: Rainwater harvesting

Rainwater harvesting is especially important in dry areas where moisture deficit is the primary limiting factor for production. Costs are stated as a limiting factor, but especially in Tunisia, where it is very dry (150-240 mm/a) and where people have a long-term experience with such structures, it is considered as a well adapted and very efficient measure.

Flood management and dams might also be counted as rainwater harvesting structures at a larger scale. They were identified as a potential structure in Cape Verde, but still requiring technical studies. In China and Tunisia, dams and other recharge units are already applied, but funding is a constraint.

Similarities and differences in assessments made by local and external participants

According to the workshop guidelines it was recommended to conduct the assessment in separate stakeholder groups, i.e. in a local stakeholder group and an external one. In 5 study sites the exercise was done all together in plenary. In 3 study sites it was done either by the researches, or not at all (Crete and Nestos, Greece; Rendina Basin, Italy). In 7 sites the assessment was made in separate groups, whereas in one of them the two groups did not asses the same technologies (Saratov).

The following table gives an overview of the summarized key limiting factors per study site and the similarities or differences in the assessment of the identified SLM strategies.

Table 23: Key limiting factors and similarities & differences in the assessment of SLM strategies, summarized per study site

Limiting factors are often costs, education or technical constraints. They should and do cover similar topics as the socio-cultural, economic, political and legal constraints identified in exercise 2. Costs / limited funds are mentioned more often here than in exercise 2. In many study sites it became clear that land users do need support from the government to combat land degradation and desertification, be it direct financial support, or training.

The perception of these limiting factors is mostly very similar between local and external stakeholders. However, external participants more often considered training and awareness raising to be constraint. The similarity or agreement between local and external stakeholders applies also for the assessed impact and potential of the identified measures. If there are differences, they are mainly related to the impact assessment (economic, ecological and socio-cultural) and less to the overall estimation of the potential for the local context. Surprisingly, local stakeholders often rank the impact more positive than external. If this is due to more wishful thinking or other reasons can not be elaborated.

For the detailed lists see also deliverable 3.1.1 "List of locally applied and potential strategies from all study sites".