Scaling-up Sustainable Land Management in the highlands of Kenya and Tanzania

Land degradation is widespread in Eastern Africa. A progressive degradation of natural resources (fertile soils, forests, water) is causing poverty and irreversible loss of ecosystem services. Successes in sustainable land management (SLM) initiatives have mostly been confined to the intervention areas; large scale adoption of SLM approaches (i.e. scaling-up) has not yet been achieved. Horizontal scaling-up involves farmer-to-farmer-to-village spreading of SLM technologies and innovations, and vertical scaling-up deals with establishing an enabling institutional and economic environment with supportive policies. Both need to be addressed simultaneously. This project explores how to foster scaling-up SLM in the highlands of Kenya and Tanzania. The project aims at delivering scientific evidence and new insights that can support multi-scale approaches to promote SLM, trigger behavioural changes, foster multi-level collaboration and lead to the formulation of supportive policies for SLM. Science for development is central in this project. From a scientific perspective the project will unravel the complexity of multi-scale factors affecting adoption and scaling-up of SLM technologies. From a developmental perspective the project will deliver evidence-based strategies and policy recommendations for the horizontal and vertical scaling-up of SLM. Collaboration at inter(national) and academic level is fundamental; not only to ensure the scientific quality of the results and linkages to current academic debates on SLM, but also to commit policy-makers at all institutional levels to be involved and take account of the research outcomes. The project is therefore embedded in on-going research activities of the African Highlands Initiative, and will intensively use existing networks in East-Africa. The project includes four PhD-researchers and one Post-doc, supervised by Wageningen University (three groups from different research schools), Kenyatta University, University of Dodoma, African Highlands Initiative and experts from CIFOR and ICRAF. Two PhD-projects focus on the micro-meso level, particularly on the key-factors that affect horizontal scaling-up, and the role of farmer/village collaboration. The end-result will be ready-to-implement district-level strategies for the horizontal scaling-up of SLM technologies and innovations. Two other PhD-projects focus on the meso-macro enabling context (vertical scaling-up) for SLM, particularly on enhancing the quantitative understanding of the (future) impact of continued land degradation at multiple scales and on institutional and macro-economic solutions to scaling-up SLM. The Post-doc researcher focuses particularly on policies, and ensures that research outcomes and concrete policy recommendations for scaling-up SLM are communicated to local, national and East-African stakeholders, including farmers and policy-makers.