Publication: Land Degradation and Population Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa : The Machakos Experience
Loading...
Published
1995-01
ISSN
Date
2012-08-13
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
An issue which has generated much concern has been the potential link between low incomes and resource degradation. This report presents the results of a study which investigated this question. Machakos District is a relatively low income and agriculturally marginal district in Kenya. Before World War II the colonial administration was concerned that land degradation was becoming severe under the pressure of population, aggravated by drought. The report analyzes the changes which have taken place in the land resources, agricultural systems, and social structures of the district over the period since 1930. Despite the fact that there was considerable social turbulence in the period prior to independence, the people of the district have managed, building on good market access and periodic government support, to make substantial changes in their government support and agricultural systems and bring about a dramatic increase in the productivity of their land resources.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“English, John; Tiffen, Mary; Mortimore, Michael. 1995. Land Degradation and Population Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa : The Machakos Experience. Africa Region Findings & Good Practice Infobriefs; No. 31. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/10004 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Stakeholder Assessment of Opportunities and Constraints to Sustainable Land Management in Ethiopia(Washington, DC, 2007-04)Stakeholders' perceptions of opportunities and constraints to sustainable land management in Ethiopia was assessed through interviews and a review of secondary data. Stakeholders included farmers as well as representatives of development agencies, agricultural organizations, donors, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and agricultural research systems. Stakeholders generally perceive that the numerous, well-intentioned but piecemeal interventions undertaken over the last few decades have contributed little to reversing the negative spiral of land degradation, for several reasons: 1) the top-down, non participatory approach was generally unsuited to specific farming systems; 2) most funding for sustainable land management (SLM) was channeled to so-called 'low-potential' areas, neglecting 'high-potential' areas where serious land degradation is now occurring; and 3) agricultural research, training, and extension were not sufficiently integrated. In particular, research, training, and extension institutions are crop focused, top-down, and quota-driven; they lack institutional linkages with each other and interdisciplinary linkages within their own walls; and thus they are ineffective in addressing integrated soil/water and watershed management issues. According to stakeholders, participatory, integrated, technically high-quality, and economically profitable interventions are needed to achieve sustainable results.Publication Investing in Trees and Landscape Restoration in Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-11)Reforestation measures for degraded lands, strategies for the sustainable management of forest resources, and agroforestry practices that incorporate trees into farming systems are increasingly demonstrating their promise for producing commercialized tree products. Although the level of investment so far has remained modest, the challenge is to find ways to scale up promising investments in a way that will have a clear impact at the landscape level. These types of investments can help achieve the triple wins of climate-smart agriculture: increased incomes and yields, climate change adaptation and greenhouse gas mitigation.Market trends are promising for a wide range of tree-based technologies, including tropical fruits, cashews, honey, timber and wood products, lipids, gums and resins, tree crops, and agroforestry systems. In many cases, African entrepreneurs, farmers, civil society, and governments have responded dynamically to the widespread challenge of land degradation. The continent is dotted with landscapes where production of trees on farms and in managed forests has grown dramatically to meet market and subsistence needs; sustainable agricultural practices and revegetation have restored soils and watersheds; and key conservation areas are being protected. However, this is not happening at the scale required by societal needs in Africa. In part, this is due to a lack of strategic cooperation and coordination between private sector investors and land managers (who are focused on realizing profitable opportunities and meeting their own needs) and public and civil society actors (who are focused on restoring forest cover and ecosystem services). Such coordination is only possible when the biophysical potential for landscape restoration, private sector investment opportunity and incentives, and societal demand for multiple benefits converge. Much can be learned from examples of large-scale landscape restoration in Ethiopia, Kenya, Niger, Tanzania, and Zambia, and the variable roles of the private sector, farmers, government, and civil society in supporting and undertaking investment.Publication Determinants of the Adoption of Sustainable Land Management Practices and Their Impacts in the Ethiopian Highlands(Washington, DC, 2007-04)An extensive review of literature on the determinants of adoption and impacts of land management technologies in the Ethiopian highlands was undertaken to guide policy makers and development agencies in crafting programs and policies that can better and more effectively address land degradation in Ethiopia. Several generalizations emerge from the review: 1) the profitability of land management technologies is a very important factor influencing technology adoption. In many cases it is a threshold consideration; 2) land tenure insecurity and limited transfer rights undermine land management investments; 3) the impacts of household endowments on technology adoption are mixed; and 4) the impacts of credit on input use are positive where input use is profitable and not too risky; in other cases credit is not a binding constraint, because farmers ration their use of credit to avoid risk. Further research on the adoption and impacts of land management practices is needed to build on this understanding of what works, and where. Based on this review, as well as the findings from two companion papers and stakeholder workshops, it appears that research in different biophysical and socioeconomic domains to assess the off-site as well as on-site costs and benefits of alternative land management approaches will be particularly useful in supporting efforts to scale up successful sustainable land management practices in Ethiopia.Publication Sustainable Land Management Sourcebook(Washington, DC, 2008)This sourcebook is intended to be a ready reference for practitioners (including World Bank stakeholders, clients in borrowing countries, and World Bank project leaders) seeking state-of-the-art information about good land management approaches, innovations for investments, and close monitoring for potential scaling up. This sourcebook is divided into three parts: the first part identifies the need and scope for sustainable land management (SLM) and food production in relation to cross-sector issues such as freshwater and forest resources, regional climate and air quality, and interactions with existing and emerging infectious diseases. It introduces the concept of production landscapes and analysis of trade-offs and establishes a framework for linking indicators that provide a measure of the outcomes of SLM. It then categorizes the diversity of land management (that is, farming) systems globally and the strategies for improving household livelihoods in each type of system. For the farming system types, a set of SLM principles and common but important issues for future investments are identified. The second part of the sourcebook focuses on three major farming system types and presents a range of investment notes and innovative activity profiles. The third part provides users of the source book with easy-to access, web-based resources relevant for land and natural resource managers. The resources are available in the public domain, and readers can access the web sites of various international and national agencies.Publication Ukraine : Soil Fertility to Strengthen Climate Resilience(World Bank, Washington, DC and FAO, Rome, 2014)Ukraine is renowned as the breadbasket of Europe thanks to its black soils ( Chernozem black because of the high organic matter content) which offer exceptional agronomic conditions. One-third of the worldwide stock of the fertile black soils, which cover more than half of Ukraine s arable land, a large variety of climatic zones, and favourable temperature and moisture regimes, offers attractive conditions for the production of a large range of crops including cereals and oilseeds. Ukraine s proximity to large and growing neighbouring markets the Russian Federation and the European Union and access to deep sea ports at the Black Sea, provide direct access to world markets, especially large grain importers in the Middle East and North Africa.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Regional Poverty and Inequality Update: Latin America and the Caribbean, October 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-23)This brief summarizes recent facts related to poverty and inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) using the latest wave of harmonized household surveys from the Socio-Economic Database for LAC (SEDLAC). This brief was produced by the Poverty Global Practice in the LAC Region of the World Bank.Publication Global Economic Prospects, January 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16)Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.Publication Ukraine Country Environmental Analysis(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-01)The objective of the Country Environmental Analysis (CEA) is to assess the adequacy and performance of the policy, legal, and institutional framework for environmental management in Ukraine, in light of the decentralization process of environmental governance and wider reform objectives, and to provide recommendations to government to address the key gaps identified. Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe and has a population of 43 million, the majority of whom live in urban areas. It is a lower middle income country, with the services, industry and agriculture sectors being main contributors to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Ukraine faces a number of environmental challenges, as identified in its National Environmental Strategy 2020 (NES). Key among these are: air pollution; quality of water resources and land degradation; solid waste management; biodiversity loss; human health issues associated with environmental risk factors; in addition to climate change. The scope of Ukrainian environmental legislation is quite broad and comprehensive (more than 300 legal acts) and covers most areas of environmental protection and natural resources management. However, the environmental legislation faces a number of weaknesses:The environmental legislation is largely declaratory in nature and does not have all the essential enforcement mechanisms for the implementation of legal acts and international agreements; Many of the acts are not coordinated with each other; and Legislation undergoes limited analysis of its impact—for example, no in-depth analysis such as Regulatory Impact Analysis is conducted for proposed pieces of legislation.Publication Thailand Monthly Economic Monitor, October 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-22)Fiscal conditions remained stable, with a modest widening of the deficit to 3.1 percent of GDP. New stimulus measures are expected to support short-term demand without breaching the public debt ceiling. Inflation stayed negative, reflecting lower energy and food prices amid subdued domestic demand. The central bank kept the policy rate unchanged, citing limited policy space. Thailand’s growth momentum has slowed further as manufacturing activity and services weakened as projected. Tourism remained subdued, largely due to fewer Chinese visitors. Goods exports also slowed as earlier front-loaded orders faded, particularly in agriculture and industrial goods. The Thai baht depreciated in early October as the US dollar appreciated and the current account turned negative.