Conservation, natural resource management and development challenges in rural Africa: evidence from East Africa

There is consensus in the international community that development and poverty alleviation in rural Africa are among the most urgent global agendas for the 21st century. Many rural Africans have traditionally depended on natural resources. Land use patterns are highly heterogeneous across diverse agro-ecological/farming systems and even within the systems, some being more extensive, while others being more intensive. These days a range of factors, including increasing population pressure and global climate change, has made it impossible for development through conventional extensive technologies or degradational pathways to be sustainable as a viable strategy. To achieve both development and environmental goals, sound agricultural intensification technologies through more intensive and efficient use of inputs internal to systems, or conservation pathways, must be identified and tailored to specific local needs and conditions to be adopted by rural households, while enabling policy and infrastructure should be availed by government and development agencies. This chapter investigates the challenges that Africa has faced in rural development and natural resource management and seeks guidance for policies and research. Firstly, the chapter gives an overview of the current state of heterogeneous agro-ecological and farming systems and the development challenges posed by population growth and climate change in rural Africa. We propose a conceptual framework to guide empirical research in effectively examining the multi-dimensional aspects of the evolution of farming systems/resource management and review how the framework is applied at meso-level in the recent literature. Secondly, a case study from a Rift Valley community in western Kenya is presented to show micro-level evidence of diverse portfolios of technology options in a semi-arid environment. It turns out that some conservation pathways may exist to promote more sustainable development in rural Africa, possibly through the better integration of system components, i.e., crop and livestock, and the inclusion of agroforestry into the farming systems. Concurrently, there are also degradational pathways entailing substantial tradeoffs between promoting economic development vs. conserving natural resources. To promote conservation development pathways, policies not only need to identify optimal technology portfolios best suited to local conditions and exploit the complementarities among system components but also to provide education with farmers to augment their human capital assets and to promote stable non-farm/off-farm income opportunities to enable investment in resource management. The chapter concludes by synthesising the findings for policy implications and by presenting another emerging challenge of rising food/fuel prices and a subsequent future research agenda.

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