Strategies for promoting smallholder farmers' stewardship of ecosystem services in southern Africa region: wielding the stick or dangling the carrot?

Land degradation and, in particular declining soil fertility is one of the greatest biophysical constraints to food production in sub- Saharan Africa. Most of the food deficit regions face a challenge of identifying appropriate technological and policy approaches that best meet food security objectives and, contribute to improved environmental quality. Despite this challenge, some land use practices exist that offer opportunities to achieve the two objectives because they help farmers to replenish soil fertility and improve food production, at the same time generating ecosystem services(e.g. carbon sink) that helps to respond to the challenging global phenomenon of climate change. The dissemination of the land use practices among farmers has primarily been based on sensitization, training (“ moral suasion”), and “wielding the stick” (regulations and enforcements). Their level of adoption by smallholder farmers is however generally low due to several factors especially policy and institutional constraints. Based on several studies carried out in southern Africa for over a decade, this paper highlights agroforestry-based land use practices (ALUP) as cases study of the practices that are available to meet household food security and contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. It also discussed how smallholder farmer adoption of ALUPcan be accelerated through conditional incentive mechanisms (“offering carrots”) that reward farmers for the ecosystem services generated by specific agri-environmental land use practices

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