Thought on a Comprehensive Strategy For Development In Poor Rural Communities: John D. Liu, Rothamsted International Fellow for the Communication of Science

Over many years of observing and documenting pockets of poverty in various places around the world, I have seen that ecological degradation and grinding poverty go hand in hand. In order to address one, it is necessary to address the other as well. Now, because of global disruptions to ecosystems (e.g. climate change, desertification, etc.) we can see that poverty and degradation somewhere, is actually poverty and degradation everywhere. If we fail to address the combined issues of poverty and ecological degradation then we will experience continuous and accumulated disruptions from lowered biodiversity, lowered fertility, disruptions to the hydrological system, growing extreme weather events and continuous anthropogenic impact on climate change.

This means that there is a rationale for the transfer of sufficient capital and technical support to address these issues wherever they occur, not simply because we want to help the poor, but because this is the most efficient and cost effective way for human beings to address a wide range of problems, including: biodiversity loss, fresh water stress, desertification, loss of soil fertility, poverty, disparity, population growth, conflict and climate change.

One of the fundamental things noted during the documentation of ecosystem restoration in China’s Loess Plateau was that you have to work in the worst places, because you need to intervene so that the situation doesn’t further deteriorate. For instance, if sands are shifting and dunes are beginning to overwhelm grasslands you must intervene to reverse this or the situation will accumulate and become much worse. This suggests two things to me. One is that really extreme conditions such as in Sub-Saharan Africa, where people live right at the edge of survival, need to be one focal point of action, and two, the sooner we make decisions to physically address the situation the better.

In trying to conceive of how this might work I have been contemplating and designing specific theoretic interventions. All of the thinking is based on a few principle ground rules.

1. One is that any external intervention is done in collaboration with the local community. This means that there is almost continuous use of “Participatory Assessment” to initially engage the community in the process and to continuously adjust to their needs and expectations. The process as envisioned is based on teamwork between the local and external participants. Using this facilitated method, the community can identify all of the problems, all of the resources, all of the possibilities, and together write the local development plan based on what the community (with external assistance) can achieve. This must be flexible because if the first goals are met then ambitions will increase. This can lead to a development trajectory where the participants are optimistic and see hope for their children and the future.

2. Restoration of ecosystem function and sustainability must be the key guiding principles. This provides the rationale for investment and external assistance and is something that both external and local participants can agree to. All levels of the community must study to the point where they understand that their future and indeed all our futures depend on functional ecosystems such as biodiversity, infiltration and retention of rainfall, soil moisture, nutrient cycling and productivity. By making this the primary goal it should be possible to increase food production while restoring soil organic matter, grass canopies, tree canopies and biodiversity.

3. External assistance needs to be based on equality between the external and the local participants. This is not a charity program to help the poor. It is a collaborative program to restore ecosystem function and all the participants are equal. The idea is also not that the external participants lower their standard of living to that of the local participants but that together the community works to raise the standard of living for everyone. Concrete examples of this would be that infrastructure such as housing, vehicles, sanitation, communication, and energy, etc. are not simply coming to the area for the external participants but should be integrated into the project.

4. The project can identify local building materials, enhance and update local designs, provide training in essential skills such as construction, energy generation and distribution, computer skills and so on. This would mean that external experts working with local participants should work to achieve the level of comfort, sanitation, infrastructure needed for themselves to live healthy and productively and that this should be provided to the entire community simultaneously. This should also include celebrating and encouraging local culture, protecting it from being overwhelmed by global influences.

5. We need to have well educated, skilled people who are willing to live together with the local people and share meals, work, study and housing with them. I would recommend two types of people for this task. One group is recently retired professionals who are not satisfied with simply leisure activities (Given the demographics of the baby boom this could be large). The second group is recent graduates who are seeking wider experience and meaningful work. Again this is potentially also quite a large group.

6. Applying this strategy will require the political will to provide financial support for this type of project however, the amounts are very practical, since you can do a tremendous amount with very little money in these desperately poor areas. The external participants should have some skills in resource management and resource mobilization.

Specific measures:

3 fundamental challenges must be overcome initially to transition the chronically poor from subsistence livelihoods, Water, Food and Energy. Once these basic requirements have been have been met, the wide range of needs to move toward a sustainable trajectory comes more into focus but also everything becomes employment and if mounted correctly with access to information (broadband internet access and facilitators) then the community can continue to follow inquiry, growing and improving forever.

Energy – with assistance from Uppsala University and Dr. Schauz in Germany we are seeking to design community based methane generation with gas being used to store energy and then following sulfur removal going direct to co-generation of heat and electricity for micro grids that serve only local communities. This is much more efficient that the national grid and provides jobs, direction and the energy for broadband internet access needed for non-traditional education (also needed by the external researchers and development professionals).

Compost - by using the methane generators residue from anaerobic digestion and going through one additional step - mixing the materials with dried leaves, shredded newspapers, sawdust or other cellulose materials and allowing aerobic digestion and worms to process everything we will have the fastest and best organic fertilizers available for agricultural and ecological rehabilitation.

Sanitation - merging sanitation with energy production means that we can gather all human waste and all animal waste for methane production thereby solving the sanitation issue and producing energy. If we also separate urine we can produce low cost nitrogen fertilizer to increase productivity. We can take it one extra step and remove the odor in order to increase the acceptance. This also provides jobs and is very supportable because of the need to produce food locally. Increased locally produced organic fertilizer from compost and urine separation represent cost-effective, necessary parts of development.

Water - the issue of water has been mainly considered from the point of view of flow rates. This is incorrect and should be rethought to be infiltration and retention, as work in China, Africa and around the world shows. What I am proposing is that the communities with external assistance provide water for everyone - ending the cycle of carrying water for mainly women and children - and then put people to work re vegetating in order to infiltrate and retain all water that hits the area. This depends on infiltrating 100 % of the water and that will ensure that vegetation cover and biodiversity can be restored as well as accumulated organic matters in the soil. Once these principles are understood and adhered to every day by everyone the development trajectory of the community will have turned around and will be headed for sustainability.

Food - What we have seen in relation to yield is that this is dependent on soil moisture and nutrient cycling and that it is possible to increase fertility in degraded soils. Based on these observations, areas that differentiated and designated ecological and economic land and allowed tree and grass cover in the ecological land changed the soil moisture and relative humidity regimes. By maintaining ecological land biodiversity and accumulation of organic matter changes microbiologic communities, soil organic matter, nutrient cycling and fertility. We have seen that you must have soil moisture and fertility in order to be self sufficient in food. That is the baseline. This can be improved by active measures. This must be done in participating communities.
If agriculture is set up to be integrated with many perennial crops and intercropping with an understanding of what is being called “conservation agriculture” techniques such as no-till that do not expose soils to wind, sun and water to reduce erosion and soil degradation an important phenomenon kicks in. That is that in severely degraded land “it is possible to increase productivity by decreasing the amount of land in cultivation” by increasing soil moisture and fertility. When fully understood this also puts a community on the path to sustainability as the function of infiltration and retention of rainfall and accumulation of organic matters can be restored. It is also important that animal husbandry that uses pin feeding where the fodder is cut and carried to the animals rather than they destructively graze it is possible to increase animal protein without the destructive impacts.

Conservation – By designating ecological land the community takes the first steps toward a sustainable future. This will accumulate positive results as functionality returns in the same way as degradation caused the accumulation of negative results. There is much to consider about conservation and it is both active and passive. Communities must actively refrain from behaviors and impacts that disrupt the ecological land. They must also passively stand back and let nature determine which species are most suitable so that there will be biodiversity surviving into future generations.

Education – Given the urgent need for both poverty eradication and large-scale ecosystem rehabilitation, traditional forms of education may need to be supplemented with something that has become much more technically feasible in recent years. This is using internet based resources with facilitation to allow all to study to whatever extent that they wish. This can be combined with equivalence testing to assign the level if degrees are required or can simply be knowledge that enhances the lives of the people. I would call this inquiry and by making the facilities available to young and old alike in communities it will be possible to engage the entire community into the inquiry of exactly what they need to raise out of poverty, to restore and conserve nature for the enhancement of their community.

External Technical Assistance – I would recommend using retired professionals and recent graduates from the host country and around the world. This will bring new thought into communities and help increase understanding across cultures, between ethnic groups and help bridge social and economic divides. This also helps to begin to fulfill the need to act as a species and not from national or regional interests. In this vision all people are equal.

Design and Construction of New Infrastructure – Once the community has moved away from subsistence agriculture it is very important for them to consider and to understand where they are going. This will require thinking about areas that they may have never considered. The book we have translated called “The Community Planning Handbook” can be useful in directing the communities attention to the many different issues needed to consider and the potential role for citizens to participate.

The strategies of having external technical assistance from development professionals, retired professional volunteers and recent graduates from the host country and from abroad can help to provide ideas. When this is used together with “Participatory Assessment” it is possible to engage the entire community in designing its future. Sanitation, Communications, Energy, Education, Healthcare, Administration, Service, and much more all join agriculture and conservation as possible livelihoods.

Value added to local products - Research into product development – This can begin with local agricultural products in an industrial kitchen/design laboratory. This should be built to high standards so that it can meet sanitation and food safety codes. By striving to reach high standards it should be possible to open up markets farther away from the home market. It should have the ability to process vegetables, meats, fruits, mushrooms, and any other local produce. Jams, jellies, condiments, dehydration, canning, freezing, prepared snack foods, drinks, all can be researched in this facility. If this facility is developed to the highest level it could also research extraction of essential oils.

One way to test products would be to have a restaurant and a store connected to this facility. If no one likes the product and no ones buys it then the team should go back to the drawing board. If however the product becomes a favorite of the customers you might have a hit. Once a product has been identified then a business plan that describes resource requirements, personnel requirements, manufacturing, packaging and marketing should be made and the product moved out on its own. At this point the research team begins the process with other commodities. Having external participants will open up new ideas, new tastes and new markets.

Marketing - connection to local, regional, national and world markets – Once products have been identified then they need to be connected with markets. This becomes a separate and important part of the development trajectory away from subsistence as it links the local community to larger markets up to and including world markets if it has the ability and the ambition. Certain products like essential oils could be important in that they are extremely valuable, easy to ship and are sold on international markets for cosmetics, food and other industries. Reaching this level with professionalism will help local communities build modern and sustainable businesses. I would suggest certain partners such as Weleda, which makes all natural products and that has a social conscience. This type of company can help the community to meet the technical requirements.

Health Care – This becomes both a social responsibility and an area for sustainable employment. Having international external participants will help ensure that health care is available. Retired doctors and nurses as well as medical students can help. Eventually the communities thus served will in turn serve others.

Scientific Monitoring – As this strategy is implemented it should be fully documented and scientifically monitored to see its strengths and weaknesses. Where it is effective it should be duplicated and where it is weak it should be strengthened.

In ecology each species seems to have a specific niche and have a specific contribution to play in the overall organism that is life. Sustainability to me means that it is possible to participate in an activity without reducing the ability to continue that activity in future generations. In development I think that it is necessary to have a comprehensive strategy that emulates nature as much as possible. Each part fits together with the overall goal of reaching sustainability.

There is much more to consider but it is already possible to see that the wealthy wherever they are in the world and the poor living in marginal and degraded lands all share the same fate. The future for both groups, rich and poor; will be determined by the same thing, functional ecosystems on a planetary scale. This means that the world can no longer afford to leave the poor to pull themselves up by their bootstraps but must engage to end poverty and restore ecosystem function everywhere immediately or face predictable and catastrophic consequences.

John D. Liu, johnliu@earthshope.org

John D. Liu Sustainable development Agriculture, Sustainability