Impact case study database

The impacts of this research were seen at the household and community level. Individuals in more than 37 village communities interacted directly with the action research while government and NGOs have applied the concept to over 148,000 households in Ethiopia, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda. The aggregate impacts are reported in a summary table (5.1). National wetland policies were influenced in Ethiopia and Zambia.

The impacts can be summarised under three headings: Improving livelihoods of small-scale farmers; Inspiring change and creating long-term solutions; Policy support.

Improving livelihoods of small-scale farmers (food security, diet, diversification)

An impact assessment of the Functional Landscape Approach (FLA) (3.3) was undertaken by the research team at the Striking a Balance (SAB) project sites in Zambia (2016) (3.4).

It showed that 68% of the 849 households living in the three study villages were wetland farmers in 2016, up from 13% in 2005 (before the project). Improvements in the economic conditions in the villages were mostly through improved food security, which increased their ability to withstand droughts associated with climate change (5.2). Further, 16% of the population had diversified their livelihoods through the investment of “wetland derived capital” outside village life – notably in trade and urban enterprises. The majority of the community (75%) had adopted new cropping and production activities – such as goat keeping, and village trading. At a minimum, wetland farming now supplemented the main rainfed harvest for these families, and the income from crop sales had stimulated the local economy (5.2).

In these and other project sites, Self Help Africa (SHA), a €20m/yr turnover NGO, reported “that the FLA has had considerable benefits in terms of livelihood security and improved nutrition” with “final evaluations [that] showed that 35,000 people benefitted from increased dietary diversity” (5.2). Increased food availability during the dry season, and early rains, helped address seasonal food shortages in villages and local towns, while the improved availability and increased range of vegetables from the wetlands for much of the year helped reduce severe stunting in children, and improved the condition of people with long-term health challenges, such as HIV/AIDS (5.2, 5.3).

Excess wetland produce that could be transported with little damage – such as squashes and onions – were traded over 500–700km to the Zambian and Congo Copperbelt. The income generated helped households meet schooling costs and was invested in other enterprises e.g. keeping poultry or pigs. In one seasonal wetland, 300 households were estimated to have traded more than 200 tons of onions in one year (2018) (5.4).

Inspiring change and creating long-term solutions

Using the FLA lessons (3.3) Wood and Dixon provided training programmes for 90 project and government staff in Malawi (2012) and Zambia (2014). Wood supported the design of five development projects for SHA (2014–23) funded by the EU, Britain, Ireland and Norway, valued at over €17m, that impacted more than 800,000 people in Zambia, Malawi and Uganda (5.1, 5.2). The sustainability of the FLA approach was assessed by an independent consultant on behalf of SHA in Zambia and Malawi in 2019. He stated that “the prospects for continued generation of economic benefits for the communities is good for the next decade at least” (5.3). Use of the FLA for wetland and catchment management has helped build resilience in communities suffering from weather extremes caused by climate change, with examples seen in many countries, including Uganda where communities “were protected from the worst of the landslides and flooding [which] affected the region as a result of the exceptionally heavy rainfall across East Africa at the start of the 2020 rainy season” (5.2).

FLA-inspired lessons were shared through radio (an important way to reach widely dispersed rural communities) with programmes produced by former SAB project staff in Zambia. A report by independent consultants (2018) estimated that, directly and indirectly, the Striking a Balance project led to a 60-fold increase in wetland farming in three districts of northern Zambia in the last two decades, impacting more than 28,000 households (5.4).

Publication of the research on Guidelines on Agriculture and Wetlands Interactions (GAWI) (3.6) led to more requests for training. With FAO support, Wood covered GAWI and FLA research lessons with 14 senior staff in the Malawian government (Directors and Deputy Directors across 10 government departments and the Directors of four NGOs) (2010). This directly impacted the design of an FAO-supported government famine relief project in Malawi in 2016. As a result, 16,000 households started to use wetlands to supplement a reduced main harvest caused by Army Worm infestation. The “FLA requirement (in the project) was imposed by FAO… to ensure that winter farming did not negatively affect the wetlands” (5.5).

The FLA research (3.1, 3.2, 3.3) impacted several NGOs. In Ethiopia EWNRA grew from two people in 2000 to 70 in 2014 and 180 staff in 2020, with an annual turnover of $3m+ (5.6). Wetland Action (WA) from 2005 to 2015 had an average annual turnover of c.Euro100k and shared knowledge with several other NGOs in Africa through training and its website (5.7). In Malawi, a village-focused NGO, Functional Landscape Action Movement (FLAM), was established by WA. It has tested the FLA with 60 families in six villages since 2017 (5.7). The founder of FLAM left his post with an international agri-business focused project because he realised a focus on production alone was environmentally unsustainable (5.7).

Other field testing of the FLA was undertaken in northern Malawi by Dixon (2015–18) (5.8) and by the global NGO World Vision in both Zambia and Malawi (5.4, 5.5).

Self Help Africa (SHA) involved Wood in the development of a position paper on the relevance of the FLA for the organisation, confirming how it will guide its approach to improving livelihoods and resilience in the face of climate change in the six African countries where it operates (5.2).

Policy Support

A national dialogue on Ethiopian wetlands (2008/09) was influenced by the EWRP action research findings (1997-2000). In this dialogue, EWNRA used the research findings of its work with UoH to argue for better policies for the management of wetlands (5.6). Since 2017 this dialogue has re-emerged. EWNRA has collaborated again with government agencies and NGOs, and reported “that building on our joint research and advocacy efforts, Ethiopia is now in the process of getting a Wetland Policy approved by Parliament” (5.6). A government official (Commissioner for Environment) stated that he “appreciates the valuable and relevant comments (from Wood and Dixon)…on the draft Wetland Proclamation” (5.9).

SHA was asked by the Zambian government to support them in the development of a wetland policy. The SAB survey (2016) (3.4) provided evidence that SHA used in its contributions to the new policy published in 2018 (5.10). The policy “focus on the livelihood contribution of wetlands” (5.10) was underpinned by the survey results and reflected the view, stressed by Wetland Action (of which UoH is one of three members), that small inland wetlands should be recognised as areas for sustainable multiple use, not simply for conservation and protection, as earlier policy drafts had stated.