On the sidelines of the recent meeting on climate science in Paris, AllAfrica spoke with Ephraim Nkonya, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington:
Your presentation here at the conference focused on the role of policy in preserving the environment. Could you please speak to the importance of policy in the context of climate change?
Good policies are really important because the behaviour of people is developed and governed by the institutions prevailing in a country. If we have good policies, we have good laws that are enforced effectively, we find that people behave in the way that we would like them to behave.
We have done a study in Africa, looking at land degradation and relating it to governance. The results were very striking. We found in countries where bad governance has reduced government effectiveness, there was more land degradation and in areas where government effectiveness has increased, there was a reduction in land degradation.
So it begins with the policies in a country, with governance, the rules and regulations, and enforcement is really important for us to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals that we are currently designing.
We should start with governance first, to improve policies so that the people who are land users and people who care for the land can have an incentive to do the right thing.
In your presentation you used the example of how the difference in policy between Kenya and Uganda had differing impacts on the land.
When we look at Kenya and Uganda, and we look at decentralisation, giving a mandate to the local people to make their own decisions and manage their own natural resources, Uganda is far ahead of Kenya.
Kenya is very market-orientated in terms of the economy. In terms of decentralisation it is not very strong except in the past two years, when it has improved decentralisation but has not yet reached the level that Uganda has.
If you look at the number of local by-laws enacted to prevent land degradation and help farmers to adapt to climate change, there are a lot more laws relating to this in Uganda as compared to Kenya. The reason for this is that [when] people are given a mandate to address issues of concern to them... they usually take up the challenge and draft those laws.
We looked at compliance with laws drafted by local councils versus those drafted by the central government and those drafted under colonial rule.
It was very interesting. The highest compliance was with the laws enacted by the local council, followed by those enacted by central government, and finally those enacted by the colonial government.
The colonial government enacted a law that farmers cannot cultivate on steep lands and people were forced to abide by that law. After independence those terraces were cut down deliberately because people felt that they were now free to do as they pleased. It was a bad move and they only realised that after the terraces had been destroyed.
The lesson is that the local governments had to enact the... law. So a mandate from the people is a very important thing for land management and climate adaptation.
You also spoke about slash and burn practices in Nigeria versus the absence of those practices in Niger. Could you please elaborate?
The case of Nigeria is also very interesting. Nigeria is the third most decentralised country in Africa, after South Africa and Uganda. There we found that decentralisation was very good [because it enabled] people on the ground [to] identify problems.
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There was a lot of bush burning and animals were dying because all the grass was burnt so communities took ownership of the problem and a by-law was passed to ban the fires. Satellite images show an improvement after the by-law was enacted.
In terms of enforcement of the by-laws, this is very effective because the local people themselves are the best police on earth - not government-employed police officers who may be corrupted. The people themselves are willing to work without payment and are very effective in terms of the enforcement of by-laws because they have taken ownership of the problem and take the initiative to fix it.
That's an aspect that past governments have been ignoring. They have been viewing local people in the villages as stupid - but those people know a lot more than we do. They can do what is needed but they need guidance, they need a mandate to be given to do what needs to be done.
