Are Landscape Restoration Interventions Sustainable? A Case for the Upper Tana Basin of Kenya

Fred Kizito, Jane Gicheha, Abdul Rahman Nurudeen, Lulseged Tamene, Kennedy Nganga and Nicholas Koech
Additional contact information
Fred Kizito: Alliance for Biodiversity-CIAT, Accra PMB LG 56, Ghana
Jane Gicheha: Alliance for Biodiversity-CIAT, Nairobi 823-00621, Kenya
Abdul Rahman Nurudeen: International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Tamale PMB TL 06, Ghana
Lulseged Tamene: Alliance for Biodiversity-CIAT, Addis Ababa P.O. Box 5689, Ethiopia
Kennedy Nganga: Alliance for Biodiversity-CIAT, Nairobi 823-00621, Kenya
Nicholas Koech: Alliance for Biodiversity-CIAT, Nairobi 823-00621, Kenya

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 18, 1-13

Abstract: Landscape restoration initiatives often have the potential to result in environmental gains, but the question of whether these gains are sustainable and how they are linked to other community needs (social, productivity and economic gains) remains unclear. We use the Sustainable Intensification Assessment Framework (SIAF) to demonstrate how environmental benefits are linked to productivity, environment, social, human, and economic components. Using the SIAF, the standardization of relevant indicators across multiple objectives provided a contextual representation of sustainability. The study assessed the overall gains resulting from the measured indicators of sustainable land management (SLM) practices and their relationship to the multiple domains of the SIAF. We present a unique case for SLM options using a combined-methods approach where biophysical, socio-economic, and citizen science help assess the sustainability of the interventions. Using a participatory approach with farmers, land restoration options were conducted in four target micro-watersheds for 3 years (2015–2017). Co-developed restoration measures at the landscape level within the four micro-watersheds (MW1-MW4) resulted in a substantial increment (50%) for all treatments (grass strips, terraces, and a combination of grass strips and terraces) in soil moisture storage and increased maize and forage production. We demonstrate that SLM practices, when used in combination, greatly reduce soil erosion and are profitable and sustainable while conferring livelihood benefits to smallholder farmers.

Keywords: landscape restoration; livelihood benefits; sustainable intensification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/18/10136/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/18/10136/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:18:p:10136-:d:632722

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().