The new FAO approach to land use planning and management, and its application in Sierra Leone

The FAO Framework for Land Evaluatio nstates that the use potential of land depends on both biophysical and socio-economic conditions. Nevertheless, current assessments are oriented mainly towards the evaluation of the physical environment, and most land evaluation studies are limited to predicting theoretical production potentials, without addres sing the questions: how can this potential be tapped by the users and what constraints have to be removed? Because this situation remains remote from the realities in the field, it provides only a weak basis for land management and land use planning. Since its appointment as task manager for the implementation of Agenda 21, Chapter 10, FAO has been promoting a new approach which emphasizes the integration of physical, socio-economic and institutional aspects of land use, as well as the need for the active participation of all stakeholders in decision-making. This integrated approach has the advantage that it better meets the needs of the stakeholders; consequently, it has a better chance of implementation at grassroots level. In our example, this approach is applied in Sierra Leone, a country characterized by demographic pressure, mismanagement of resources, civil war and declining crop production. It is obvious that depletion of soil fertility is not the only constraint to production. It follows that if land use planning is to improve the situation, it must square up to the difficult conditions encountered by the people, as well as to the conditions of the land. The FAO Framework for Land Evaluatio n[6] states that the potential of land for various uses depends on both biophysical and socio-economic conditions. The difficulty of assessing simultaneously the impact of such diverse conditions—the former being relatively stable and the latter highly variable in space and time—has led to a two-stage approach, with evaluation of the physical environment followed by socio-economic analysis, including the institutional and legal aspects. Because land evaluation has been carried out mainly by soil scientists and agronomists, the assessment of land use potential has often been restricted to evaluating soil, terrain and climate, and to identifying physical constraints and remedial interventions. More sophisticated studies include an economic analysis, while in recent years crop growth simulation models and GIS have also been used in order to achieve a more quantitative evaluation. The majority of land evaluation studies have focused on assessing the theoretical production potential. Little or no attention has been paid to the extent to which this potential can be, or has been tapped by the users. This evolution carries a danger. Linking planning with simulation modelling and academic research may lead to a situation where the development of the tools becomes an end in itself, and where technical criteria override common sense. This can be observed in the numerous papers on land evaluation that are published in esteemed scientific journals, which concentrate more on correlations between physical parameters and yields than on anything else. However, high correlations obtained within farmers’ fields are dismissed by people with field experience. They suggest to policy makers that land management and land use planning are no more than a mathematical exercise, and one that may safely be entrusted to the computer. Equally, since the results and recommendations of this approach are often far away from field realities, they constitute a very weak basis for land management. The key problem is not to find correlations for yield predictions; it is to assess the conditions that allow people to obtain an optimum benefit from the land on a sustainable basis. It is particularly important to understand why land users frequently take decisions which do not correspond with what planners consider to be optimal. Clearly, land users take into account factors that are not considered in the technical approach to planning, and it is therefore of utmost importance that these factors be investigated and their impact integrated in the planning process from the beginning [32].