International Food Policy Research Institute
sustainable solutions for ending hunger and poverty
Poverty reduction and sustainable natural resource management (NRM) are two objectives that most African countries strive to achieve simultaneously. To design policies that will help to achieve these objectives simultaneously a clear understanding of their linkage is crucial. However, limited empirical evidence has been given to show the poverty-NRM linkage in Africa. Using Uganda as a case study, this study was conducted with an objective of understanding this linkage. We used a number of poverty measures to show the linkage of poverty to a number of indicators of sustainable NRM. In general we found a strong linkage between poverty and NRM. Many poverty indicators generally give credence to the natural resource degradation-poverty trap. However, some poverty indicators showed negative association with land degradation.
These results suggest that some poverty reduction strategies that are implemented through agricultural modernization can achieve win-win-win outcomes, simultaneously increasing productivity, reducing poverty, and reducing land degradation. Examples of such strategies include promoting investments in soil and water conservation. Some strategies appear able to contribute to some positive outcomes without significant tradeoffs for others, such as promotion of agroforestry, road development, non-farm activities, participation in the new demand driven agricultural advisory services (NAADS) program and rural finance. Other strategies are likely to involve tradeoffs among different objectives. The presence of such tradeoffs is not an argument to avoid such strategies; but rather is an argument to recognize and find ways to ameliorate such negative impacts where they may occur. For example, incorporating teaching of principles of sustainable agriculture and NRM into educational curricula, as well as in the technical assistance approach of the NAADS and other organizations, is one important way of seeking to address such tradeoffs. Thus, investing in poverty reduction and agricultural modernization is not sufficient to address the problem of land degradation in Uganda, and must be complemented by greater efforts to address this problem.