Final Evaluation of FAO Lesotho’s Emergency & Resilience ... · Final Evaluation: FAO Emergency and Resilience Programme - Page 5 of 67 5 ERP outcomes The ERPs spent the bulk of

FinalEvaluationofFAOLesotho’s

Emergency&ResilienceProgramme

ChristoFabricius

1September2016

Final Evaluation: FAO Emergency and Resilience Programme - Page 2 of 67

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Table of content ExecutiveSummary..............................................................................................................................................41. Background.................................................................................................................................................122. Introductiontotheproblem..................................................................................................................132.1 Theglobalcontext..................................................................................................................................................132.2 ThesituationinLesotho......................................................................................................................................132.3 FAO’sEmergencyandResilienceProgrammeinLesotho....................................................................17

3. Keyquestionsaddressedinthisreview............................................................................................224. Studyarea....................................................................................................................................................235. Methods........................................................................................................................................................245.1 Theevaluationprocess........................................................................................................................................245.2 InitialdiscussionswithProgrammeCoordinator....................................................................................255.3 Initialliteraturereview.......................................................................................................................................255.4 Fielddatacollection..............................................................................................................................................255.5 WorkshopwithFAOandgovernmentofficials.........................................................................................30

6. Conceptsandframeworksused...........................................................................................................316.1 Social-ecologicalsystems....................................................................................................................................316.2 Resilience...................................................................................................................................................................326.3 Resiliencedashboard............................................................................................................................................34

7. Results...........................................................................................................................................................357.1 TheERP’sresilience..............................................................................................................................................357.2 DisturbancesthatarechallengingtheresilienceoflocalfoodproductionsystemsinLesotho:resilienceoflocalfoodproductionsystemstowhat?.....................................................................447.3 TheERP’simpactontheresilienceoflocalfoodproductionsystemsinthetargetcommunities.........................................................................................................................................................................47

8. StrategiestoenhancetheERP’sresilience,anditscontributiontoresilientfoodproductionsystemsinLesotho.....................................................................................................................579. Reflections,prioritiesandfuturedirection.....................................................................................6110. Bibliography.............................................................................................................................................64

Table of figures Figure1.DemoralizingpicturesoffailedcropswerecommonduringthefieldvisitinJanuary2016,atthe

heightofthedrought(Matelile,Mafetengdistrict)............................................................................................16Figure2.Trendsinwhiteandyellowmaize,Lesotho,2014-2016.Source:LesothoBureauofStatistics.

FromFAO.http://www.fao.org/giews/food-prices/price-warnings/detail/en/c/413921/...............16Figure3.Lesothoadministrativeandlivelihoodzones.From

http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/ah865e/ah865e06.jpg...............................................................................23Figure4.ThereviewtookplaceduringaperiodofextremeheatandmoisturestresslinkedtoanElNiño

event.LesothoAgriculturalStressIndex,15December2015.RedpolygonsareareaswithveryhighASI’s.Source:FAO-GIEWS.TheimpactisevidentinthedustcloudsandlowproductivityoffieldswhereCAfarmerswerewaitingforthereviewteam(Lifajaneng,Mafeteng)...........................................24

Figure5.Interviewswereconductedinarelaxedsetting,outdoors,nearhomesteads.(Patlalla,Mohale’sHoek)..................................................................................................................................................................................27

Figure6.ExtensionstaffwereinterviewedatAgricultureResourceCentres(Ramokoatsi,Mafeteng).....27Figure7.Theworkshopwithofficialscentredonsmallgroupdialogues,............................................................30Figure8.Conceptualframeworkofasocial-ecologicalsystem,usingtheexampleofFAOsERPinLesotho.

Knowledge,skillsandcapacity(centraloval)isthe‘bridge’betweenlocalpeople,locallandscapes


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andlivelihoodassets.Governancesystemsandinstitutionsunderpinthisbridge.Interventions(bottomoval)needtofocusonindividualsandcommunities,theirlandscapeswithecosystemservices,aswellasinstitutionsandgovernancesystems.Localsocial-ecologicalsystems(theinnerlargecircle)areaffectedbypoliticalandeconomictrends,shocksandsurpriseoutsidethelocalsphere(depictedonthefarleft)aswellasecologicalandclimaticchange,shocksandsurprise(depictedonthefarright).Theseelementsneedtobemonitoredtoenableadaptivemanagement..............................................................................................................................................................................................31

Figure9.Resilienceprinciples.FromBiggsetal.2012..............................................................................................33Figure10.TheERP'sfocusonlearningisevidentfromthecomprehensivelearningandeducational

materialsithasprovidedanddisseminatedtoagriculturalresourcecentres(TaleRC,Leribe).......40Figure11.Multi-leveldecisionmakingamongFAOERPstakeholders..................................................................41Figure12.Snap-shotofFAO'sresiliencestrengthsandweaknesses......................................................................43Figure13.TheERP'simpactonsocial-ecologicalresilienceisconstrainedbythebaselineresiliencein

Lesotho,wheresocial-ecologicalsystemsareextremelyvulnerableandwheredroughtsareincreasinginregularity................................................................................................................................................47

Figure14.ThisgroupofCAfarmersinterviewedatNaleli,Leribe,hasinvestedinadiverserangeoflivelihoodstrategiesincludinghomegardens,chickenfarming,hairdressingandlookingafternaturalspringsasafall-backduringwaterscarcetimes.Theywereremarkablypositiveaboutthefuture..................................................................................................................................................................................48

Figure15.Farmerswhoarestronglyconnectedthroughrulesandcodesofconduct(inthiscase,engaginginritualprayerbeforeameeting)tendtobewellorganized,understandeachother’srolesandresponsibilitiesandarethereforemoreresilient(Brakfontein,Mohale’sHoek)...........................49

Figure16.TwophotosofthesameCAfield,takeninJanuary2014(left)andJanuary2016(right)demonstratethedevastatingimpactofthe2015-16ElNiñoevent,andtheincompletenessofCAasasolemechanismtobuildresilienceundersuchtestingconditions.ThesefarmersatNalelibuilttheirownresilienceafterreceivinganinitialkick-startfromtheERPbygettingthemselvesorganized,forminganalliancewiththetraditionalleader,developingaclearcodeofconductforeveryoneinthevillage,diversifyingtheirlivelihoodstrategiesprotectinganearbyspring–theironlywatersource...........................................................................................................................................................51

Figure17.Resilientfarmerswhohaveaccesstofinancialcapitalareabletoplanaheadanddiversify.Notethewatertankandsatellitedishinthebackground,fruittreestotherightandflourishingkeyholegardenintheforeground(Sebelea,Berea)...........................................................................................54

Figure18.SnapshotoftheERP'simpactonagriculturalresilienceinLesotho..................................................56Figure19.AnexampleofFAOsCAcalendarthatusedwinningartworkfromaschoolartcompetition.

ThisactivitywassupportedbytheEuropeanCommissionHumanitarianAidandCivilProtectiondepartment(ECHO),theCommonMarketforEasternandSouthernAfrica(COMESA)andtheOfficeofU.S.ForeignDisasterAssistance(OFDA)...........................................................................................................63


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Executive Summary

Background A recent World Bank report concluded that food production in sub-Saharan Africa was extremely vulnerable to climate change, with predicted a 24-40% reduction in maize yields under a 2 degrees C global warming scenario. When considering additional economic and political threats, it becomes evident that small-scale farming in sub-Saharan Africa in general and Lesotho in particular are facing an unprecedented crisis. The 2012 Lesotho Vulnerability Assessment Committee (LVAC) report, for example estimated that 38.7% of the country’s population, or 726,000 people, required humanitarian assistance in 2012-13, with at least 35% of the population in various districts benefiting from safety net support. After a food crisis in 2012, FAO and the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security co-designed an Emergency and Resilience Programme (ERP) for a 3 year cycle implemented from 2012-2015, with two groups of farmers: one group enrolled in 2012 and another in 2013. The ERP strongly emphasises capacity development, social protection contributions, provision of seed inputs for home gardens, and provision of fertilizer and seed inputs, training and support to promote Climate Smart Agriculture practices such as Conservation Agriculture. FAO asked the author to conduct an end of term review for the project Emergency and Resilience Programme (ERP) which had reached the end of two cycles of 3 years (a first intake from 2012-2014, and a second from 2013-2015). Two important caveats should be considered from the outset. First, the ERP’s primary mandate is reactive, with a focus on emergency relief and humanitarian support. Funding is allocated in three year cycles. Second, the review took place after an exceptionally dry four-month period with almost no rain since August 2015, in the middle of an exceptional El Niño event. Approach and key questions The spirit of the review is non-judgemental. The author uses a constructive approach to point out areas where the Programme could improve its impact, particularly with regards to resilience building, and gives credit where this is due. The over-arching question is: how can the ERP make the most of opportunities to build social-ecological resilience in Lesotho, given the constraints of factors beyond the Programme’s control? The report addresses seven inter-linked questions.

1. How resilient is the Programme? What is affecting its resilience? 2. What has happened as a result of the Programme so far? 3. How has this affected the attainment of the Programme’s objectives? 4. What are the factors affecting resilience of the target communities and their social-

ecological systems? 5. To what extent is the Programme effectively improving social-ecological resilience in the

target communities and beyond? 6. How sustainable are these outcomes? 7. What has been learnt to improve the functioning and impact of the Programme on social-

ecological resilience?

Methods The review uses a mixed methods approach, with literature reviews, semi-structured interviews, informal conversations and an interactive workshop. It consists of seven steps:


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ERP outcomes The ERPs spent the bulk of its USD 7 million budget over five years with only minor malfunctions, all of them due to circumstances beyond the Programme’s control. Its achievements are summarized in tabular form below. YEAR ACTIVITY BENEFICIARIES

Sustainable Production

2012 Livelihood Protection. Extension technical support. 11,000 HHs (Group 1)

2013 Cover crops 11,000 HHs (Group 1) Livelihood Protection. Extension & technical support. 7,500 HHs (Group 2) Mechanical CA planters 56 Resource Centres

2014-15

Cover crops (Year 2 inputs): 7,500 HHs (Group 2)

Social protection 800 HH (Leribe District)

2015 Community Development project led by UNICEF and CRS: 2300 HHs

Capacity Development

2012-15 Training on CA for extension staff and lead farmers

560 Extension personnel and 600 Lead Farmers

2013

Training on Armyworm awareness 250 extension staff, 300 teachers and 383,000 beneficiaries

Training on Early Warning System 134 ext. staff, 623,000 farmers

Armyworm Awareness: Provision of equipment MAFS Early Warning System: provision of equipment MAFS Support to local seed production Local farmers

• Broadoverviewofproject• Jointplanningofsitevisits• Informationsharing

InitialdiscussionswithProgrammeCoordinator

• FAOreports• Mid-termreview• FAOLSWebsite

Initialliteraturereview

• Interviewswith13agriculturalresourcecentrestafffromsevenAgriculturalResourceCentres.• Semi-structuredinterviewswith97beneXiciariesin11villages,insixDistricts(Maseru,Leribe,Mafeteng,Berea,Mohale’sHoekandQuting).• Informalvisitsanddiscussionswithconventionalfarmers.

Fielddatacollection

• Presentationofresilienceprinciples,initialXindingsandimpressions.• Smallgroupdiscussions(KnowledgeCafémethod).

WorkshopwithFAOstaffandinter-departmentalgovernmentofXicials

• Additionalpeerreviewed,web-basedandgreyliterature

Literaturereview

• FAOstaff• Othere.g.MAFS,fundingagencies

Draftreportssentforcomment

Finalreport


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Support to MAFS research capacity MAFS Armyworm training material MAFS & community Visual training materials on CA for MAFS extension staff and CA Task Force members

850 training kits, 50,000 leaflets

2013-14 Training materials - Home Gardening and Nutrition 400 kits, 60,000

handouts

2014 Training on CA and Home Gardening & Nutrition 675 Education personnel

Farmers’ exchange visits 106 farmers, 80 ext. off. 2014-15 Support to MAFS to attend conference 21 people

2015

Training on nutrition, home gardening and social protection

72 nutrition officers, 5 council representatives

Training sessions on mechanical CA 140 MAFS ext. staff Training on CA and home Gardening and Nutrition 20 Red Cross field staff

Training materials on cover crops 18,500 HHs, 68 resource centres, 300 schools

Farmers’ exchange visits 1,323 farmers,178 ext. officers

School Art Competition on Conservation Agriculture Children from 300 schools (all districts)

2015-16

Training of area chiefs and community council representatives on Rangeland and CA

245 chiefs and local representatives

2015-16 Sustainable Land Management training materials

Policy & Analysis

2012-16

Support to Food Security Sector Coordination structures

2012 Information and Communication products: 2 PRs General public

2013 Information and Communication products, PRS General public t ERP Monitoring & Evaluation reports Land Cover Change assessment mission 30 local professionals

2014-16 CA video and radio spots All public in Lesotho

2014

Information and Communication products: PRs General public ERP Monitoring & Evaluation reports Land Cover Change : design of the legend for the Lesotho map 20 local professionals

FAO Resilience Strategy Mid-term Evaluation

2015

Information and Communication products: 16 PRs General public channels ERP Monitoring & Evaluation Reports Land Cover Change : interpretations, analysis and applications

FAO Resilience Strategy Final Evaluation Resilience index methodology Repository website (www.lesothocsa.com) Procurement of video camera and communication material for MAFS Agricultural Information

MAFS – Department of Agric Information

Resilience assessment The Programme’s resilience, as well as its impacts on social-ecological resilience, was assessed using eight criteria: • Principle 1: Diversity. In the social system: do not put all your eggs in one basket. In the

ecological system: promoting species and crop diversity and invest in multiple responses to disturbance that causes food insecurity.

• Principle 2: Connectedness. In the social system: collaboration, networking and cooperation.


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In the ecological system: landscape connectivity, soil fertility, river and wetland flow • Principle 3: Responsiveness. In the social system: the capacity to check, adapt & respond. In

the ecological system: the capacity to recover after disturbance or drought • Principle 4: Ability to look at the entire system, not just one component • Principle 5: Encouragement of learning • Principle 6: Broadening of participation • Principle 7: Multi-level decision making - joint decision making at all levels • Principle 8 (author’s own addition): Persistence. Ability to be patient and to continue trying.

The ERP’s resilience as a Programme The ERP’s main strengths are its responsiveness, the way it encourages learning, and its persistence. It faired well in the area of multi-level decision making and reasonably well in the areas of diversity and participation. The strengths and weaknesses of the ERP’s resilience are depicted below.

Recommendations to strengthen the ERP’s resilience 1. Diversity - While the ERP has an impressive variety of funding sources and a diverse network

of collaborators, there is room for improvement in the diversity of response strategies the Programme has adopted in its interventions. This could in future be improved by adapting response strategies to the specific needs and disturbances of a livelihood region or district by e.g. working with Agriculture Resource Centres, traditional and elected leaders and officials from various Ministries to design locally appropriate solutions; working with FAO offices in other countries in the region to diversify the number of response options; connecting with the SADC office for regional integration of agriculture and food security strategies; working more closely with national and regional universities; and working with a wider range of government directorates In Lesotho. A scoping exercise to identify opportunities and constraints for response diversification is recommended.

2. Connectedness - The ERP is very well connected at national and local levels. By improving regional connectivity to other programmes, both in FAO and in other multi-national organizations such as SADC, learning and knowledge sharing could benefit from other experiences in the region; reciprocal exchanges could take place and emergency support could be streamlined. Building on the already good cooperation with other organizations working at grassroots level e.g. ActionAid, CRS and World Vision, where appropriate, would be beneficial.

3. Responsiveness - There is little room for improvement in the ERP’s responsiveness. Its monitoring systems and adaptive flexibility are impressive, as is the way it has used emergency funding to not only humanitarian relief but also build resilience where it could.

4. Ability to look at the entire system - The ERP’s focus on conservation agriculture and home gardens is a welcome deviation from conventional narrow yield-based approaches to food production. The ERP can improve its ability to look at the entire system by incorporating


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ecosystem health at the landscape or catchment level, broadening its focus to governance and institutions, and incorporating other sectors and other parts of the food value chain such as markets. The ERP can overcome current constraints by identifying organizations at various points in the food system, forging links with them, and designing training courses and capacity development initiatives in practical food system resilience rather than just CA and home gardens. The ERP should consider appointing a person dedicated to broadening its impact on the resilience of the food system. The new focus on Sustainable Land Management, mapping land cover and collaborating with more Departments in response to the mid-term review is positive and needs to be encouraged and resourced.

5. Encouragement of learning - While it was found that the ERP is a good example of a learning organization, it should strive to also include learning about catchment level sustainability and about the entire social-ecological food system.

6. Broadening of participation - The ERP has a strong participatory focus and encourages participation of particularly government decision makers across different departments and like-minded non-government organizations. There is room for improvement to obtain more direct input into decision making from extension staff and lead farmers.

7. Multi-level decision making - The areas for improvement in multi-level decision making include empowering Lead Farmers and extension staff to also contribute to strategic decisions, and considering the facilitation of multi-departmental catchment management forums in all the beneficiary communities. The mid-term review recommended the establishment of Village Management Plans (VMPs) and these could be considered instead of catchment management forums, although their geographic mandate will be narrower.

8. Persistence - The ERP receives a very high rating for persistence. With poor infrastructure, destitute people, environmental degradation and weak governance, circumstances can be quite daunting, and yet the Programme staff have remained enthusiastic with attitudes that have rubbed off on MAFS officials and extension staff. Factors beyond the Programme’s control, especially the short operational cycles and uncertainties about long term enabling funds, unfortunately undermine the ERP’s resilience.

The ERP’s impacts on social-ecological resilience Social-ecological resilience in Lesotho is challenged by at least 22 contextual factors that make communities and ecosystems exceptionally vulnerable. These include factors related to environmental degradation, deteriorating infrastructure in rural areas, stressed local, national and regional economies, community health issues, livestock and crop diseases, declining government capacities, and rising input costs. The main positive impacts of the ERP on social-ecological resilience are its encouragement of persistence, and its impacts on technical learning amongst beneficiary communities. It has also promoted ecological and livelihood diversity at the local level. The ERP has been less successful in promoting responsiveness in beneficiary communities: while some groups interviewed had demonstrated an ability to adapt their farming practices, there was a striking lack of capacity to respond to land degradation amongst many of the groups interviewed. The ERP has also been less successful in strengthening functional participation by community members (other than the direct beneficiaries) in the Programme. However, recent surveys indicate a slighly more positive trend in uptake of CA. CA farmers’ participation is mostly for material incentives and it is unclear whether, despite assurances to the contrary given during interviews, they would in reality have the intrinsic motivation to continue with conservation agriculture and sustainable land management, should these incentives be withdrawn. The figure below graphically displays the ERP’s impact on social-ecological resilience.


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1. Diversity - The ERP’s interventions have promoted a diversity of crops and has promoted social

diversity. To increase its impact, it should also strive to a) promote diversification of farming systems rather than just crop diversity, and b) include a wider range of livelihood categories, including successful farmers, in the mix of beneficiaries.

2. Connectedness - The ERP makes an extremely important contribution to farmers’ resilience by connecting them at three levels: at the village level - to one another; at the regional or District level - to other CA groups through exchange visits; and at national level - to MAFS via the agricultural extension services. The ERP will strengthen social-ecological resilience by continuing to connect a wider range of government role players to each other in meaningful ways, around collaborative projects. It would also promote resilience by facilitating closer connections between CA farmers and others in the community. This could be achieved by including other types of farming, not just CA and home gardens, in interventions.

3. Responsiveness – Many of the farmer groups interviewed showed extreme shortcomings in their ability to respond to land degradation and extreme droughts, which is in start contrast to the responsiveness of the ERP itself. The ERP will strengthen agricultural resilience by more actively developing the capacity of beneficiary community to respond on their own, to ‘make a plan’ and to self-organize. This could be achieved by carefully balancing the ‘giving’ and technical training component of the Programme, and the goals of self-empowerment of individuals and communities. This should include the development of leadership skills, using coaching methods and promoting community-based adaptation planning.

4. Ability to look at the entire system – While the practice of Conservation Agriculture is a more systemic approach than conventional agriculture, the focus could now shift to landscape restoration and entire villages. The ERP should consider adapting the focal scale of its intervention, from the scale of individual fields, to the ecological level of the catchment and to the institutional level of entire villages. This would imply involving a wider range of local institutional role players.

5. Encouragement of learning - The ERP has done a remarkable job of developing the capacity of CA farmers, teachers and extension officers. It would increase its contribution to agricultural resilience if it also developed the capacity for governance, decision making and planning, and focused on entire villages or regions instead of small groups of farmers. It should consider de-coupling the provision of social support from capacity development in its interventions to avoid beneficiaries’ confusion between the two types of interventions.

6. Broadening of participation – While many of the CA groups are shrinking, a few others have grown through voluntary participation. The ERP will strengthen its contribution to agricultural resilience by acting as go-between, in cooperation with extension staff, between CA farmers and other important community members who are currently not practicing CA, to promote broader participation.

7. Multi-level decision making - While the ERP works well across multiple levels, multi-level decision making is not deeply entrenched in the Programme. The institution of Lead Farmers is an important innovation in Lesotho, adopted by the ERP, and the Programme will do well to further develop the decision making capacity of Lead Farmers and to include them in decision

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1

2

3

4

5

Principle1:Diversity.

Principle2:Connectedness

Principle3:Responsiveness

Principle4:Abilitytolookatthewhole

system

Principle5:Encouragementof

learning

Principle6:BroadeningofparHcipaHon

Principle7:MulH-leveldecision

making

Principle8:Persistence


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making. 8. Persistence - The ERP is contributing excellently to people’s willingness to persist and the focus

groups all agreed that they would continue with CA, even after the ERP has stopped providing inputs and training.

Reflections, recommendations and a way forward The ERP has evolved from humble beginnings as an emergency humanitarian response Programme into a much broader initiative that has made great strides, within its constrained and reactive mandate, towards building resilience in Lesotho. The period 2012-2015 has laid a good foundation, based on trust and credibility, for the ‘next level’, characterized by more integration across role playing sectors, broader participation, a wider geographic scope which includes villages and landscapes, developing skills beyond CA and home gardens, and social mobilization to develop governance capacity. All those interviewed greatly appreciated the Programme’s contributions. The ERP’s budget (at least a high percentage of it) was spent on targeted interventions with no indication of fruitless expenditure. The cost-effectiveness of specific Programme activities was not assessed, due to unavailability of financial reports. Where efforts did not have the desired impact, this was due to factors beyond the Programme’s control. The ERP’s key contributions are outlined in detail in Table 1 in the main report. In summary, main impacts have been: 1. Providing encouragement and hope to extension staff and beneficiary farmers – the poor and

those on the margins – that there could be a future in farming, and that ‘someone cares’. This impact should not be underestimated.

2. Building networks, based on trust and good relations, with government departments and individuals across the country, and across sectors. FAO’s ERP has a very good reputation in Lesotho for being trust-worthy, caring and inclusive.

3. Developing a very useful collection of materials for CA, home gardening and, more recently, sustainable land management. These high-quality learning materials could be used for many years to come.

4. Making a meaningful direct difference to the livelihoods of 18 500 direct beneficiaries, with improved livelihoods for more than 120 000 household members (assuming a mean of six dependents per household).

5. Assisting extension officers at all of the country’s 68 agriculture resource centres in all districts with training, learning materials and field equipment to promote the uptake of CA. Up-scaling CA to national level is one of the ERP’s major achievements.

6. There have most probably also been ecological benefits through improved soil carbon storage and soil fertility in the CA plots as a result of CA interventions, although these have not yet been measured.

Very important goals that the Programme now has to address include: • Capacity development, which was always very important and should be continued and

expanded, with comprehensive packaging of messages, and more demonstration sites to enhance absorption.

• Participation, which should become more inclusive, with communities playing a stronger role. Inclusion of traditional and local knowledge about agriculture and land restoration should be considered.

• Strengthening the intrinsic motivation of participants, i.e. self-motivated participation instead of participation for material incentives.

• Adopting a more integrated approach which goes beyond CA and home gardens, and which also includes livestock and rangeland management, landscape restoration, and working with entire villages instead of small groups of 10-15. Building on previous achievements, the ERP should continue and even strengthen its efforts to draw in and work closely with a


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wide range of government departments and ministries.

A number of strategies were identified through which the ERP could make more substantial impacts on resilience. These strategies are based on the author’s analysis of multiple evidence as well as workshop participants’ recommendations. 1. Institutional diversification - In addition to the ‘normal’ departments involved in land use

(water affairs, agriculture and food security, rangeland management, forestry) and its emerging good relations with the Ministries/ Departments of Social Development and Education, it should also explore linkages with young farmer’s groups and ‘conventional’ farmers associations.

2. Broadening the scale of focus – Targeting entire communities rather than small groups of farmers, diversify livelihood strategies, and focus on landscapes and watersheds rather than fields will improve ownership of the Programme.

3. Balanced capacity development – Strive to find a balance between the technical and governance components of the Programme’s capacity development. Farmer field schools and training can be combined with developing communities’ capacity for self-organization. The surveys have shown that well-governed groups are more successful, more confident, have better connections and invest in more diverse livelihoods than poorly governed groups. Communities need to be trained in drawing up and enforcing their constitutions, conflict resolution, and how to negotiate with others.

4. Awareness raising and advocacy – The ERP can build on its communication successes and continue to strengthen communication and awareness raising, and with an emphasis on sustainable land management. It can achieve this through show-casing success stories, organizing sustainable landscape management open days, rewarding successful farmers or groups who are actively managing landscapes and catchments for sustainable agricultural production, with a CA focus.

5. Collecting and publishing evidence of the benefits of sustainable land management, at multiple scales from the catchment to the plot level, to social-ecological resilience. A well-designed monitoring programme could form the basis for this, coupled with partnerships with government officials and universities.


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1. Background

After a food crisis in 2012, FAO and the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security co-designed an Emergency and Resilience Programme (ERP) for a 3 year cycle implemented from 2012-2015. This involved two groups of farmers: one group enrolled in 2012 and another in 2013.). The ERP includes capacity development, emergency interventions to support food security, sustainable production through climate-smart agricultural practices, and information collection and analysis. FAO employed the reviewer to conduct an end of term review for the project Emergency and Resilience Programme (ERP) which had reached the end of two cycles of 3 years (a first intervention from 2012-2014, and a second from 2013-2015). The review took place after an exceptionally dry four-month period with almost no rain since August 2015. This event, induced by one of the strongest El Niño events on record1, has resulted in what is often referred to as ‘the worst drought in 35 years’, affecting a large part of southern Africa. No rain had fallen anywhere in Lesotho since the start of the maize planting season and the situation was described as ‘critical’, even ‘catastrophic’, in various news reports and NGO briefs. Below-average yields from 2012 to 2014 exacerbated the dire situation. While this context was not favourable for the outcomes of FAO’s intervention, it also presented an opportunity to assess resilience in its truest form. If FAO’s intervention did indeed build resilience then the FAO beneficiaries should be more resilient to the 2015-16 weather crisis than farmers who were not involved in FAOs programme. The main objective of the Final Evaluation was to “analyse the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability of the ERP” and to assess the impact of the programme by understanding a) the degree to beneficiaries have developed resilience to the chronic and drastic

changes to ecosystem services and their surrounding environment; and b) the extent to which Climate Smart Agriculture technologies are being promoted.

1Thisstatementiscontestedbyrecentauthorswhoclaimitshouldonlybelabled“strong”.SeeVarotsos,C.A.,C.G.


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2. Introduction to the problem

2.1 The global context Farming communities around the world have become increasingly vulnerable to global climatic, economic, environmental and political change. Small scale agriculture is particularly vulnerable to these changes, shocks and surprises that threaten the livelihoods and food security of 31.6 million people across southern Africa2. A recent World Bank report3 analysed current and predicted changes in crop yields over a 50 year period and concluded that food production in sub-Saharan Africa was extremely vulnerable to climate change, with predicted a 24-40% reduction in maize yields under a 2 degrees C global warming scenario. If one adds the additional threats of changes in the global economy and political instability, coupled with the impact of a slump in commodity prices and weakening investor confidence on southern Africa’s economy, it becomes quite clear that small-scale farming in sub-Saharan Africa in general and Lesotho in particular are facing an unprecedented crisis. Recognizing these threats, governments, UN agencies and NGOs have produced adaptation plans and strategies to help small-scale farmers cope with and adapt to change. Research programmes such as the Global Change and Food Security programme (GCAFS), the International Institute for Environment & Development (IIED) community-based adaptation programmes and the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) project have invested in research that would assist farmers in adapting to global climate change. Intergovernmental support agencies such as the UN Food and Agriculture programme (FAO) and local and global NGOs have developed policies and strategies to improve decision making and coordination to improve food security, improve livelihoods and manage natural resources more sustainably. Increasingly, these support organizations have started focusing on building community resilience rather than the conventional notion of providing food aid, although it is recognized that social security interventions still remain important. Recognizing this, FAO’s Emergency and Resilience Programme (ERP) in Lesotho have been exploring the complementarities between social protection and agriculture. The ERP wishes to up-scale this approach in their El Niño response to be able to assist the poorest households. FAO projects such as the ERP and “From Protection to Production” has been assisting and also doing extensive research in sub-Saharan Africa on social protection and agriculture.

2.2 The situation in Lesotho The rural poverty head count in Lesotho is almost 60%, with 40% of rural people living in

2UN OCHA. 2016. Regional outlook for southern Africa - recommendations for humanitarian action and resilienceresponse. UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Washington.http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/south_africa_humanitarian_outlook_5may2016.pdf3Hallegatte,S.,M.Bangalore,L.Bonzanigo,M.Fay,T.Kane,U.Narloch,J.Rozenberg,D.Treguer,andA.Vogt-Schilb.2016.ShockWaves:Managingthe ImpactsofClimateChangeonPoverty.ClimateChangeandDevelopmentSeries,WashingtonD.C.


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‘extreme poverty’. Agricultural production is the backbone of the rural economy4 and the relatively small official contribution of agriculture to Lesotho’s GDP of 8-9%5 hides the fact that agriculture forms a crucial part of the livelihoods of the majority of Basotho. According to the Government of Lesotho, between 75 and 80% of rural Basotho (77% of the population) rely on agriculture for their livelihoods 6 . Any stress factor that affects agricultural production therefore has a ripple effect throughout the system, with impacts on almost every facet of society. In Lesotho, several NGOs and agencies such as FAO and World Food Programme (WFP) have begun focusing their attention on the looming humanitarian crisis of climatic, environmental and socio-economic threats to people’s livelihoods. The WFP lists seven threats to food security in Lesotho (https://www.wfp.org/countries/lesotho/home): • Extreme poverty • Unemployment • Inflation • Periodic droughts • Erratic rainfall • Poor harvests due to soil erosion and exhaustion • HIV/AIDS.

To this list one could add: • Extreme reliance on rain-fed agriculture • Land shortages • Rising food prices • Rainfall shifts, from early summer (September and October) rain to mid summer

(November and December) • High infant and child mortality rates of 94/1000 live births, and 23/1000 of surviving

children up to age 5 (2006 data) • Political and governance challenges at national and regional levels, with politization of

the civil service hampering service delivery • Deteriorating infrastructure • Declining remittances – employment in the mines is at only 30% of 1980s levels • Dependence on imported food (according to the UN-MDG 2013 report only 30% of

cereal needs are met from local production and • Loss of confidence amongst preferred trading partners in all emerging markets, a trend

affecting the entire sub-Saharan Africa and South Africa in particular.

Successive crop failures or at least bad production years since 2010 have led to 4AfricanEconomicOutlookforLesotho,20155AfDB, OECD, and UNDP. 2015. Lesotho 2015 - African Economic Outlook. African Development Bank, OECD andUNDP,Nairobi6GovernmentofLesotho,2014.KingdomofLesothoMillenniumDevelopmentGoalsstatusreport2013.GovernmentofLesothoandUNDP,Maseru.


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increasing needs for external food support. In 2012 it was estimated that one out of three Basotho did not have a reliable supply of food year-round and was in need of external emergency aid. The 2012 Lesotho Vulnerability Assessment Committee (LVAC) report estimated that 38.7% of the population, or 726,000 people, required food assistance in 2012-13, with at least 35% of the population (some sources claim up to 60%) in various districts benefiting from safety net support, using 5.6% of Lesotho’s GDP7. On the positive side, global NGOs and inter-governmental organizations in the country have a long term commitment to build resilience supported by a good national adaptation strategy. Government staff, although constantly facing budget and capacity shortfalls, are willing to play their roles. The country has a history of agricultural extension with a network of agriculture resource centres. In addition, at global level, agricultural technologies such as conservation agriculture and the development of drought resistant crop varieties are developing rapidly8. One of Lesotho’s greatest assets is a resilient rural population with a remarkable capacity to adapt to short term crisis. The exceptionally high adult literacy rate (87% for men, 98% for women)9 is another plus factor.

2.2.1 The2015-206ElNiño-relatedfoodcrisis

It was estimated that self-grown food provided only two to three months of nourishment in the foothills, mountains and southern lowlands of Lesotho in 2015. This figure is expected to decline in 2016 with a low point between December 2016 and March 201710 . This is due to the late onset of early summer rain in 2015, making it impossible for farmers to plant summer crops. The few farmers who dared to plant have lost all their seeds (Figure 1). A Food Security Alert in January 2016 by the Food Security Early Warning Systems Network (www.fews.net) predicts that “the severity of food insecurity and the size of the food insecure population in Southern Africa may reach their highest levels since the 2002/03 food crisis” and that the number of food insecure people could double, relative to late 2015/ early 2016 levels.

7FEWS.2015.Lesothoremotemonitoringupdate,July2015.Maseru.8The InternationalMaize andWheat Improvement Centres ‘Drought TolerantMaize Project for Africa’ developeddrought tolerant open-pollinated andhybridmaize for 13 countries (excluding Lesotho) and released 233 varietiesbetween 2007 and 2015, of which 87 were OPV, with funding from the Gates Foundation. Seehttp://repository.cimmyt.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10883/4723/57029-2015v4(4).pdf?sequence=4&isAllowed=y9AfricanEconomicOutlook,2015.10http://www.fews.net/sites/default/files/documents/reports/FEWS%20NET_Southern%20Africa%20Drought_Alert_20160122.pdf


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Figure 1. Demoralizing pictures of failed crops were common during the field visit in January 2016, at the height of the drought (Matelile, Mafeteng district)

Food insecure people rely on purchased food to survive periods of food shortages. But food prices have fluctuated widely, reaching record levels in 2016 with a 37% year on year change (Figure 2) and increased drastically since 2013,11 putting an additional burden on the rural poor who are already spending between 50 and 65% of their household income on basic food and groceries12 13.

Figure 2. Trends in the price of white and yellow maize, Lesotho, 2014-2016. Source: Lesotho Bureau of Statistics. From FAO. http://www.fao.org/giews/food-prices/price-warnings/detail/en/c/413921/

One of the responses to food insecurity is to provide food safety nets (fews.net, July 2015). Lesotho spends 9.6% of GDP on transfers and safety nets such as agricultural and fertilizer subsidies, cash for work public works programmes, school feeding schemes, child

11http://www.fews.net/sites/default/files/documents/reports/Southern_Africa_2015_12_PB.pdf12Leduka,R.,J.etal..2015.TheStateofPovertyandFoodInsecurityinMaseru,Lesotho.AfricanFoodSecurityUrbanNetwork,CapeTown13According to FAO’s analysis of its own Social Protection datasets, poor households in Lesotho enrolled in SocialProtection programmes such as Child Grant Programmes under normal circumstances spend up to 65% of theirincomeinfood.Source:Prifti,DaidoneandMiguelez(2016).ImpactoffoodpricesincreaseamongLesotho’spoorest.FoodandAgricultureOrganizationoftheUnitedNations(FAO)


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support grants, bursaries, and pensions. This figure does not include contributions from UN agencies and NGOs14.

2.3 FAO’s Emergency and Resilience Programme in Lesotho FAO established a country office in Lesotho with the aim of providing policy input and technical advice to improve food production and reducing environmental degradation. After yet another food crisis in 2012, FAO and the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security co-designed an Emergency and Resilience Programme (ERP) for a 3-year period (2012-2015) with two intakes of farmer groups: the first group, consisting of 11 500 farmers, from 2012 until 2014, and the second, consisting of about 700 farmers, from 2013 to 2015. The ERP, which is part of FAOs Country Programmatic Framework (CPF) for Lesotho, includes capacity development, emergency interventions to support food security, sustainable production through climate-smart agricultural practices, and information collection and analysis15. It should be noted that the ERP is primarily an emergency response programme aimed at providing short-term humanitarian assistance to vulnerable people during times of crisis. The considerable limitations posed by emergency responses, i.e. astonishingly short funding cycles of three years, reactive interventions and a focus on the least adaptive, most vulnerable people, should therefore be taken into account. Lesotho and FAO’s most recent Country Programmatic Framework for the period 2013-2017 stands on five pillars16:

• “Sustainable food and nutrition security, with a focus on strengthening national institutions and farmers organizations. Building the knowledge base and skills of farmers and extension services is an important area of activity, particularly with respect to the use of technologies that help build resilience through increased productivity and marketing.

• An enabling environment for sustainable agribusiness development, with an emphasis on strengthening the capacity of key government institutions as well as other important actors agricultural investment planning.

• Sustainable management of natural resources, a priority which recognizes land degradation and unsustainable utilization of natural resources as the lead contributing factors to food insecurity and declining agricultural productivity in the country.

• Improved agricultural service delivery, particularly with a view to improving farming communities’ access to agricultural advisory services. Important tasks include establishing a policy framework for research and extension and facilitating innovation through closer links between the two

• and strengthening monitoring and evaluation as well as knowledge management”.

14http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/LS_RMU_2015_07_final.pdf15FAOLesotho.2013.EmergencyandResilience(ERP)BaselineReport,2012-2013.Maseru16FAOandLesothoCPF-http://www.fao.org/3/a-au196e.pdf


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The Programme is co-designed with government, in alignment with the National Strategic Development Plan17 and the country’s Sustainable Development Goals. FAO has also established ‘knowledge platforms’, for example the Home Gardening & Nutrition Working Group (HGNWG) and the Sustainable Land Management Working Group (SLMWG). Their work on training materials and composition is available in www.lesothocsa.org. The FAO-ERP also plays an important supporting role in the long-running multi-institutional Conservation Agriculture Task Force (NCATF) where information about conservation agriculture (CA) is shared. The NCATF focuses on promoting the adoption and upscaling of conservation agriculture in Lesotho and has made significant progress since its establishment in 2012, with important contributions from FAO.

2.3.1 FAO’sEmergencyandResilienceProgramme(ERP)inanutshell

The ERP strongly emphasises capacity development, social protection contributions, provision of seed inputs for home gardens, and provision of fertilizer and seed inputs, training and support to promote Conservation Agriculture. Support and capacity development of government extension officers is an important pillar of the Programme, which works closely with staff based in decentralized agriculture resource centres as well as education managers and teachers in about 300 schools. Lead farmers are included in the complement of extension services. Vulnerable households are selected, where the household is either female-headed, elderly or chronically ill, although 55% of household heads polled in the baseline survey for the first (2012) intake group did not meet any vulnerability criteria 18. Although education levels were low, all beneficiaries have some form of education. Half of the beneficiaries (50%) had not completed primary school education (2012 baseline survey).

2.3.2 Financialresources

For the period 2012-2015 ERP received USD7 million.19 ERP donors include: European Commission's Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO), United States Agency for International Development Governmental (USAID), the Department For International Development (DfID), the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), BELGIUM, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). In-kind contributions from the MAFS in particular, and collaborations with other government departments, NGOs and the Conservation Agriculture Task Force greatly enhanced the impacts of the programme. Financial and administrative reports were not made available and therefore the consultant is unable to comment on cost-effectiveness of the respective activities listed in Table 1. 17 Government of Lesotho. 2012. National Strategic Development Plan 2012/13 – 2016/17. Maseru.http://www.gov.ls/documents/NSDPFINALPRINTVERSION13012013%5B1%5D.pdf18If the criterion of at least one household member being vulnerable is used, then 94% of households could beconsideredvulnerable(B.Miguelez,pers.comm.).Theremaining6%areLeadFarmers.19BorjaMiguelez,pers.comm.Detailedfinancialrecordswerenotinspected.


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The range of support provide by the ERP are listed and described in Table 1. Table 1. Contributions and achievements of FAO’s ERP, 2012-2015

YEAR ACTIVITY BENEFICIARIES

Sustainable Production

2012

Livelihood Protection: Staple crops seeds (maize and beans OPV – 5kg each per family), fertilizers (NPK and LAN – 50 kg each per family) and vegetable seeds (6 varieties – 100gr each per family)-Year 1 inputs. Extension technical support.

11,000 HHs (Group 1)

2013

Cover crops (Year 2 inputs): Wheat (25kg per family) and grazing vetch seeds (7kg per family in Group 1) 11,000 HHs (Group 1)

Livelihood Protection: Staple crops seeds (maize and beans OPV – 5kg each per family), fertilizers (NPK and LAN – 50 kg each per family) and vegetable seeds (6 varieties – 100gr each per family)-Year 1 inputs. Extension technical support.

7,500 HHs (Group 2)

Distribution of mechanical CA planters (4 tractor-drawn planters in lowland districts and 56 ox-drawn planters)

4 lowland districts and 56 Resource Centres (out of 68)

2014-15

Cover crops (Year 2 inputs): Wheat (25kg per family) and grazing vetch seeds (5kg per family in Group 2 – due to insufficient funding)

7,500 HHs (Group 2)

Social protection: improving the complementarities between Social Protection and Agriculture (vegetable seeds kits and training)

800 HH (Leribe District)

2015 Community Development project led by UNICEF and CRS: support with home gardening seeds kits and training materials

2300 HHs

Capacity Development

2012-15 Training on CA for extension staff and lead farmers

560 Extension personnel and 600 Lead farmers

2013

Training on Armyworm awareness

250 extension staff, 300 teachers and 383,000 beneficiaries among communities

Training on Early Warning System to prevent Armyworm potential outbreak

134 extension staff 623,000 beneficiaries among communities

Armyworm Awareness: Provision of equipment to MAFS (2 vehicle mounted sprayers, 300 sprayers, 400 personal protective equipment kits, 1,000 litres of chemicals)

MAFS

Early Warning System: provision of equipment ((100 pheromone traps, 1,000 pheromone lures, 250 trapping stripes, 200 measuring cylinders and 100 rain gauges)

Support to local seed production (purchase of 74 MT of maize seeds and 6.5 MT of bean seeds) Local farmers

Support to MAFS research capacity (inputs for trial tests, seed testing equipment and soil testing equipment – two seeds graders, two growth chambers)

MAFS

Armyworm training material and forecasting data sheets (8,000 brochures, 100 posters, 800 pictures, 400 instruction sheets and 300 booklets)

MAFS extension services and community forecasters in all districts


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Visual training materials on CA for farmers to be used by MAFS extension staff and CA Task Force members (English and Sesotho versions)

850 training kits made of posters and visual aid (275 in English and 575 in Sesotho) and 50,000 leaflets (8,000 in English and 42,000 in Sesotho)

2013-14

Production of visual training materials on Home Gardening and Nutrition

400 kits (200 in English and 200 in Sesotho) and 60,000 handouts (30,000 in English and 30,000 in Sesotho)

2014

Training on Conservation Agriculture and Home Gardening & Nutrition among Education staff

300 teachers (230 secondary schools and 70 primary schools in 10 districts), 280 principals, 15 senior education officers, 80 resource teachers

Farmers’ exchange visits (pilot initiative) 106 farmers (Leribe District) and 80 extension officers

2014-15

Support to MAFS to attend South Africa no-till conference in KZN

2014: 6 MAFS management staff 2015: 15 extension staff and farmers

2015

Training on nutrition, home gardening and social protection

72 nutrition officers, 5 community council representatives

Two training sessions on mechanical CA 140 MAFS extension staff

Training on CA and home Gardening and Nutrition 20 Red Cross field staff in all districts

Production of training materials on cover crops (15,000 leaflets and 600 posters)

18,500 HHs, 68 agricultural resource centres (all districts) and 300 schools

Farmers’ exchange visits (national upscale in all districts)

1,323 farmers (all districts) and 178 extension officers

School Art Competition on Conservation Agriculture Children from 300 primary and secondary schools (all districts)

2015-16

Training of area chiefs and community council representatives on Rangeland and CA

Chiefs and local representatives (110 from Maseru, 135 from Thaba-Tseka)

2015-16

Design and production of Sustainable Land Management training materials

Policy & Analysis

2012-16

Support to Food Security Sector Coordination structures

2012 Information and Communication products: 2 PRs General public through local media and FAO channels

2013 Information and Communication products: 10 PRs, 5 success stories

General public through local media and FAO channels

ERP Monitoring & Evaluation – 4 reports: : ERP


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Baseline, ERP Post-Planting, ERP Post-Harvest and pre-post training of teachers

Land Cover Change assessment mission 30 local professionals from various institutions

2014-16 CA video and radio spots All public in Lesotho

2014

Information and Communication products: 9 PRs, 1 success story

General public through local media and FAO channels

ERP Monitoring & Evaluation – 5 Reports: ERP Baseline, ERP Post-Planting ERP Post-Harvest, pre-post training of teachers and pre-post training of principals

Land Cover Change : design of the legend for the Lesotho map

20 local professionals in the areas of environment, cartography and statistics

FAO Resilience Strategy Mid-term Evaluation

2015

Information and Communication products: 16 PRs General public through local media and FAO channels

ERP Monitoring & Evaluation – 3 Reports: Pre-post training of teachers, Chiefs & counsellors training, Post-harvest ERP

Land Cover Change : interpretations, analysis and applications

FAO Resilience Strategy Final Evaluation Resilience index methodology Repository website (www.lesothocsa.com) Procurement of video camera and communication material for MAFS Agricultural Information

MAFS – Department of Agric Information


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3. Key questions addressed in this review

This review deviates from the norm. It is non-judgemental and uses a constructive, developmental approach to point out areas where the Programme could improve its impact, particularly with regards to resilience building. The over-arching question this review addresses is: how can the ERP make the most of opportunities to build social-ecological resilience in Lesotho, given the constraints of factors beyond the Programme’s control? More specifically, the review addresses seven inter-linked questions. 1. How resilient is the Programme? What is affecting its resilience? 2. What has happened as a result of the Programme so far? 3. How has this affected the attainment of the Programme’s objectives? 4. What are the factors affecting resilience of the target communities and their social-

ecological systems? 5. To what extent is the Programme effectively improving social-ecological resilience in

the target communities and beyond? 6. How sustainable are these outcomes? 7. What has been learnt to improve the functioning and impact of the Programme on

social-ecological resilience?


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4. Study area

For the final review (January 2016), villages where FAO-supported farmer groups were active, and Agricultural Resource Centres, in the districts of Maseru, Leribe, Mafeteng, Berea, Mohale’s Hoek and Quting were visited. Earlier visits by the reviewer during the January 2014 mid-term review included the districts Thaba Tseka and Leribe. All five livelihood zones (Foothills; Mountains; Northern Lowland; Senqu River Valley and Southern Lowland) were included (Figure 3). FAO staff agreed to select a spectrum of villages and beneficiary groups, representing low, intermediate and high levels of uptake of ERP interventions.

Figure 3. Lesotho administrative and livelihood zones. From http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/ah865e/ah865e06.jpg


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5. Methods

The review took place during January 2016, at the end of an exceptionally dry period characterized by an exceptionally high Agricultural Stress Index (ASI20), as high as 85% in some of the regions visited (Figure 4).

Figure 4. The review took place during a period of extreme heat and moisture stress linked to an El Niño event. Lesotho Agricultural Stress Index, 15 December 2015. Red polygons are areas with very high ASI’s. Source: FAO-GIEWS. The impact is evident in the dust clouds and low productivity of fields where CA farmers were waiting for the review team (Lifajaneng, Mafeteng)

5.1 The evaluation process The evaluation consisted of seven sequential steps, with constant feedbacks between them:

20ASI is expressed as a percentage of the pixels in a given area with a Vegetation Health Index below 35% - thethresholdVHIforproductivecrops.VHIiscalculatedfromsatellitedataata1Kmresolutionovera10dayperiod.Seehttp://www.fao.org/giews/earthobservation/asis/index_1.jsp?lang=en


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5.2 Initial discussions with Programme Coordinator Initial Skype discussions with the Programme Coordinator took place to

• clarify the terms of reference • identify key issues that the review should address • agree on the process, people to interview and places to visit • identify documentation required for pre-reading.

5.3 Initial literature review The initial literature review consisted of re-visiting the 2014 mid-term review and summarizing its key findings and recommendations, searching for relevant literature and FAO reports produced since January 2014 to supplement pre-2014 literature already available, and becoming familiar with the ERP’s monitoring reports and data.

5.4 Field data collection Site visits were arranged by FAO and were conducted in collaboration with the FAO coordinator and staff. FAO staff acted as interpreters. In each district the agriculture resource centre was visited where discussions took place with extension staff. Thereafter, local extension staff accompanied the reviewer and FAO to pre-selected villages, deliberately chosen to represent the entire spectrum of CA uptake from ‘good’ to ‘poor’. , Beneficiary communities involved in Conservation Agriculture and home gardening were met and interviewed. While focusing on beneficiaries of FAOs ERP, the evaluator also

• Broadoverviewofproject• Jointplanningofsitevisits• Informationsharing

InitialdiscussionswithProgrammeCoordinator

• FAOreports• Mid-termreview• FAOLSWebsite

Initialliteraturereview

• Interviewswith13agriculturalresourcecentrestafffromsevenAgriculturalResourceCentres.• Semi-structuredinterviewswith97beneXiciariesin11villages,insixDistricts(Maseru,Leribe,Mafeteng,Berea,Mohale’sHoekandQuting).• Informalvisitsanddiscussionswithconventionalfarmers.

Fielddatacollection

• Presentationofresilienceprinciples,initialXindingsandimpressions.• Smallgroupdiscussions(KnowledgeCafémethod).

WorkshopwithFAOstaffandinter-departmentalgovernmentofXicials

• Additionalpeerreviewed,web-basedandgreyliterature

Literaturereview

• FAOstaff• Othere.g.MAFS,fundingagencies

Draftreportssentforcomment

Finalreport


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interviewed a number of “conventional” farmers who were not involved in CA. Details of people and places involved in the interviews are provided in Table 2. Table 2. People interviewed and places visited

District Livelihood region Resource Centre

Village Number of interviewees Farmers

Exten-sion offi-cers

Men Wo-men

Mafeteng Foothills Matelile Matelile Hau se Khupane

8 5 1

Foothills Lifajaneg 7 6

Foothills Ramokoatsi Ha Lekhari 1 3 3

Quting Senqu River Valley Koali Marelleng 4 5 3

Senqu River Valley Kohlong 1 8

Mohale’s Hoek Senqu River Valley Mekaling Phatlalla 8 14 4

Senqu River Valley Braakfontein 2 4

Leribe Northern Lowlands Mahobong Naleli 5 8 -

Northern Lowlands Tale N/A - - 2

Mountains N/A Pela-Tsoeu 2 - -

Berea Foothills Mapoteng Sebedea 4 1

Maseru Mountains Semonkong 1 - -

43 54 13 Semi-structured interviews were supplemented by participant observations and photographs. Officials were met in their place of work and first asked to show the reviewer around and to talk about their work, highlights and challenges. Farmers participating in the FAO programme were likewise visited at their homesteads or in their fields. Interviews were preceded, where possible, by visits to CA and ploughed fields, respectively, and informal discussions. Thereafter farmers were asked to gather in a circle, mostly outdoors under shade trees where weather permitted (Figures 5, 6).


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Figure 5. Interviews were conducted in a relaxed setting, outdoors, near homesteads. (Patlalla, Mohale’s Hoek)

Figure 6. Extension staff were interviewed at Agriculture Resource Centres (Ramokoatsi, Mafeteng)

Interviews centred around eight principles that have been shown to build resilience in systems of people and natural resources (see Section 7.2). Interviews were open-ended (Table 3), starting with General questions such as “Please tell me about the way you make a living here” or “Please tell me how you farm”. Depending on the answer, more specific questions were included such as “How big are your fields”? “Which crops do you cultivate when there is enough rain?” and “What was this year’s harvest like”?; “How many animals do you have”? and “How many people in the village practice CA”?. These questions also helped find answers to Principle 4 (look at the entire system). This lead to a discussion about Diversity of livelihoods (Principle 1). Questions included: “How do you make a living here”?; “Where do you get food from when it is dry like this”? “How do other people, who are not part of your group, get food”? This was followed by a series of questions about Learning (Principle 5), e.g. “Where do you learn about farming, and about CA?”; “Who do you learn from?”; “How do you learn?” and “Who learns from you?” and “What have you learnt from this crisis, that would prepare you better for a similar one in future?”.


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This paved the way for questions about Responsiveness and Innovation (Principle 3), with questions such as “Which new things have you tried?” and “Is there anything new you can do which you have never done before?”. People would normally point to something which they don’t yet have access to, e.g. water storage, infrastructure or funding. The follow-up question would then be: “What would the new thing be that you could do, if you had access to X?”. Questions about Participation (Principle 6) included “Who do you work with?” and “Who is allowed to be part of your group?”. Questions about Connectedness (Principle 2) included: “What is your relationship like with other members in your community”? “What is your relationship like with the extension officers?” and “What is trust like in the group?”. Questions about Multi-level decision making (Principle 7) included: “How do you make decisions in the group?” and “What are the roles of your Councillor and Chief in decision making?”. A discussion about Persistence and Patience (Principle 8) included questions such as “How do you see the future moving forward?”; “For how long do you plan to be involved in CA?” and “How would you farm if the support from FAO comes to an end one day? Table 3. Resilience principles and associated interview questions

Resilience issue Associated open ended question(s) Follow-up questions Livelihood diversity and sustainability (Principle 1)

“How do you make a living here”?

“Where do you get food from when it is dry like this”?

“Where do other people, who are not part of your group, make a living?”

“How have things changed, since you became involved in the support programme of MAFS and FAO?”

Connectedness (Principle 2)

“What is your relationship like with other members in your community”?

“What is your relationship like with the extension officers?” “What is trust like in the group?”

“Where else do you get support or advice from?”

Responsiveness, innovation (Principle 3)

“What are the risks to your farming?” “How do you check those risks?”

“Which new things have you tried?” [People would normally point to something which they don’t yet have access to, e.g. water storage, infrastructure or funding].

“What would the new thing be that you would do, if you had access to [X]?”

“Is there anything new you can do which you have never done before?”

“What adaptations can you make?”

“Which plans do you have, to be better prepared for another drought?”

“What are your plans for other


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sources of income / livelihoods?” “What solutions do you have to <a challenge

mentioned>” “What advice do you have to yourselves?”

“DO you think a challenge such as this can happen again?” “How would you respond then?”

“Which kinds of interventions will help you deal better with your challenges?”

The bigger picture and systems perspective (Principle 4)

“Please tell me about the way you make a living here?” or

“How big are your fields?” “Which crops do you cultivate when there is enough rain?” “What was this year’s harvest like?” “How many animals do you have?” “What are your rules of membership?”

“Please tell me how you farm?” “How do other people in the village farm?”

Learning (Principle 5)

“Where do you continuously learn about farming?”;

“..and about CA?”

“What must happen, so those who know about farming can transfer their knowledge better to others?”

“How do you learn”? “What have you learnt about CA, compared to

conventional farming?” “What is working well?”

“What did not work so well?” Who is learning from you? “What are they learning?” “What motivated them to copy

you?” “What must change, for things to work better?” “How can your support services (e.g. Agricultural

Resource Centre; FAO) work better?” “How is the way they are working affecting your work?”

“What advice do you have for FAO and MAFS?”

“What have you learnt from this crisis, that would prepare you better for a similar one in future?”

Participation (Principle 6)

“Who do you work with?”;

“How does the group work together?” ‘Who is allowed to be part of your group?” “How are you organized?” “How did you start?” “What does <organization X> do for you/ bring to

you?”

Multi-level decision making (Principle 7)

“How do you make decisions in the group?” “What rules do you have?” “How are the rules enforced?”

“What are the roles of your Councillor and Chief in decision making?”

To Resource Centre staff: “What is your relationship with Head Office”?

Persistence (Principle 8)

“How do you see the future moving forward”?

“For how long do you plan to be involved in CA?” “Do you plan to continue with CA once the drought is over?”

“How would you farm if the support from FAO comes to an end one day?”


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“What is motivating people to continue?” “How do you see the future of Conservation

Agriculture?”

5.5 Workshop with FAO and government officials A one-day information-sharing workshop, facilitated by the author and arranged by the ERP, was conducted at FAO’s offices in Maseru. The workshop, attended by 10 people from diverse backgrounds, started with introductions followed by a presentation by the reviewer of early findings. This was followed by a semi-structured group discussion. Thereafter, the participants were asked to split into two groups of five and to continue their discussions around small tables (Figure 7). Discussions were prompted by five issues and questions:

1. Defining the challenge - “What is it that we, the people in this room, MUST make progress with, if we want to promote more resilient farming communities?”.

2. Visioning the future - “What will life be like for them (the farming communities) if we achieve this?” “How will we know that we are making progress?” “What will the indicators be?”.

3. Imagining the possibilities - “What have we tried before, that has potential to be explored further?”. “Are there new ways, that we haven’t tried or thought about?”.

4. Pin-pointing the priorities - “What can we DO, with the resources and capacities available to us at this point in time?”. “What is the one thing that would make a BIG DIFFERENCE here?”.

5. Making a commitment- “What is the NEXT thing we will do?”. “Who will do it?” ‘With whose help?”. “By when?”.

Figure 7. The workshop with officials centred on small group dialogues


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6. Concepts and frameworks used

The review used two fundamental frameworks: a social-ecological systems framework and a resilience framework. The two frameworks are described in greater detail below.

6.1 Social-ecological systems A social-ecological systems ‘lens’ (illustrated in Figure 8) was adopted, with four corner-stones: 1. Understanding that ecosystems, food, systems, people, institutions, public service

provides, infrastructure, rules and decision making systems are all part of the same system. These elements can adapt and self-organize, which brings novelty through innovation. Sometimes new issues emerge from these interactions.

2. Looking for couplings, linkages and interactions (‘feedbacks’) between the social, ecological, institutional and livelihood elements of the system.

3. Leaving room for non-linear change over time (i.e. not assuming straight lines and considering surprise events), and taking uneven patterns (a ‘patchy’ distribution of resources and people) into account. The future is not just an extension of the past.

4. Looking for interactions across different scales, e.g. from the global scale to national and ultimately to local and from past episodes to current events.

Figure 8. Conceptual framework of a social-ecological system, using the example of FAOs ERP in Lesotho. Knowledge, skills and capacity (central oval) is the ‘bridge’ between local people, local landscapes and livelihood assets. Governance systems and institutions underpin this bridge. Interventions (bottom oval) need to focus on individuals and communities, their landscapes with ecosystem services, as well as institutions and governance systems. Local social-ecological systems (the inner large circle) are affected by political and economic trends, shocks and surprise outside the local sphere (depicted on the far left) as well as ecological and climatic change, shocks and surprise (depicted on the far right). These elements need to be monitored to enable adaptive management


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6.2 Resilience Resilience is defined as the capacity of a system – e.g. a farming system, a city, a community or an economy – to deal with change and continue to develop and where necessary transform itself. A resilient system withstands shocks and disturbances (such as climate change or financial crises) and uses such events to bring about renewal and innovation. A resilient system ‘bounces back’ when previous conditions were desirable (i.e. the past was a good place to be’). But when past conditions were unworkable or undesirable (‘a bad place to be’) a resilient system is able to adapt and ‘bounce forward’. This is called transformative change and is linked to learning and innovation. Food system resilience is defined by Danielle Tendall and her colleagues as “capacity over time of a food system and its units at multiple levels, to provide sufficient, appropriate and accessible food to all, in the face of various and even unforeseen disturbances”21. The authors further state that “effective policy and management interventions require an understanding of these complex [cross-scale and cross-level] interactions and their implications…..therefore a whole system perspective is required”4. Jen Hodbod and Haylie Eakin22 emphasized the importance of diversity in food system resilience: firstly, when looking at just one scale, functional diversity (i.e. more goals than just maximizing profit and multiple mechanisms of producing food) is important. When looking across scales, response diversity (multiple ways of responding to shocks, crisis or disturbance) is important.

6.2.1 Resilienceisbouncingforwardandbouncingback

The litmus test of a resilient food system in Lesotho would be its capacity to either bounce forward, or bounce back, depending on circumstances. • During favorable, food-secure years the system must bounce forward – i.e. innovate,

transform and take a new path towards social, economic and ecological sustainability. • During times of crisis, the system must bounce back to a food-secure state where

innovation and transformation could be considered.

6.2.2 Principlesformanagingandbuildingresilience

Resilience is promoted by applying seven principles, derived from the peer reviewed literature, with an eight principle added by the author. These principles fall in two categories: principles related to the properties of the system being managed; and principles related to the governance of the system (Figure 9).

21Tendall,D.M.etal.2015.Foodsystemresilience:definingtheconcept.GlobalFoodSecurity6:17–23.22Hodbod, J., and H. Eakin. 2015. Adapting a social-ecological resilience framework for food systems. Journal ofEnvironmentalStudiesandSciences5:474–484.


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Figure 9. Resilience principles. From Biggs et al. 2012 23

The eight principles include: • Principle 1: Diversity. In the social system: do not put all your eggs in one basket. In

the ecological system: promoting species and crop diversity and invest in multiple responses to disturbance that causes food insecurity.

• Principle 2: Connectedness. In the social system: collaboration, networking and cooperation. In the ecological system: landscape connectivity, soil fertility, river and wetland flow.

• Principle 3: Responsiveness. In the social system: the capacity to check, adapt & respond. In the ecological system: the capacity to recover after disturbance or drought.

• Principle 4: Ability to look at the entire system, not just one component. • Principle 5: Encouragement of learning. • Principle 6: Broadening of participation. • Principle 7: Multi-level decision making - joint decision making at all levels. • Principle 8 (author’s own addition): Persistence. Ability to be patient. Trying and trying

again.

23Biggs, R. et al. 2012. Toward Principles for Enhancing the Resilience of Ecosystem Services. Annual Review ofEnvironmentandResources37:421–448.


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6.3 Resilience dashboard A dashboard on a 1-5 was developed with ratings ranging from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest):): 1. Considerable room

for improvement. Few if any strong points. A major re-think is required.

2. A few strong points, but considerable re-thinking, experimenting and learning required.

3. Average. Numerous strong points, but some re-thinking and modification required. Some early warning signals here.

4. Good. Many strong points with lesser room for improvement. Keep it up and continue learning and adapting.

5. Exceptional, with very little room for improvement. Can be used as a model to learn from and move forward.


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7. Results

7.1 The ERP’s resilience This section assesses whether the objectives of the Programme are consistent with the goals and principles of resilience - whether the Programme’s design, activities and outputs are designed to build resilience. As mentioned in the Introduction, the ERP originated in the aftermath of a disaster; its priority was to assist in the humanitarian protection of livelihoods. Its funds are linked to emergencies, with logical and unavoidable tensions between the reactive frame of emergency responses and the proactive frame of resilience building. The ERP’s resilience is affected by external factors such as national politics and political stability, the global economy that affects the willingness to pay of funders, and local capacity, both in communities and government. The level of cooperation from government is crucial in the Programme’s ability to re-organize and to continue functioning in the face of disturbance. Within the Programme, a very important influencing factor is the exceptionally high levels of motivation and flexibility of staff, both at the project coordination level and at the field level. This is partially affected by the levels of support and acknowledgement within FAO. The reliable availability of enabling funds plays an important role in the resilience of the Programme, which is adversely affected when continuous funds, beyond three-year funding cycles, is uncertain. Building resilience in agriculture takes many decades and the ERP’s three-year funding cycles, while being appropriate to emergency relief, are obviously not the best mechanism to build long term resilience. The key issue which this report hopes to address is to advise the ERP how to make the most of opportunities to build resilience within the constraints of its emergency mandate. The resilience of the ERP can be assessed, using the eight resilience principles and resilience dashboard outlined in the previous section. 1. Diversity – The Programme’s diversity of funding sources, activities and staff is designed to enhance its resilience: at least seven funding agencies (ECHO, DFID, USAID, COMESA, CERF, Belgium and SDC) contributed funding and more sources are being explored (see Table 1). Perhaps the most impressive resilience-enhancing strategy in the Programme is the many in-kind contributions and add-on activities it has leveraged via other NGOs as well as various government ministries. Diversity of funding and in-kind contributions in the Programme is therefore regarded as being HIGH.

The response strategies promoted by the ERP, on the other hand, are less diverse – especially if the low diversity of multi-scale strategies (from local to global) is considered. The programme opted for focusing on a universal integrated package (crops and vegetables/nutrition) while acknowledging that other interventions such as livestock would have been desirable, but difficult to manage all at once in all 68 Resource Centres of the country. The ERP did plan to introduce fruit trees, but funding for this did not materialize.


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Looking forward, the diversity of future response strategies could be improved by

a) adapting response strategies to the specific needs and disturbances of a livelihood region or district, in response to monitoring data (augmenting the strategy to upscale CA in Lesotho)24 . This could be done in collaboration with local village institutions and extension office staff, perhaps partnering with NGOs working on the ground;

b) working with FAO offices in other countries in the region, notably FAO South Africa, to diversify the number of response options;

c) connecting with the SADC office for regional integration of agriculture and food security strategies http://www.sadc.int/sadc-secretariat/directorates/office-deputy-executive-secretary-regional-integration/food-agriculture-natural-resources/;

d) working more closely with national and regional universities to design monitoring systems and gather monitoring data on the ground; and

e) working more actively with a wider range of government directorates, departments and Ministries in Lesotho to incorporate grazing, forestry, tourism and small business development as component of resilience building. Some progress has been made in this regard by harmonizing training materials with different ministries and NGOs, beginning to work with the Ministry of Education in the dissemination of training and learning materials and piloting Social Protection programmes with UNICEF. And yet many of the extension staff interviewed commented on the lack of functional cooperation with other Ministries (on the ground) and expressed a strong desire for more functional cooperation.

The Sustainable Land Management initiative, currently under development, is a good example of the type of collaboration that will promote social-ecological resilience. The trend in the ERP to progressively expand its integrated focus should be encouraged and supported. The Programme might of course be hampered by institutional and administrative constraints in implementing these recommendations. A scoping exercise to identify opportunities and constraints for response diversification is therefore recommended.

2. Connectedness – The programme is connected at three levels. At global level, the Programme is well connected to the UN-FAO. It has access to expertise, funding, data, technologies and tools developed by FAO. At national level, the Programme is exceptionally well connected to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MAFS). All 24While acknowledging that diversification would pose logistical and funding challenges, especially when the ERPwishes to upscale its interventions to national level, continuing with a universal approach, on the other hand, isextremely risky, prone to locality-specific failures and inconsistent with resilience principles. Logically, a particularstrategythatisworkableinonedistrictorbioregionmightnotworkeverywhere.Allstrategiesareexperimentalandsolutionsarenotclear-cut;thereforetheonlywaytolearnwouldbetolauncharangeofcarefullydesignedlocally-relevant interventions.Thiswill requireamajorshift towardsmoreparticipatorydecentralizeddecisionmakingandadaptivemanagement.


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MAFS staff interviewed expressed their appreciation for the Programme’s contribution with statements such as “Without them we won’t be able to do our work”; “Without FAO it will be very difficult”; “FAO is the one and only that does workshops”; “FAO really cares about the Ministry” (MAFS) and “They are essential for our functioning”; “The training materials they provide are the only ones we have”. At local level, the Programme staff have very good links with extension staff at the agriculture resource centres and at Head Office, as well as with local communities directly. The strength of these connections relies on training and capacity development materials, courses and exchange visits. At national level, the Programme is therefore very well connected. At regional level, however, the programme’s connections to organizations and institutions operating at supra-national scale are less well developed. By improving regional connectivity to other programmes, both in FAO and in other multi-national organizations such as SADC, response diversity could be improved, (see previous heading); learning and knowledge sharing could benefit from other experiences in the region; reciprocal exchanges could take place; and emergency support could be streamlined. 3. Responsiveness – The Programme has monitoring systems in place to assess its own activities, and seems to be able to adjust its activities in response to changing conditions. It has access to and uses reliable FAO data collection systems such as the Global Information and Early Warning System http://www.fao.org/giews/english/index.htm. Although not all data collection has been completed on schedule, there is nevertheless valuable information available from baseline studies, post-harvest studies (420 households sampled) and assessment of training courses. So, for example, when it became apparent through monitoring that cover crops were not being as widely adopted as anticipated, the Programme responded by organizing exchange visits by farmers to places where cover crops were properly being adopted and used (2013-14 post-planting monitoring report). Also, when it became apparent that fewer than expected respondents were still involved in CA after the first season’s planting, the Programme launched a survey to find out why some farmers persist with CA and others not. When it became apparent through monitoring that farmers were not capable of the manual labour required for CA, the ERP motivated for the acquisition of ox-drawn CA planters (2014 post-planting report). The Programme staff are exceptionally good at identifying new opportunities for collaboration and innovation. The use of youth art in the development of the 2016 FAO CA Calendar is an example: it was not part of the original plans but was opportunistically developed when an opportunity arose. Training of school educators, the new focus on exchange programmes for CA farmers, and submitting the programme for a “Feeding Knowledge” Expo 2015 for cooperation on research and innovation on Food Security https://www.feedingknowledge.net/02-search/-/bsdp/5920/en_GB are good examples of adaptability and flexibility. The Programme is exceptionally good at being responsive. It takes signals from other scales (e.g. long term weather and climate predictions and food prices in other southern African countries; political dynamics) into account in its decision making and strategies.


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4. Ability to look at the entire system – The ERP currently has a strong focus on Conservation Agriculture as the main technical innovation at the field level, with some attention to food production in home gardens 25 , capacity development and social protection. The Programme’s strong focus on CA, in the belief that it is this practice that generates desirable changes in natural resource management and promotes environmental sustainability in agriculture, has many advantages. The ERP is doing well by raising awareness about the techniques and technologies associated with CA and is training people how to do it. And yet the strong focus on CA is also the ERP’s greatest weakness. There is nothing wrong with CA, but it is only one aspect of resilient food systems. The ERP’s resilience is negatively affected by its incomplete and constrained focus on only some parts of the whole system. Food production systems are highly integrated26 and a focus on only CA, home gardens, social protection and skills development for CA while paying less attention to other, more powerful drivers of the food system (e.g. water security; landscape-level processes and dynamics; markets; public infrastructure) results in an incomplete understanding of the factors shaping the success or failure of food security interventions. In focusing so strongly on the household level (CA and home gardens), the ERP is at the mercy of the other elements of the food system which have a profound impact on the Programme’s resilience outcomes. It needs to be acknowledged that this constrained focus is a result of the Programme’s original design, its humanitarian origins, and its budget. A programme with limited resources cannot begin to address all the drivers of the system, and yet formerly neglected elements such as ecosystem health at the landscape or catchment level, governance, institutions, other sectors and other parts of the food value chain such as markets are well within the Programme’s reach. The ERP has, indeed, started to address this through its Sustainable Land Management materials. And yet more can and has to be done – particularly on promoting water security, but without of course completely neglecting CA and home gardens. The ERP can overcome these constraints by identifying additional organizations at various points in the food system, forging links with them, and designing training courses and capacity development initiatives in practical food system resilience rather than just CA and home gardens. The ERP should consider appointing a person dedicated to broadening its impact to the resilience of the food system along its development path, including landscape health, water security, food production and markets. This kind of analysis was attempted by John Ingram and colleagues in their assessment of food security and global environmental change in 201027. While few practical examples exist where this has been

25FAO’spost-harvestassessmentshaveshownthathouseholdvegetableproductioncanbeincreasedbymorethan120%throughwell-designedhomegardens(ERPPost-harvestSurvey,2012-2013).26Tendall,D.M.,etal.2015.Foodsystemresilience:definingtheconcept.GlobalFoodSecurity6:17–23.27Ingram,J.,P.Ericksen,andD.Liverman.2012.Foodsecurityandglobalenvironmentalchange.Routledge.Downloadablefromhttp://www.gecafs.org/publications/Publications/Food_Security_and_Global_Environmental_Change.pdf


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achieved at country level, FAO in Lesotho (with UNFAO backing) is well placed to be a global pioneer in this regard. 5. Encouraging learning – The FAO-ERP is clearly a learning organization. The conditions for learning organizations, outlined by Annette Bos and her colleagues in the journal Global Environmental Change, include: a hands-on project that focuses everyone’s attention; a peer group drawn from different organizations; the presence of good facilitators at many different levels; enough flexibility to be able to adapt; access to research; and having time to think28. The ERP complies very well with all these criteria. It emphasises learning at all levels, from the many training courses it sponsors and offers to its own team members, extension staff, teachers and others, to its willingness to experiment and constantly improve. The Programme Coordinator’s appreciation for and complete acceptance of the recommendations in this report is a prime example of this learning culture. The TOR of this review is an excellent example – it was made clear that the review is not meant to be judgemental but should emphasize learning and improvement. The ERP intervention is an excellent learning platform, not only for FAO in Lesotho but also for practitioners in climate-smart agriculture and resilience world-wide. Decentralized facilitation takes place in the form of agricultural extension staff at local level, FAO field staff, the FAO ERP Coordinator, and the CA Task Team. The ERP has taken the lead in establishing the Home Gardening and Nutrition Working Group, the Sustainable Land Management Working Group and a Technical Core Group (multi ministerial) that assisted in the completion of the Lesotho Land Cover map. The Programme is doing all it can to optimize learning. One recommendation, going forward, is to extend learning beyond CA and food production at the plot scale, but to also promote learning about how to improve the resilience of the entire landscape (e.g. at the scale of a catchment) and about resilience of the entire social-ecological food system. Unfinished initiatives such as the Land Cover Map and learning materials for Sustainable Land Management are a very good start. Further financial and technical support for initiatives aimed at restoring social-ecological resilience at the village and catchment (watershed) level will be extremely helpful in taking the ERP to the next level.29

28Bos, J. J.,R.R.Brown,andM.A.Farrelly.2013.Adesignframeworkforcreatingsocial learningsituations.GlobalEnvironmentalChange23:398–412.29Programmestaffhavecompletelybought into this ideabutneedthe financialandtimeflexibility (longer fundingcycles)todoitproperly.


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Figure 10. The ERP's focus on learning is evident from the comprehensive learning and educational materials it has provided and disseminated to agricultural resource centres (Tale RC, Leribe)

6. Broadening participation – The Programme has strongly promoted participation by MAFS officials, communities and other organizations with similar issues and mandates. All the extension services staff interviewed expressed their genuine appreciation for FAO’s efforts to involve them, train them and empower them. Although none of the school teachers who participated in FAO training were interviewed, the ERP’s efforts to reach out to them, and to also involve scholars, is a remarkable example of participation. Participants in the inter-departmental resilience dialogue that formed part of this review expressed the same sentiments of appreciation. FAO’s policy to consistently work through MAFS extension staff, which may at times be frustrating and time consuming, is another superb example of the Programme’s commitment to participation, as is its desire to work with the Ministries of Forestry, and Social Development. As Jules Pretty 30 explains, functional participation is when communities or other participants are part of decision making and are empowered to influence the direction of interventions. Participation in the ERP is, however, to a large extent in the form of information sharing (e.g. distributing learning materials) or participation for material incentives (e.g. agricultural inputs to beneficiaries). There is regular contact with the Departments of Field Services (MAFS) and Ministry of Education, including quarterly workshops, where they have the opportunity to discuss ERP strategies. People working in the field, e.g. extension staff based at Agriculture Resource Centres, indicated that, while they have a lot to offer, they are seldom consulted about the design of interventions. Truly functional participation by communities and field staff is not yet taking place in the ERP, although there is monitoring to assess where the main needs are and to understand what motivates people to participate in CA and home gardens, and assessment of the extent to which beneficiaries are benefiting from training. Therefore, while the ERP has many good aspects related to participation, there is room for improvement to obtain more input from extension staff and Lead Farmers, to influence the Programme’s implementation for the better31.

30Pretty,J.N.1994.AlternativeSystemsofInquiryforaSustainableAgriculture.IDSBulletin25:37–49.31The ERPCoordinator shares this viewandhas started addressing this challenge to, as heput it, “strengthen the


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7. Multi-level decision making – Decision making affecting the ERP takes place at many levels: at the budget allocation level FAO Headquarters takes many decisions about resourcing, approves budgets and provides global monitoring data and web interfaces, although the Lesotho office is also able to raise funds and has indeed done so for most of the ERP funding. The FAO Lesotho Office has an oversight and administrative governance function. The ERP coordinator has full responsibility for managing the strategy and its implementation, with the FAO country representative (the Budget Holder) approving all expenses and official agreements. The MAFS senior staff and to some extent the CA Task Team (in an advisory capacity) provides inputs into priorities. Extension staff assist with identifying beneficiary communities and households. At the village level, a Lead Farmer plays a coordinating and mentoring role to individuals and households, in collaboration with extension staff32 (Figure 10).

Figure 11. Multi-level decision making among FAO ERP stakeholders

The areas for improvement in multi-level decision making include empowering Lead Farmers and extension staff to also contribute to strategic decisions. The facilitation of multi-departmental catchment management forums in all the beneficiary communities would make a big difference here. The mid-term review recommended the establishment of Village Management Plans (VMPs) and these could be considered, to supplement catchment management forums – in line with the new multi-scale strategy. 8. Persistence and patience – Circumstances in the beneficiary communities can be daunting with poor infrastructure, destitute people, environmental degradation and weak governance all contributing to the potential to be negative, if not depressed. And yet the Programme staff have remained super-enthusiastic, with an attitude that has rubbed off on MAFS officials and extension staff. The ERP is exceptionally persistent. Programme staff are remarkably motivated and have constantly shared their enthusiasm and optimism with voiceofthepeopleintheERP”andpromote“moreregularandmeaningfuldialogue”totaketheERPtothenextlevel32Theroleoftheleadfarmershasbeensomewhatsub-optimal.Thegoodnewsisthatthisleavesroomforinnovation

BeneXiciaries

Leadfarmers

MAFSXieldstaff

MAFSdecisionmakers;CATaskTeam

FAO-LS

FAOHQ


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the reviewer. They tend to see obstacles as challenges and opportunities for learning; even the recent drought was viewed as something to learn from and adapt. The ERP therefore gets a very high rating for persistence.

7.1.1 OverallassessmentofERP’sresilience

Principle 1: Diversity.

Diversity of response strategies could be improved by adapting response strategies to the specific needs and disturbances of a livelihood region or district; working with FAO offices in other countries in the region to diversify the number of response options; connecting with the SADC office for regional integration of agriculture and food security strategies; working more closely with national and regional universities; and working with a wider range of government directorates In Lesotho. A scoping exercise to identify opportunities and constraints for response diversification is recommended.

Principle 2: Connectedness

By improving regional connectivity to other programmes, both in FAO and in other multi-national organizations such as SADC, response diversity could be improved, (see previous heading) learning and knowledge sharing could benefit from other experiences in the region reciprocal exchanges could take place and emergency support could be streamlined. Stronger cooperation with other organizations working at grassroots level e.g. ActionAid, CRS and World Vision.

Principle 3: Responsiveness

The Programme is exceptionally good at being responsive, takes signals from other scales (e.g. long term weather and climate predictions food prices in other southern African countries political dynamics) into account in its decision making and strategies.

Principle 4: Ability to look at the entire system

Neglected elements such as ecosystem health at the landscape or catchment level, governance, institutions, other sectors and other parts of the food value chain such as markets are well within the Programme’s reach. The ERP can overcome these constraints by identifying organizations at various points in the food system, forging links with them, and designing training courses and capacity development initiatives in practical food system resilience rather than just CA and home gardens. The ERP should consider appointing a person dedicated to broadening its impact on the resilience of the food system. The new focus on SLM is positive and needs to be encouraged and resourced.


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Principle 5: Encouragement of learning

Strive to also learn about catchment level sustainability and about the entire social-ecological food system.

Principle 6: Broadening of participation

While the ERP has many strong points related to participation, there is room for improvement to capacitate at least extension staff, but also perhaps lead farmers, to influence the Programme’s implementation for the better.

Principle 7: Multi-level decision making

The areas for improvement in multi-level decision making include empowering Lead Farmers and extension staff to also contribute to strategic decisions, and considering the facilitation of multi-departmental catchment management forums in all the beneficiary communities. The mid-term review recommended the establishment of Village Management Plans (VMPs) and these could be considered instead of catchment management forums, although their geographic mandate will be narrower.

Principle 8: Persistence

Circumstances in the beneficiary communities can be daunting with poor infrastructure, destitute people, environmental degradation and weak governance all contributing to the potential to be negative, if not depressed, and yet the Programme staff remain enthusiastic, with an attitude that has rubbed off on MAFS officials and extension staff. The ERP therefore gets a very high rating for persistence. The 3-year funding cycles and uncertainties about long term enabling funds is, while being beyond the Programme’s control, are not conducive to the Programme’s resilience.

A snapshot view of the ERP’s strengths and weaknesses is presented in Figure 12 below.

Figure 12. Snap-shot of FAO's resilience strengths and weaknesses


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7.2 Disturbances that are challenging the resilience of local food production systems in Lesotho: resilience of local food production systems to what?

Looking at the social-ecological systems diagram (Figure 8), local food production systems in Lesotho are challenged by at least 22 types of changes, disturbances, surprises or shocks against which they have to be resilient. In addition to fast-acting disturbances, there are also slow-onset factors which, although they may not change drastically, can be the onset of catastrophic change. At the local level Slow factors that can reach catastrophic thresholds include: • soil degradation in fields • rangeland degradation • deteriorating rural infrastructure • declining household incomes • community values, trust and cohesion • chronic diseases • hunger.

Shocks and surprises include: • weather events e.g. droughts, floods • pest outbreaks • animals raiding or trampling their fields • livestock and crop disease outbreaks • water restrictions.

At the national and global levels Slow factors that can reach thresholds include: • declining national infrastructure • declining government capacity • rising import costs • currency devaluation, driven by political uncertainties in Lesotho and South Africa

coupled with falling prices of commodities • rising costs of food • rising costs of agricultural input costs e.g. fertilizer and equipment • the capacity and motivation of beneficiaries and government officials to cooperate and

implement the Programme’s strategies.

Shocks and surprises include: • political turmoil • macro-economic disturbances and challenges • insecure import and export agreements • subsidies and social support.

These factors are described in greater detail in Table 4 below.


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Table 4. Fast and slow disturbances that test the resilience of Lesotho farmers

Geographic scale (local / national / global)

Type of disturbance

Description of impact on resilience

Local factors Fast Weather events e.g.

droughts floods, hailstorms

Droughts are clearly a huge challenge to the resilience of everyone involved in farming, but particularly challenging to the selected beneficiaries. The 2015-2016 El Niño event, the worst in living memory, is coming at a time of economic hardship and political uncertainty.

Pest & disease outbreaks in crops

Pest outbreaks such as the 2013 armyworm outbreak can make many months of hard work undone, especially if amongst impoverished communities who cannot afford pesti3000379956#cides. ‘Pests’ is highlighted as the second-most often mentioned hazard (after drought) in the FAO post-harvest impact monitoring report in 2014.

Animals raiding or trampling their fields

This is a huge challenge to CA farmers, whose strategy is to improve the texture and fertility of untilled soil. Livestock consume valuable mulch and cover crops, but also compact the soil. Livestock have a particularly high impact in communities where the traditional leadership is not supportive of CA or not a CA farmer. “Even if the chief has spoken people don’t listen”

Livestock diseases Although this problem was not specifically mentioned by any of the farmers interviewed, several reports such as the Lesotho Strategy for Climate-Smart Agriculture raises concerns about animal diseases. “Outbreaks of animal diseases and the lack of infrastructure to prevent and control these are considerably hampering livestock production in Lesotho” http://www.fao.org/emergencies/countries/detail/en/c/168688/

Unreliable water supplies

Unreliable water and lack of access to water emerged in all the focus group discussions and interviews. Most people interviewed had to either walk far to get water from springs or rivers, or had to purchase water at high cost. Although most villages had evidence of reticulated water infrastructure, these were invariably dysfunctional, even at the agricultural resources centres. The current El Niño event has obviously exacerbated the situation.

Slow Acceptance of CA farmers by their local community

CA is seen as a ‘step backward’ by many, and those farmers who aspire to increase their social status often tend to resist it

Ill health due to chronic diseases; hunger

Manual CA is labour intensive; weeding in particular is energy consuming, as is digging basins. When people lack energy and strength due to ill health or hunger, the benefits of CA are not really accessible to them.

Deteriorating rural infrastructure

Lesotho has excellent road infrastructure and cell phone networks exist almost everywhere, near major centres. Away from the major roads, however, the road network is in a state of disrepair. Agricultural infrastructure such as irrigation and water storage is almost non-existent in the communities visited. This makes access to markets for produce difficult and increases the costs of agricultural inputs. Informal markets are furthermore few and far between.

Rangeland degradation

Rangeland degradation, attributed to weak common property management institutions, puts additional pressure by livestock on fields, affects water run-off and reduces the contribution of livestock to household incomes

Soil degradation Erosion and soil degradation affects agricultural productivity, depletes soil nutrients and organic content, and available land for cultivation.

National factors Fast Political turmoil and

lack of unity “Basotho no longer trust each other” (Agricultural Technical Officer). Fractures between opposition parties, ruling government and military. Many comments about disunity, lack of mutual support and a culture of intolerance. “Politication of civil service”

Slow Weakening infrastructure

While road networks are well maintained, infrastructure away from main roads is very poor and poorly maintained. Agricultural resource centres, for example, are in a state of disrepair (Figure **). This affects the availability of markets and people’s access to markets

Declining government capacity to implement policies and strategies

Everyone interviewed commented on declining budgets and weakening capacity in government, lack of monitoring and accountability systems and frequent reference to ‘politization of the civil service’

Dwindling community capacity to act independently to help themselves

Communities rely heavily on government support, subsidies and social grants. When the capacity to deliver this support declines, people are left without a plan. “What can we do? We have nothing. Government must help us” (elderly female CA farmer). “No, we do not have a plan” (Lead Farmer). “The only way to stop this erosion is if government pays us to do it”

Rising agricultural input costs

Agricultural input costs, linked to price of fossil fuels, currency devaluation and long term (yet fluctuating) increases in fossil fuel prices, have risen far above agricultural productivity. Government subsidies have mitigated this but doubts exist whether government can continue subsidising agricultural inputs, given the state of the country’s economy. Besides, these subsidies are meaningless to the rural poor who are unable to afford even subsidized agricultural inputs


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Rising food prices When crops fail, most people sell off some of their livestock or rely on remittances and social grants to purchase food. The price of maize has increased rapidly since the El Niño event was forecasted in 2015 (see Figure *), making purchased food less affordable. The poor spend a disproportionate percentage of their household income on food.

Global factors Slow Climate change Many reports have been written about the impact of global climate change on food

security in sub-Saharan Africa. World Bank models suggest that maize and sorghum production could shrink by 40% under a 2 degrees warming scenario. The problem is not only declining productivity, but also wide fluctuations in rainfall (droughts, then floods) and temperatures. Lesotho is already experiencing these impacts.

Economies of neighbouring countries

Economic conditions in South Africa and to a lesser extent other sub-Saharan African countries have been deteriorating rapidly. The Rand, to which the Loti is linked, lost 26% of its value against the US Dollar between June and December 2015, and 56% of its value against over the past 3 years

Job prospects for migrant labourers

The South Africa mining sector, a major source of employment for Basotho males, have shed 47 000 jobs between 2012 and 2015 with a further 32 000 jobs predicted to be shed in 2016 due to global economic slowdown.

Global confidence in developing country markets & governance systems

Global confidence in emerging markets is at an all-time low.

Relations with neighbouring countries

Relations between Lesotho and South Africa could have a severe impact on rural livelihoods due to food import costs, labour relations, tourism, import tariffs and water pricing. Eighty percent of Lesotho’s imports are food-related.

Fast Prices of imported goods

Resilience, i.e. the capacity to respond to change in disturbance and to if necessary transform, can be severely tested by the slow-onset variables listed above. These slow factors, which change subtly and almost unnoticeably, can lead to catastrophic ‘regime shifts’ when a small change pushes susceptibility to droughts or price changes over a tipping point. Land degradation is a case in point: a single incidence of erosion does not have a catastrophic impact, but successive erosion events, when combined, can lead to a catastrophic tipping point when the system is stressed by a large drought or flood. It is therefore important to keep track of the slow variables listed above and identify thresholds below which resilience is severely compromised. Now that the factors that are challenging the resilience of local food production systems have been described and compared, the resilience-building properties of the ERP can be assessed. It should, however, be borne in mind that the resilience of the target communities is already severely compromised due to the issues raised in Section 2.2. The baseline social-ecological resilience is therefore low.


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Figure 13. The ERP's impact on social-ecological resilience is constrained by the low background resilience in Lesotho. History has made social-ecological systems extremely vulnerable and droughts and extreme weather are becoming increasingly common

7.3 The ERP’s impact on the resilience of local food production systems in the target communities

In this section the Programme’s strategies and actions are assessed in terms of their contribution to local food production systems resilience. I.e. it is not the resilience of local food production systems that is being assessed, but rather the outcomes and impacts of the ERPs efforts at building resilience. The eight elements of resilience (diversity, connectedness, responsiveness, ability to look at the entire system, encouragement of learning, broadening of participation, multi-level decision making, and persistence) are assessed against the resilience dashboard presented earlier.

7.3.1 AssessingtheERPsimpactsagainsteightresilienceprinciples

1. Diversity – The incorporation of CA has contributed positively to ecological diversity. A variety of seeds are cultivated and rotated in CA fields, and the incorporation of grazing vetch in fields, food gardens with multiple crops, and planting of indigenous seed varieties are all positive elements. In addition, the enrichment of soils that takes place through CA contributes to below-ground biological diversity. The survey has indicated that, during times of severe stress such as the 2015-16 drought, those individual farmers who have invested in livelihood diversity by e.g. combining CA with tillage, and included home gardens, piggeries, chickens and livestock in their farming system are more resilient to the drought than those who have invested only in CA combined with home gardens. People are of course not always able to diversify, but the programme can do a lot to assist people in diversification of their farming enterprises. In the social dimension, the ERP has recruited a mix of beneficiaries, but with a strong


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bias (understandable, in view of the Programme’s humanitarian nature) towards weaker community members who are in need of support. The focus group interviews have, however shown that those CA groups that consist of a diverse mix of community members, including successful farmers, traditional leaders, and a gender and age balance, are more persistent than those which include predominantly destitute members of the community.33 The ERP should therefore strive to a) promote diversification of farming systems rather than just crop diversity, and b) include a wider range of livelihood categories, including successful farmers, in the mix of beneficiaries.

Figure 14. This group of CA farmers interviewed at Naleli, Leribe, has invested in a diverse range of livelihood strategies including home gardens, chicken farming, hair dressing and looking after natural springs as a fall-back during water scarce times. They were remarkably positive about the future

2. Connectedness – The ERP makes an extremely important contribution to farmers’ resilience by connecting them at three levels: at the village level, to one another; at the regional or District level, to other CA groups through exchange visits; and at national level, to MAFS via the agricultural extension services. “We motivate each other when we work together” (Focus group, Braakfontein) and“ we learn what other farmers are doing [Through exchange visits]”. The MAFS staff are a crucial connection for farmers, and rely heavily on FAO. “FAO is really concerned about the Ministry” (Agricultural Technical Officer). Extension staff inform farmers of training courses, subsidies, approaching pests and droughts, and what crops to plant. The establishment of Watershed Management Committees (not FAO’s intervention) was an important initiative by CRS which connect farmers to each other and to the landscape and facilitates communication and coordination. There are, however, significant warning signs about the disconnection of CA farmers from the rest of their community, who many CA groups accused of laughing at them or disrespecting them. This demotivates them and has become a major impediment to the resilience of CA farmers. An important area for improvement is the connection between MAFS officials and officials from other Departments, notably Rangelands, Livestock and Forestry. “When FAO comes to the Resource Centre it should work with all the ministries, not just MAFS”. and “If we focus only on growing crops, we will experience that

33TheERPisindeedintheprocessofbroadeningitstargetgrouptoincludechiefs,schoolsandthegeneralpublic.


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communities are slow to adopt CA” (Agricultural Technical Officer). The beneficiary communities seem to have stronger connections with MAFS than with any other government department dealing with natural resources. The 2011 Capacity Development for Climate Change Adaptation Strategy34 strongly recommended improved synergies between departments and ministries dealing with natural resources, and many of the extension staff interviewed shared that opinion. The ERP will strengthen agricultural resilience by continuing to connect a wider range of government role players to each other in meaningful ways, around collaborative projects. It would also promote resilience by facilitating closer connections between CA farmers and others in the community. This could be achieved by including other types of farming, not just CA and home gardens, in interventions. Current trends in the ERP towards inter-agency integration and sustainable land management are a step in the right direction.

Figure 15. Farmers who are strongly connected through rules and codes of conduct (in this case, engaging in ritual prayer before a meeting) tend to be well organized, understand each other’s roles and responsibilities and are therefore more resilient (Brakfontein, Mohale’s Hoek)

3. Responsiveness- While the ERP itself is exceptionally responsive (see Section 8.1), many of the interviewed CA farmer groups have extreme challenges to be responsive. “We do not yet have a plan”; “We have no more seeds left - we have eaten them all” (CA group member, Kohlong). “The extension officer must organize a meeting with livestock owners” (CA farmers, after complaining about livestock damage to CA fields). “The MAFS must approach the chief. He is not on our side”. There were, however, two capable farmers’ groups who showed a strong ability to be responsive. The group at Braakfontein had joined forced to form an agricultural cooperative, and have identified land which will be used for that purpose. Another group, at Laleni, had diversified their production systems, are combining CA with conventional farming, poultry and home gardens, together with off-farm income, and were positive about being able to deal with the drought. This group is also working closely with the Chief and have established a strong Constitution with penalties for those who break the rules.

34Dejene,A.,S.Midgley,M.VMarake,andS.Ramasamy.2011.Strengtheningcapacityforclimatechangeadaptationinagriculture:experiencesandlessonsfromLesotho.FAO,Rome.


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The ERP will strengthen agricultural resilience by more actively developing the capacity of beneficiary community to respond on their own, to ‘make a plan’ and to self-organize. This could be achieved by carefully balancing the ‘giving’ component of the Programme, and self-empowerment of individuals and communities. This should include the development of leadership skills, using coaching methods and promoting community-based adaptation planning35. CARE International produced a practical manual that could be very helpful in this.36 4. Ability to look at the entire system – The ERP has successfully promoted CA, which in itself embraces a systems approach. By incorporating home gardens, the ERP also acknowledges the need to work with several elements of the agricultural system, and has developed national scale strategies which have been operationalized, via agricultural extension offices, at the field level. The resilience approach is major deviation from ‘conventional’ agriculture which focuses on production and maximum sustainable yield – a concept that has been discredited by resilience scientists because of its focus on sustainable production, instead of on system functioning. The concept of Ecological Sustainable Yield is now preferred, or even better: social-ecologically sustainable yield37. While acknowledging these advances, the current drought and food crisis has demonstrated that CA and home gardens alone are not enough to build resilience to severe droughts such as the one experienced in 2015-16. The ERP’s new direction will require a concerted shift in focus – from ‘bouncing back on the back of conservation agriculture’, to ‘bouncing forward on the back of sustainable food systems’. This objective will only be achievable at the level of FAO’s overall country strategy – it cannot be expected of the ERP to achieve this within its humanitarian relief mandate. The ERP has invested a lot in CA, and it will require great courage to be more skeptical about the promises of CA as the overriding strategy to build social-ecological resilience. The evidence from this assessment is that almost all crops (including those in CA fields) had failed during the drought. While keyhole gardens have been a very useful coping mechanisms, this was not enough to help beneficiaries to cope with the crisis of the 2015-2016 El Niño event. Based on the past three years’ performance, CA was furthermore insufficient to help farmers ‘bounce forward’ during better years.38 Something else, on top 35SeeReid,H.2016.Ecosystem-andcommunity-basedadaptation:learningfromcommunity-basednaturalresourcemanagement.ClimateandDevelopment8:4–936CARE. 2014. Participatory Monitoring, Evaluation, Reflection and Learning for Community-based Adaptation: ARevised Manual for Local Practitioners. Care International, London.http://www.careclimatechange.org/files/2014_PMERL.pdf37SeeZabel,R.W.,etal.2003.Ecologicallysustainableyield.AmericanScientist,91(2),pp.150-157andAnderiesetal.2006.Fifteenweddingsandafuneral:casestudiesandresilience-basedmanagement.Ecologyandsociety,11(1),p.21–wheretheydebunkthemythofsystainableyieldinresiliencethinking38Itcouldevenbearguedthatintheabsenceofafocusontheentirefoodsystem,CAonitsownmightbeapovertytrapforpoorfarmers


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of CA, is therefore needed. The ERP has indeed acknowledged this by broadening its more recent focus to include livestock and rangeland management, and its development of sustainable land management training materials.

Figure 16. Two photos of the same CA field, taken in January 2014 (left) and January 2016 (right) demonstrate the devastating impact of the 2015-16 El Niño event, and the incompleteness of CA as a sole mechanism to build resilience under such testing conditions. These farmers at Naleli built their own resilience after receiving an initial kick-start from the ERP by getting themselves organized, forming an alliance with the traditional leader, developing a clear code of conduct for everyone in the village, diversifying their livelihood strategies protecting a nearby spring – their only water source

The Programme would do well to continue, and even strengthen its focus on processes and elements at the landscape or catchment level, and at the level of entire villages. These processes, which are already receiving attention, include watershed management, livestock, rangeland management, afforestation, and water run-off and harvesting (landscape hydrology). The ERP could therefore adapt the focal scale of its interventions, from the scale of individual fields, to the ecological level of the catchment and to the institutional level of entire villages. It should consider de-coupling the two elements of its intervention: provision of tangible support, and capacity development. Much has been done since 2012 to lay the foundation for a more systemic approach. The ERP is ready for the next level, underpinned by developing human agency and capacity at the village level, focusing on the broader food system and investing in landscape restoration, but without turning its back on the gains made so far. 5. Encouragement of learning – The ERP has done a remarkable job in developing the capacity of CA farmers and extension officers, not only through actual training courses but also through the provision of training materials and awareness raising. All focus groups interviewed expressed a strong desire for learning, and all groups asked for more skills to be developed. Many groups mentioned a need for more technical skills to improve their CA farming practices, for example how to dig better basins. The challenges experienced by beneficiaries are however mostly related to governance: how to plan ahead, how to deal with disagreements and how to work together and


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collaborate with other members of the community. Beneficiaries lack the capacity to address these governance challenges due to the disadvantaged and disempowering social and economic status of many of the women and men interviewed. The ERP would increase its contribution to social-ecological resilience if it also developed the capacity of farmers for governance, decision making and planning, and focused on entire villages or regions instead of small groups of farmers. 6. Broadening of participation - Communities involved in CA and home gardens vary in their ability to participate and collaborate. Many groups have shrunk in size (some drastically) since the ERPs inception. The reasons include the laborious nature of the work, weak acceptance of CA farmers amongst the broader local community (including the social perception that it is ‘a step backwards’, especially when practiced manually) and lack of trust between group members. Adverse climatic conditions also played a role. There are, on the other hand, groups that have grown in size with voluntary members joining them. The difference between groups that are shrinking and those that are growing seems to hinge on two factors: their ability to obtain the support of traditional leaders and councillors; and their capacity to self-organize by e.g. developing a constitution and common property resource management strategies. The ERP will strengthen its contribution to resilience by acting as go-between, in cooperation with extension staff, between CA farmers and other important community members who are currently not practicing CA. This will promote broader and more functional participation at the local level. 7. Multi-level decision making – While the ERP works well across multiple levels, multi-level decision making is not deeply entrenched in the Programme. Communities are not involved in decisions about the Programme, and it is proposed that the resilience of farming systems could be improved if there is improved multi-level decision making. This is linked to developing the capacity for governance (see ‘encouragement of learning’ above). The institution of Lead Farmers is an important innovation in Lesotho’s extension system, and the Programme will do well to further develop the decision making capacity of Lead Farmers and to include them in decision making. It would be a good idea to, in addition to ‘demonstration plots’, also include ‘demonstration watersheds’ – in line with the shift in scale from the field to the catchment level. 8. Persistence – One of the Basotho’s admirable characteristics is their ability to get on with their lives in the face of hardship. Harsh winters, scarcity of land and a history of turmoil and marginalization has contributed to this inherent robustness. The ERP is contributing to people’s willingness to persist and the focus groups all agreed that they would continue with CA, even after the ERP has stopped providing inputs and training.

7.3.2 WhatcantheERPlearnfromresilientfarmersinLesotho?

During the field visits it became apparent that none of the groups interviewed had managed to harvest anything from their fields, but then again, neither did the ‘conventional’


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farmers (personal observations). The El Niño event was exceptional: not only did less rain fall, but the onset of rain was much later than normal, with profound effects on farmers’ ability to plant. This is however not unique; predictions are that such ‘unusual’ weather events will with a high degree of certainty become more normal due to climate change. The lithmus test of resilience is whether farmers are better equipped to deal with (bounce back from) such crises when they recur, while using more favorable periods to bounce forward. And yet many of the CA groups interviewed had actually compromised their own resilience during the El Niño event. Many for example admitted that they had no seeds left to plant, there were strong signs of deteriorating social relations, both within CA groups and between them and the rest of their communities, and most of the groups interviewed had no plans or fall-back mechanisms. Is there anything we can learn from this? We can learn much from the strategies used by the few groups and individuals who were able to adapt, who were positive that they would survive the current crisis, and were already planning their future after the drought. What did these groups and individuals have in common? Successful groups were highly connected, socially. Within the groups they were cohesive, had developed their own rules and were able to resolve conflicts by having clear constitutions that everyone understood. The relationship between the group and the agricultural extension office was strong and healthy, and the extension officers seemed to be motivated by the group and vice versa. The relationship between the group and their community was healthy, or at least not dysfunctional. The local Headman or, in one case, the Councillor, was on their side and played the role of mediator or bridging agent to ensure that e.g. livestock did not trample CA fields or devour crop residues. This increased their status too. Successful groups or individuals were connected to a range of supporting agencies and NGOs, for example FAO, World Vision, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Send a Cow or ActionAid. The combined support and capacity development efforts of these organizations developed stronger capacity and skills and provided greater legitimacy to the CA groups. Even amongst the conventional farmers interviewed, those who were hyper-connected to the rest of their community and other organizations were more hopeful and persistent than those who were disconnected. Some of the CA groups had formed formal cooperatives which they are about to register as legal entities, and have started cultivating larger, pooled fields collectively. Successful groups invested in governance systems with locally derived rules or codes of conduct, and strong ‘servant leadership’ roles – leadership that put caring for people, morals and ethics ahead of short term institutional or personal self-interest.39 In such groups, all members were aware of these rules, captured in a constitution, and those who 39“Theservant-leaderisservantfirstbeginswiththenaturalfeelingthatonewantstoserve,toservefirst..Thatpersonissharplydifferentfromonewhoisleaderfirst,perhapsbecauseoftheneedtoassuageanunusualpowerdriveortoacquirematerialpossessions…..”RobertGreenleafoftheCentreforServantLeadershiphttp://www.greenleaf.org


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broke the rules were sanctioned. Often these strong governance systems evolved into formal common property associations or cooperatives. Successful groups invested in a diversity of livelihood strategies – they did not only rely on CA or indeed on agriculture. Inheritances, remittances, horse breeding, livestock, chickens and small enterprises all play a role in their livelihoods. One of the Semongkong farmers (a ‘conventional’ farmer), for example, was able to survive the drought by selling two racehorses after investing in a thoroughbred stallion and mare. At Naleli, a family who practiced CA was earning additional income from hairdressing and selling eggs.

Figure 17. Resilient farmers who have access to financial capital are able to plan ahead and diversify. Note the water tank and satellite dish in the background, fruit trees to the right and flourishing keyhole garden in the foreground (Sebelea, Berea)

Successful groups planned ahead for crisis before it happened. The group at Naleli had looked after a natural spring some distance from their village, which they were able to use as a source of household water when reticulated water became unavailable during the drought. Another farmer had invested in a water tank and was able to plant a diverse range of vegetables in her keyhole garden, which she irrigated from a water tank. A farmer in Mohale’s Hoek had drilled a borehole and installed water tanks and, despite owning a tractor, still maintained manual CA fields knowing that sooner or later the rain would come; when the rain arrived he was ready to plant.

7.3.3 OverallassessmentofProgramme’scontributiontofoodsystemresilience

Principle 1: Diversity.

The ERP should strive to a) promote diversification of farming systems rather than just crop diversity, and b) include a wider range of livelihood categories, including successful farmers, in the mix of beneficiaries.


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Principle 2: Connectedness

The ERP will strengthen agricultural resilience by continuing to connect a wider range of government role players to each other in meaningful ways, around collaborative projects. It would also promote resilience by facilitating closer connections between CA farmers and others in the community. This could be achieved by including other types of farming, not just CA and home gardens, in interventions.

Principle 3: Responsiveness

The ERP will strengthen agricultural resilience by more actively developing the capacity of beneficiary community to respond on their own, to ‘make a plan’ and to self-organize. This could be achieved by carefully balancing the ‘giving’ component of the Programme, and self-empowerment of individuals and communities. This should include the development of leadership skills, using coaching methods and promoting community-based adaptation planning.

Principle 4: Ability to look at the entire system

The ERP should consider scaling up its intervention, from the scale of individual fields, to the ecological level of the catchment and to the institutional level of entire villages.

Principle 5: Encouragement of learning

The ERP would increase its contribution to agricultural resilience if it also developed the capacity of farmers for governance, decision making and planning, and focused on entire villages or regions instead of individual farmers. It should consider de-coupling the provision of tangible support, and capacity development.

Principle 6: Broadening of participation

The ERP will strengthen its contribution to agricultural resilience by acting as go-between, in cooperation with extension staff, between CA farmers and other important community members who are currently not practicing CA, to promote broader participation.


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Principle 7: Multi-level decision making

The institution of Lead Farmers is an important innovation in the ERP and the Programme will do well to develop the decision making capacity of Lead Farmers and to include them in decision making.

Principle 8: Persistence

The ERP is contributing excellently to people’s willingness to persist and the focus groups all agreed that they would continue with CA, even after the ERP has stopped providing inputs and training.

The strengths and weaknesses of the ERP’s impact on agricultural resilience in Lesotho are summarized in Figure 18.

Figure 18. Snapshot of the ERP's impact on agricultural resilience in Lesotho

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Principle1:Diversity.

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Principle7:MulH-leveldecision

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8. Strategies to enhance the ERP’s resilience, and its contribution to resilient food production systems in Lesotho

Given the unpredictability of the political, economic and environmental climate within which the ERP in Lesotho operates, the Programme is remarkably successful. This can be ascribed to the diversity of activities, funding streams and partnerships involved in the Programme as well as the remarkable persistence of staff. There are, however, additional strategies which could be considered to promote the Programme’s resilience. A resilient ERP is able to adjust to a diverse set of uncontrollable, unpredictable and often rapid changes in its external environment, locally, nationally and internationally. A resilient Programme should be able to quickly adapt to changing circumstances and has adopted diverse strategies that would insure it against a political, economic and environmental risks and uncertainties. The greatest risk to the ERP’s resilience is the short-term, reactive nature of FAOs emergency interventions. The ERP has done remarkably well to, despite this constraint, still adopt a long term forward-looking approach. Building resilience is however a long-term endeavour. Resilience building makes use of crisis as opportunities for renewal and a change in direction, and then uses the post-crisis period to build resilience in a new direction. For this reason the Programme should be able to continue with its activities beyond conventional short funding cycles, and beyond periods of declared emergencies. It is crucial that FAO as a whole seriously considers this reality, especially given that ‘emergencies’ are fast becoming the norm in a vulnerable country within a region harshly impacted by climate, political and economic change. The current drought has created a scenario where a vulnerable social-ecological system is tested by a ‘tripple whammy’ of political, economic and climate crisis. This is not a fair trial for resilience; it is rather a trial for coping capacity which is not the same as resilience. Before the current food security crisis the ERP has prepared the system for change by building trust and credibility of officials at the policy level an on the ground, building capacity for Conservation Agriculture and home gardens, and making stakeholders aware of what the Programme can offer. During a drought crisis the ERP could at best provide coping mechanisms such as social protection support. It could, however, use the drought as a window of opportunity to raise awareness, challenge the status quo and lay the foundation to start building resilience in a new direction – after the crisis. The ERP should therefore consider making the most of the current food security crisis by gathering convincing data and information possible about vulnerabilities created by dominant agricultural practices. The ERP should be cautious about hinging its strategies too much on CA: interviews and field visits have demonstrated that, while CA should never be abandoned as one of several strategies, CA alone is not the answer to resilience during a severe crisis such as the 2015-16 drought. Rather, the ERP should raise awareness and be an advocate for the benefits of a systems approach, with a focus on the landscape and village scale as opposed to the individual field and farmer-group scale, and of building


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connections, investing in diversity and building capacity. These are the cornerstones of resilience building. The remainder of this section is largely based on the workshop with government and FAO officials described in Section 5, supplemented by the author’s own insights.

8.1.1 AvisionfortheERP’simpactbeyond2016

Looking into the future, the Programme’s ‘vision’ should be to improve social-ecological resilience at all levels, but especially the community and watershed level, with improved livelihoods and ecosystem resilience a result of its interventions. This would entail inclusive, functional participation at all levels; strong connectedness between farmers, officials in different Ministries and local authorities; and a good understanding by all role players of the concepts and techniques of sustainable landscape and catchment management and its links to resilient local livelihoods. Very important goals that the Programme has to address include:

• Capacity development, which was always very important and should be continued and expanded, with comprehensive packaging of messages, and more demonstration sites to enhance absorption.

• Participation, which should become more inclusive, with communities playing a stronger role. Inclusion of traditional and local knowledge about agriculture and land restoration should be considered.

• Strengthening the intrinsic motivation of participants, i.e. self-motivated participation instead of participation for material incentives.

• The Programme should adopt a more integrated approach which goes beyond CA and home gardens, and which also includes livestock and rangeland management, landscape restoration, and working with entire villages instead of individual farmers or small groups. This will necessitate involving a wider range of government departments and ministries.

Indicators of success would include:

• The extent of care-taking of natural resources (land, water, landscape health) at the scale of the individual field as well as the local catchment or micro-watershed

• The diversity of livelihood options and active livelihood strategies, at the level of a) the household and b) the community / village.

• People’s standard of living, e.g. changes in financial capital, food security, consumption patterns.

• Changes in programme participants’ contributions to the economy.

8.1.2 NewpossibilitiesthattheERPcouldexplore

The ERP should look into five focal areas, going into the future: widening the focal scale;


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engaging communities in participatory monitoring and reflection; showcasing inspiring examples; action research; and communication and awareness raising. 1. Widening the focal scale - The key issue is to ‘zoom out’ somewhat, beyond

Conservation Agriculture in its conventional sense and to start also focusing on the scale of a watershed, and an entire village. This does not mean abandoning the existing CA groups or CA and home garden practices; they should continue. The problem with the bias towards the poorest and most vulnerable farmers, however, is that most of them do not have a high status in their villages – it is therefore unlikely that they would hold much influence. It is therefore crucial to start with Headmen and Councilors, and successful farmers, regardless whether they are practicing CA or not (but without abandoning the CA groups). The shift in social-ecological scale to include micro-watersheds with rangelands, fruit orchards, plantation forests and rivers will be crucial. The recent survey has shown that it is only by including the watershed, with its accompanying ecosystem services (groundwater, wetlands, springs, rangelands, etc.) that resilience can be built at the village level. This shift will however necessitate the inclusion of a wider range of stakeholder groups: more government departments and ministries, and local authorities. This is a big challenge to the ERP, which is already crossing over to this approach through the land cover mapping, sustainable land management training materials, and programmes to train traditional leaders in rangeland management. These are important moves in the right direction that deserve strong support.

2. Participatory monitoring and reflection - Another exciting possibility is to develop and

implement participatory monitoring systems. CARE International and IIED 40 developed a very useful participatory monitoring handbook available at http://www.careclimatechange.org/files/2014_PMERL.pdf which the ERP could adopt or modify. When communities contribute their own information to monitoring, their awareness of progress increases and they become more motivated, adapt better and become more responsive – a key element of resilience. Such programmes could include indigenous knowledge.

3. Showcasing inspiring examples – Workshop participants believed that communication

of success stories in sustainable land management (including CA) could inspire others and motivate participants. This could include ‘field farmer schools’ where successful

40CARE. 2014. Participatory Monitoring, Evaluation, Reflection and Learning for Community-based Adaptation: ARevisedManualforLocalPractitioners.CareInternational,London.


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groups or communities could showcase their successes, coupled to exchange visits. This could be linked to a recognition programme, with contributions by participating schools and teachers, and could include more competitions where successful ‘climate smart farmers’ could be recognized.

4. Action research – Workshop participants felt that FAO could either co-fund, or

spearhead, novel research programmes into community-based adaptations for resilient food systems. This could involve different research institutions, allowing for innovation, participatory action research and testing of novel technologies, crops and crop types.

5. Communication and awareness raising – According to workshop participants this could

include political advocacy for sustainable land management through climate smart agricultural practices, influencing policies, and making knowledge and information even more accessible. The CA fact sheets and sustainable land management information sources currently under development are excellent examples.41 “Much is being done and has to be documented and shared”.

41Availablefromwww.lesothocsa.com


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9. Reflections, priorities and future direction

The ERP has evolved from humble beginnings as an emergency humanitarian response Programme into a much broader initiative that has made great strides, within its constrained and reactive mandate, towards building resilience in Lesotho. The period 2012 to 2015 has laid a good foundation, based on trust and credibility, for the ‘next level’, characterized by more integration across role playing sectors, broader participation, a wider geographic scope which includes villages and landscapes, developing skills beyond CA and home gardens, and social mobilization to develop governance capacity. All those interviewed greatly appreciated the Programme’s contributions. The ERP’s budget was spent on targeted interventions with no indication of fruitless expenditure. Where expenditures did not have the desired impact, for example seeds that did not germinate or inputs or technologies that were not delivered on time, this was beyond the Programme’s control. The ERP’s key contributions are outlined in detail in Table 1. In summary, main impacts have been: 1. Providing encouragement and hope to extension staff and beneficiary farmers – the

poor and those on the margins – that there could be a future in farming, and that ‘someone cares’. This impact should not be underestimated.

2. Building networks, based on trust and good relations, with government departments and individuals across the country, and across sectors. FAO’s ERP has a very good reputation in Lesotho for being trust-worthy, caring and inclusive.

3. Developing a very useful collection of materials for CA, home gardening and, more recently, sustainable land management. These high-quality learning materials could be used for many years to come.

4. Making a meaningful direct difference to the livelihoods of more than 18 500 direct beneficiaries, with improved livelihoods for more than 120 000 household members (assuming a mean of six dependents per household).

5. Assisting extension officers and all 68 agriculture resource centres in the country with training, learning materials and field equipment to promote the uptake of CA.

6. There have most probably also been ecological benefits through improved soil carbon storage and soil fertility in the CA plots as a result of CA interventions, although these have not yet been measured.

The significant constraints of circumstances beyond the ESP’s control: a politicized civil service, demotivated officials, poor infrastructure, degraded ecosystems, high poverty rates, a weakening regional economy and a devastating drought should not be underestimated. Its focus on Conservation Agriculture, home gardens and training, together with building linkages and relationships, while not the Holy Grail of resilience


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building, had positive impacts and laid a solid foundation for future, more transformative work. A number of strategies were identified through which the ERP could make more substantial impacts on resilience. These strategies are based on the author’s analysis of multiple evidence as well as workshop participants’ recommendations. 1. Institutional diversification - In addition to the ‘normal’ departments involved in land use

(water affairs, agriculture and food security, rangeland management, forestry) and its developing linkages with the Ministries/ Departments of Social Development and Education, the ERP could also reach out to Correctional Services, young farmer’s groups and ‘conventional’ farmers and farmers’ associations.

2. Broadening the scale of focus – Target entire communities rather than small groups of farmers, diversify livelihood strategies, and focus on landscapes and watersheds rather than fields. This will improve ownership of the Programmes.

3. Balanced capacity development – Strive to find a balance between the technical and governance components of the Programme’s capacity development. Farmer field schools and training can be combined with developing communities’ capacity for self-organization. The surveys have shown that well-governed groups are more successful, more confident, have better connections and invest in more diverse livelihoods than poorly governed groups. Communities need to be trained in drawing up and enforcing their constitutions, conflict resolution, and how to negotiate with others.

4. Awareness raising and advocacy – The ERP can build on its communication and awareness raising successes (for example the highly successful CA calendar competition that reached out to 300 schools – Figure 19) by show-casing success stories in sustainable land management, rewarding success through e.g. certificates and plaques. In addition to awareness about CA, this approach will also get messages about sustainable land management across. The Sustainable Land Management learning materials are an excellent start.

5. Collecting and publishing evidence of the benefits of sustainable land management to social-ecological resilience. A well-designed monitoring programme could form the basis for this, coupled with partnerships with government officials and universities.


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Figure 19. An example of FAOs CA calendar that used winning artwork from a school art competition. This activity was supported by the European Commission Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA)


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10. Bibliography

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Final Evaluation of FAO Lesotho’s Emergency & Resilience ... · Final Evaluation: FAO Emergency and Resilience Programme - Page 5 of 67 5 ERP outcomes The ERPs spent the bulk of