An Overview Of Our Solution
We work with a local partner organisation in southeast Kenya to enable community Self-Help Groups to build sand dams and implement climate-smart agriculture and soil and water conservation techniques. Our programme significantly increases food and water security, and builds resilience to climate change for communities in this impoverished region. The impacts of climate change are felt particularly harshly here as the majority of the population are subsistence farmers reliant on rain-fed agriculture.
Our solution is inherently replicable and scalable in other dryland environments – we have already enabled 1,017 sand dams and supported over 947,000 people with the food and water security. Part of our strategy is to influence the implementation of 10,000 sand dams for 5 million people by 2025 and 1 million sand dams for 0.5 billion people by 2040.
- Population Impacted: Approx 1,000 per sand dam
- Continent: Africa
Last name
Organization type
Context Analysis
We do most of our work in Ukambani, southeast Kenya: an arid and semi-arid region which suffers from increasingly frequent droughts and unreliable rainy seasons, exacerbated by climate change. The lack of water means food insecurity here is severe: according to government statistics, in Kitui alone 24% of the population required food assistance from Aug 2017 to Jan 2018.
The majority of the region’s population derive livelihoods from agriculture, but baseline consultations show many farmers still choose to plant crops like maize despite insufficient water. Consultations also show that farmers often lack the knowledge and resources to adopt practices that would enable them to adapt to the increasingly arid environment. Lack of adaptation techniques contribute to soil erosion and land degradation, further hampering farmers’ efforts to produce food. Resultant failed and reduced harvests and shortage of pasture for livestock threaten food security and contribute to worsening poverty.
Describe the technical solution you wanted the target audience to adopt
We enable communities to implement climate-smart agriculture techniques alongside sand dams: a sustainable low cost method of harvesting up to 40 million litres of clean water (enough to support over 1,000 people with a local clean water source for life.) Research demonstrates that sand dams increase the adaptive capacity of drylands to climate change by increasing the resilience of vegetation during drought. It has also been shown that sand dams enable vegetation to recover more quickly in times of relative water availability. Learn more here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkq540gsq2M
Climate-smart agriculture techniques include terracing, mixed cropping, manure use, crop rotation, early-planting and using drought-resistant crops. These allow communities to improve the quantity, quality and diversity of harvests. As a result, households have more food to eat, buy/sell and store, improved nutrition, reduced dependency on food aid and stronger resilience to climate change.
Type of intervention
Describe your behavioral intervention
We have been working with our strategic partner, the Africa Sand Dam Foundation (ASDF), since 2010 to change behaviours around soil and water conservation and the implementation of climate-smart farming techniques. ASDF are a local organisation staffed entirely by Kenyan nationals.
ASDF work with Self-Help Groups (SHGs): groups of approximately 30 farmers committed to the development of their own community. ASDF give SHGs participatory agriculture training and support, farming inputs such as seeds and tools, and training in how best to use water from sand dams to support agriculture.
The techniques ASDF encourages SHGs to adopt are more suited to the environment (such as diversifying crops in case one crop fails, and growing crops specifically suited to dry environments), and help farmers to build resilience to drought. Currently, farmers in Ukambani tend to over-rely on crops like maize, which require a lot of water.
ASDF only work with SHGs who approach them for support and have proved their dedication to their own development over a probationary period of six months, ensuring high levels of adoption. In one of our recent projects in this region of Kenya, which was funded by the UK Government, adoption rates were very high. By the end of the three-year project, 92% of SHG farmers were practicing soil and water conservation (including terracing), 85% planting trees on their land and 97% were diversifying crops and adopting drought resistant seeds.
As needed, please explain the type of intervention in more detail
We support SHGs to build sand dams, which help groundwater levels replenish, allowing surrounding vegetation to regenerate, and creating the potential for farmers to plant trees and crops. This reduces soil erosion, improves soil fertility and increases water absorption during the next rains, transforming drylands into productive green environments. To ensure communities reap the optimum benefit from their sand dams, we also support them – with training, tools and materials – to develop improved farming methods, so they are able to grow more food, despite the increasing challenges related to climate change, particularly erratic rainfalls and drought. This enables communities to break the cycle of subsistence and, instead, to thrive.
Describe your implementation
Activities:
• Participatory Agricultural Training: See Solution section for information on specific techniques.
• Tree Nurseries: Each SHG plants an average of 500 trees to conserve soil on their farms, prevent erosion and retain rainwater. Trees also provide food, fodder, fertiliser, fuel, shade, medicine, lumber and a source of income.
• Seed Banks: SHGs are provided with quality, diverse, drought-resistant seed varieties which boost food production and help build resilience to increasingly unreliable rainfall patterns. Farmers return twice as many seeds to the bank as they originally withdrew.
• Land Terracing: Each SHG digs up to 2,000m of terracing to aid water and soil conservation. Terraces help to retain 95% of water run-off and up to 97% of top-soil so vital for agriculture. The increase in groundwater levels improves the conditions for growing crops, which enables increased food production.
• Demonstration Farms: These provide a farming ‘classroom’ which enable SHGs to receive agricultural training, test crops and new farming methods before using them on their own farms, and grow communal crops for the community to eat, store and sell.
• Workshops and Peer-Learning: These enable communities to learn from and motivate each other e.g. by exchanging ideas on how best to use sand dams to support agriculture. We find peer-learning to be one of the most effective methods of encouraging positive behaviour change.
See Solution section for information on adoption of behaviours. Enabling conditions and success factors include availability of water (provided by sand dams), existence of self-formed SHGs with their own land to farm, and the expertise and availability of ASDF. The main obstacle is that some SHG members drop out when they realise that this is not an unsustainable food or cash for work scheme, and that hard work is involved. However, experience shows that often new members join once they see the benefits of the project e.g. improved harvests.
External connections
Self-Help Groups (SHGs): These are groups of approx. 30 local farmers who have come together independently to bring about a change in their community. Approx. 70% of members are women, and most are among the poorest in their community. Having worked their land for generations, members from these groups take an active lead in every project, making decisions based on their own needs and promoting long-term improvement in people’s lives, without the need for unsustainable cash or food handouts. A recent independent evaluation of our programme in southeast Kenya found that: “The rigorous and disciplined approach they apply to working with self-help groups represents an antidote to the decades of dependency-creating development practices.”
ASDF: ED has partnered with ASDF on water and food security projects since 2010. ASDF is a registered Kenyan NGO with an intimate knowledge of self-help development in southeastern Kenya and significant sand dam project experience. As our strategic partner, ASDF also offers support and expertise to our other projects in northern Kenya, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
Local & National Government: The outcomes of this programme (i.e. improved water and food security and increased resilience to climate change, through improvements to agriculture and rainwater harvesting), closely fit with local and national government plans. This includes the County Integrated Development Plan for each county in Ukambani, as well as Kenya’s Vision 2030.
Who adopted the desired behaviors and to what degree?
In a recent project funded by the UK Government in this region of Kenya, adoption rates of improved farming techniques by SHGs were very high. By the end of the three-year project, 92% of SHG farmers were practicing soil and water conservation (including terracing), 85% were planting trees on their land and 97% were diversifying crops and adopting drought resistant seeds.
How did you impact natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions?
As part of her Masters research, a former staff member tested the hypothesis that sand dams increase the adaptive capacity of drylands to climate change by increasing the resilience of vegetation through times of drought. For this, she used the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), which measures photosynthetic activity, and is highly correlated with parameters of plant health and productivity, which are in turn highly correlated with water availability. NDVI can be used as an indicator of drought, with healthy vegetation giving higher NDVI values and unhealthy vegetation giving lower NDVI values. Her results supported the original hypothesis, by showing that mean NDVI at sand dam sites is consistently, statistically and substantially higher than at control sites throughout periods of water scarcity. NDVI was 2.5 times greater at sand dam sites in drought conditions. She also found that sand dams enable vegetation to recover more quickly in times of relative water availability
What were some of the resulting co-benefits?
The result of the high adoption rates of improved farming techniques in the project detailed above (a 3-year UK Government funded project in Ukambani) were that 81% of SHG farmers reported increased crop yields, 91% reported improved diets and 95% reported improved household income. The impact of this was that food security and nutrition were significantly improved for these communities. In addition, 17,896 people now have access to improved water within 1km and water collection time reduced to 30 minutes, as a result of the new sand dams. This improved life for women and children in particular, as they are the main water carriers in Ukambani society, often spending 6-12 hours a day collect water during the dry period before the dams were built.
Sustainability
Sand dams are one of the lowest cost rainwater harvesting techniques, costing less than both underground and above ground tanks per 1,000 litres of water provided. Costs are kept down by the fact that materials and labour are contributed by the community, but also because sand dams require little to no maintenance. They last for over 50 years, and we even know of one that is 100 years old and still providing water.
Our partner, ASDF, supports SHGs for 3-5 years – this gives them time to embed the skills and knowledge to be self-sustaining (and therefore no longer reliant on external funding) before the group ‘graduates’.
Return on investment
The average cost of a dam plus support for agricultural activities for one year in this area is around £21K - £34K depending on the size of the dam, which in turns depends on depth of bedrock and width of river. This cost includes a contribution of around £5K-£6K from the community in the form of labour and basic construction materials such as water, sand and stone. Income from farming (using water from sand dams) typically surpasses initial building and maintenance costs.
How could we successfully replicate this solution elsewhere?
Sand dams are inherently replicable and scalable across drylands, which make up 40% of the world’s land surface. Most materials can be sourced locally and labour is provided by communities. To date, we have enabled 1,017 sand dams in 8 countries, reaching over 947,000 people. Scaling up through pioneering and influencing is a key part of our Strategy to 2025, which you can read our strategy here: http://www.excellentdevelopment.com/site-assets/files/resources/publica… Our goal is to directly support other orgs (including NGOs and Governments) to build 100 sand dams every year by 2020 (increasing to 200 per year by 2025) and to influence the implementation of 10,000 sand dams for 5 million people by 2025 (increasing to 1 million sand dams for 0.5 billion people by 2040). This prize would allow the potential of sand dams to reach a large influential audience and help grow a body of research and evidence.