Meeting multiple, often competing objectives when seeking to sustainably intensify their agricultural operations is a constant challenge for smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Trade-offs between social, economic and environmental goals at different time and spatial scales need to be reconciled, making best use of scarce resources. This study explored how different types of farm households in Northwest Ghana, Eastern Burkina Faso and Central Malawi make choices about resource allocation and farming strategies, and how they manage the trade-offs encountered. It used both quantitative (questionnaire survey) and qualitative (household case studies) methods to identify trade-offs experienced by farmers and to analyse tradeoff management strategies used by them. The 10 main trade-offs identified across the 3 countries occurred across sustainability domains, across time, across spatial scales, across types of farmers or a combination of these. Famers were disincentivized from prioritizing long-term sustainability in their farming operation by resource constraints to meet multiple farming and livelihood objectives, mainstream agricultural policies encouraging short-term productivity gains and adoption-focused interventions, which disregard the diversity of farming households.
The article examined domestic water access sustainability under informally driven water supply market, drawing on suppliers-consumers’ perspectives. Analysis was done on the capacities of the informal water suppliers for sustainable water provision, how the informal water markets operate, and clients’ perspectives of water access today and tomorrow. Four different data set were comparatively analyzed from interviews with the Municipal Water Engineer (MWE), Ward Health Officer (WHO), 3 Mtaa leaders from 3 informal settlements, interviews with 43 informal water sellers from three informal settlements, including a survey of (n = 292) clients in three informal settlements. It was realized that though informal water suppliers are sociocultural capable of providing flexible and gender-sensitive water supply services, households have unsustainable access to improved water due to the financial, hydro-technical, institutional and organizational in capacities of the informal water sellers coupled with the low financial abilities of low-income earning households to continuously purchase water for domestic activities. It was observed that informal settlements’ dwellers are less likely to meet their water supply needs in the near future if their income status together with the financial, hydro-technical, organizational and institutional capacities of the informal water sellers are not improved.
The relationship between environmental change, local knowledge systems and livelihood sustainability has received increased scholarly attention over the past few decades. However, the inter-linkages and emerging dynamics of knowledge systems in response to environmental change is still a grey area. This paper explores the dynamics of local knowledge systems for adapting crop farming to environmental change in the Wa Municipality, northern Ghana. The study employed a mixed methods research approach to collect data from four farming communities. Qualitative data was collected through in-depth interviews of Key Informants and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with women, men and youth groups involved in farming. This was complemented by a household survey that targeted 200 farmers. The results show that farmers have resorted to integration of indigenous and new external knowledge systems for diversifying crop varieties and soil and water conservation strategies for adapting crop farming to environmental change, particularly, climate change and soil degradation. Drawing on the results, the paper advocates that Development Planning (DP) should emphasize an Endogenous Development (ED) approach and promote pro-poor approaches to crop diversification and integrated soil and water conservation for achieving inclusive environmental and livelihood sustainability in smallholder agriculture in the Wa Municipality and country at large.
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