Parker Mitchell's Speech for the State of the Planet Conference

March 28-29, 2006, The Earth Institute

(The speech can be viewed online.)

Thank you and another heartfelt congratulations to the earth institute for hosting such a terrific conference.

It is a pleasure to have an opportunity to share some thoughts with you today. Normally, I speak to relative development neophytes and I share a message of hope - of the challenges poor people face but the opportunities each of us has to make a difference in the world. And I am an optimist - how could I not be? Engineers Without Borders Canada has 17,000 members who work in Canada to make our country the most pro-development country in the world. We also have volunteer engineers willing to work for periods of 1-3 years with partner organisations in Africa to help them accelerate their own poverty reduction efforts. So there is lots to celebrate about inspiring a new generation to get involved in creating change.

But at the same time, we at Engineers Without Borders Canada spend a lot of time asking questions about what that change should be - about development, about the role of westerners, of outsiders, about the specific opportunities to help in a relatively mature and sophisticated sector.

Today, I'll take for granted that we care, passionately, about making a difference. And so I'll share some thoughts on this second track - how that energy can be optimally harnessed.

As an engineer, I was taught to "define the problem. And to me, the central problem isn't the existence of poverty, but it is "why isn't poverty reduction happening more quickly?"

We hear about the need to kick-start development with more money. We have heard about the need for ideas - scientists and engineers and doctors and agronomists finding better "technical solutions". Money and ideas are obviously important.

But we feel the greatest opportunity to accelerate poverty reduction is to shift our focus - to a better understanding of what happens "on the ground" as project ideas become reality. We would term this "implementation".

And basically, implementation is about the difficulties of translating ideas and money (or other resources) into results, into impact.

This implementation is not sexy - it is overcoming the nitty-gritty details, for example of figuring out how more farmers can benefit from existing foot improved farming techniques; of ensuring that local women's groups can run a food processor in their village; of supporting local entrepreneurs who are offering technical services to their community.

Implementation is also not easy. It is usually locally specific - in that a solution in northern Ghana will be different from one in southern Burkina Faso. It is usually dynamic, meaning that it has to be able to change as circumstances change. There is no recipe to be "handed" to field staff to "implement". So it inherently involves understanding a community's particularities - through participatory approaches - and incorporating them into the project.

So implementation involves people close to the field taking good ideas and trying to translate that into local positive change.

Now, I'm not suggesting that this a contrast to other approaches, but rather an important addition, that we have certainly seen is missing from a number of projects on the ground.

How does this tie into the theme of this panel? Development is about promoting positive change. But change is happening all the time in developing communities.

And central to this idea of change is people's behaviours. Individuals' behaviour is influenced by any number of factors. But ultimately, development will result in - or be driven by - people changing their behaviours.

In our experience, implementation - why ideas and money don't translate into impact - fails because we don't sufficiently understand behaviour change and how people - "beneficiaries" - react to project ideas.

And by better incorporating this understanding, development resources - ideas and money - can be more effectively transformed into on-the-ground impact.

I hope to illustrate this theme with examples from the field, based on the following three main ideas:

1. Low-capital technologies/techniques are available as viable solutions, and better understanding behaviour change would help accelerate their spread
2. Non economically-rational influences drive behaviour change and are important in planning project and developing technologies
3. Behaviour change leads, not lags, "development", and is indeed central to the idea of development

There are low-capital technologies/techniques which are viable solutions, and that better understanding behaviour change would help accelerate their spread.

Let me give two examples about how better understanding how implementing existing solutions could bear fruit.

There are at least two easy, affordable technologies providing household level potable water. The first is solar pasteurization. That is nothing more than leaving water in a container for 2-3 days in the sun - lots in Africa! - and the temperature and time (there is logarithmic relationship) will kill all disease-causing pathogens. This is not much more than a change in behaviour- yet not widespread.

Another option, for twenty cents, people can buy a half-litre of chlorine solution (here called chlorin in Zambia) and use a teaspoon to purify their water. Again, a change in behaviour, yet not widespread.

Food production. In many areas, there is endemic food shortages from low rainfall. However, some simple changes by farmers could significantly increase food security. For example, many farmers seem to plant larger fields than they can weed, therefore weeding late, which can reduce the yields by 20%. Changing staple crops from maize to the more drought resistant sorghum or millet in drought-risk areas would reduce vulnerability. Basic intercropping could provide some nitrogen replenishment. Again, easy changes in behaviour with big impact - but not widespread.

What are the implications - simply that simple technical solutions might be necessary, but they aren't sufficient, to produce widespread quality of life improvements that we all hope to see.

Non economically-rational influences drive behaviour change and are important in planning project and developing technologies.

In the course understanding the motivations that lead to behaviour change, we have noticed a trend to underestimate the non-rational influences driving behaviour. Let me share with you the example of conservation farming.

Conservation farming is a technique to increase food security. The idea is deceptively simple: digging and planting in basins, as well as some changes in planting time and technique. You can see this illustrated in the slide above. Yields increase because basins concentrate moisture and nutrients. Experimental farm results show tremendous potential. But, talking with extension workers in rural Zambia, it seemed farmer uptake was slow. Why?

One clue came when I was asked the director of conservation farming promotion at a provincial agriculture unit whether he used conservation farming on his plot. He laughed: "I tried it, but of course not, it is way too difficult."

The problem is that it is hot and backbreaking to dig basins the first year in the very hard soil, before the rains come. The technique calls for farmers to dig basins in the same place in subsequent years, which lowers labour because the soil becomes looser.

But it is difficult to explain to a farmer, after the first difficult year, that just by doing the same thing next year, it will get easier.

Other reasons were also mentioned:

• It is a departure from the existing method of handhoeing rows, and not intuitive to farmers. They therefore feel it is risky, and are hesitant to adopt. Close to the edge of poverty, farmers are naturally risk-adverse, because if something is to fail they have no safety nets.
• It is quite complex and requires reasonably precise spacing and measurements and timing to be successful;
• The increased yield benefits are more visible in years where rain fails.

So, what begins as a good idea is a potentially difficult implementation challenge. However, the story gets even more complicated.

An even bigger issue is farmer motivation and perception. Conservation farming is not "prestigious" because prestige is using ox to plough your field. Prestige, tradition, and alternative explanations for success are important. The following except came from a Zambian farmer magazine, describing conservation farming, talking about a worker demonstrating this conservation farming.

"Initially I took this man as a bad joker who should not be allowed to take us for a ride in a land without water.

But after years of no rain, I decided to take his bad joke seriously. My fellow villagers believed that there was something wrong with me to dig holes in my maize field! I tried to explain to them, but they mistook me for a hard hashish smoker. Even now, my fellow villagers still believe my successful harvest is by some witchcraft.

I am not saying that farmers are farmers are not rational. While a number of farmers' decisions might seem, from an outsider's perspective, to be irrational, most, on further understanding, are actually a wise decision. But as anyone who has experience in the field will admit, many farmers have non-scientific explanations that hinder the adoption of new ideas, and new idea adoption does not necessarily happen in a linear scientific manner of trial, observe, decide.

Thus, we feel that for the "innovation" of conservation farming might not spread as rapidly without a lot of individual "field agents" to marry it to a deep understanding of how farmers make their decisions.

Let me share an example of a project that incorporates an "understanding behaviour change" approach. Many experts have "decided" that sorghum is a better crop in southern Africa than maize - which rationally it is, based on labour studies, drought resistance, yields etc. But notwithstanding lots of promotion programs - free seeds, extension programs, etc., farmers are not growing it.

To overcome this, one of our volunteers and partner organisations tried to understand the communities' current goals and link those with better strategies. Initial discussions unearthed a stigma associated with sorghum. Two generations farmers have grown maize, which they are familiar with; furthermore there is a relative hierarchy between maize, the national crop, and sorghum known as "poor man's crop".

It was also revealed that an attractive characteristic about Maize is that there is a deep market. This might be surprising Ð but even though we would consider these farmers to be "subsistence", they still want to sell some of their crop.

So turned the traditional sorghum promotion program on its head. Rather than promote sorghum as a staple crop, we focused on creating a market for sorghum, as well as traditional extension work. The idea is that by creating this market we will encourage farmers to adopt the behaviours of growing - and selling - sorghum.

Then, once people are more comfortable growing sorghum we will begin promoting the idea of grinding and eating it - the ultimate goal to enhance food security.

What are the lessons - that projects can't be designed in far away capitals. That a project is a dialog between communities and outsiders (and here I include extension officers). These outsiders bring new ideas and approaches, but the ideas must ultimately be tailored to the local context.

A second example picking up on this theme of local context would be the number of women in water committees. All development projects talk about the need to have women on water committees. We were working with a partner in Haiti on rural water systems. The rules for the CAEP - committee approvisionment en Eau Potable - were quite clear - at least 50% women.

In the field, among 25 members, 4 women. When our volunteers asked the local "animateur" why, he explained that the job descriptions were for traditional male roles, so women couldn't apply for them even if it was mandated to. Turns out a consultant, sitting in Washington or maybe the hotel in the capital, came up with 50% rule - a good idea, and wrote the job descriptions - a bad idea. And the local people didn't have the confidence to tell them that this was wrong. So - projects are locally specific, and project planners need to empower local implementers.

Does behaviour change lag or lead development - and implications.

Many development practitioners would agree that ultimately behaviour change is critical. But there is still a question of whether behaviour change lags or drive the process of development. While obviously they are linked, the question bears further analysis.

If we believe behaviour change lags development, we can focus on a "capital increasing strategy" of development, with outsider providing free "inputs" such as education, water, seeds or fertilizer.

But we feel the more the more the issue is one of production (such as farming or employment, as opposed to health or education) the more careful one needs to be about providing free inputs. We would share three cautionary notes.

First are issues of correct implementation - ensuring that the inputs get to the right people. While that might work in pilot projects, it is difficult to scale these up to situations where there aren't lots of outsiders ensuring playing an oversight role. It is also easy to overlook, in widespread implementation, the component of ensuring that the inputs are used correctly. There are many programs trying to promote conservation farming in southern zambia that tie free seed and fertilizer to adopting conservation farming techniques. The farmers nod, get their inputs, but then plant as they would like.

Second, there are questions of how increasing yields/incomes translate into investments in human or other capital.

We experienced some surprising outcomes in the promotion of the treadle pump, a simple foot powered pump allowing small-holder farmers to undertake dry-season irrigation and increase their income. We would expect households using treadle pumps to be better off than those without. However, we found to our surprise that this was not the case. Why? In this area, many farming households are polygamous. And it seems that increases in income are used to "buy" another wife - and her labour. As a result, higher income households don't seem to have better quality of life indicators, such as years of schooling.

This conclusion was echoed in a study by Judith Tendler showed in a region in Guinea that increases in women's income went more toward expenditures like education and health, and men's went more toward consumables - alcohol and tobacco.

In this case, a pure focus on increasing incomes without incorporating an understanding of behaviour change might not achieve the desired outcomes.

The second point is more complex, and it is whether by supplying free inputs, outsiders create a culture of dependency. If a person, household or community feels that their path to success depends on outsiders coming in to do something for free - that destroys self-initiative. And self-initiative is one of the most important behaviours needed for people to reach - and being to climb - the ladder of development. For example, will farmers receiving free fertilizer one year buy it the next year, even if they see the advantages? Will their neighbours buy fertilizer knowing that it might be given out for free? Those aren't roadblocks, just the difficulties of implementation that need to be addressed. Fertilizers, for example, were used in zambia for decades and were heavily subsidized. When the subsidies disappeared, fertilizer use decreased significantly.

I hope that these examples give some flavour of the challenges of translating ideas into widespread positive impact.

Now, I'm not saying that all development needs "behaviour change programs", but that understanding behaviour change can improve the development of technologies/techniques, as well as project planning.

There are lots of ways that this can happen.

A well known suggestion is for planners and policy makes to return to the field periodically through immersions. The idea is that the west-based - or capital-based - development workers spend a week in a community, shadowing community members. There is no agenda, no meetings, no feeling from the community that they are being evaluated and have to answer questions correctly - which is endemic in development. Just time to observe and ask lots of questions. With that, I would hope that projects are less recipes with short time-lines, but guidelines that can be adapted to local realities.

I would also argue that we need a new generation of practitioners western and local, who are be sensitive to and comfortable with the realistic pace of development work, yet to bring a powerful intellectual pragmatism to solving the challenges of implementation.

A crazy idea is for a new journal, one the chronicles the failures of development. I would provisionally title it "damn, this isn't working" and it would be for practitioners to discuss real challenges!

Before I finish, I would like to leave you with one final quote:

"In theory, there might be no difference between theory and practice. But unfortunately, in practice, there is."

 

Learn more about the Earth Institute's State of the Planet Conference online.