16
Making Soil and Water Conservation
Sustainable: From Coercion and Control
to Partnerships and Participation
J. Pretty and P. Shah
Modernity and Soil Conservation
Dominant themes
Agriculture has had many ‘revolutions’ throughout history, from its advent some
10,000 years ago to the renowned 17th–19th-century agricultural revolution in
Europe. In the past century, rural environments in most parts of the world have
also undergone massive transformations. In some senses, these have been the most
far-reaching in their speed of spread of new technologies and the nature of their
impacts upon social, economic and ecological systems.
Two guiding themes have dominated these agricultural transformations. One has
been the need for increased food production to meet the needs of growing popula-
tions. The other has been the desire to prevent the degradation of natural resources,
perceived to be largely caused by growing numbers of people and their bad practices.
Governments have encouraged the adoption of a wide range of conservation practices
and technologies, including soil and water conservation to control soil erosion, graz-
ing management schemes to control rangeland degradation, and exclusion of people
from forests and other sites of high biodiversity to protect wildlife and plants.
These forms of agricultural and rural development appear to have been remark-
ably successful. Both food production and the amount of land conserved have
increased dramatically, but both these results have been achieved within the frame-
work of modernization, which is firmly rooted in, and driven by, the enlighten-
ment tradition of positivist science (Habermas, 1987; Harvey, 1989; Rorty, 1989;
Kurokawa, 1991). Scientists and planners identify the problem that needs solving,
Reprinted from Making soil and water conservation sustainable: From coercion and control to part-
nerships and participation by Pretty J and Shah P. 1997. Land Degradation and Development 8,
pp39–58. Copyright © John Wiley and Sons Limited. Reproduced with permission.