Making Soil and Water Conservation Sustainable 393introduced and sustained with support from the local network of village exten-
sionists (Shah, 1994).
Build up and strengthen local institutions
The success of sustainable soil conservation depends not just on the motivations,
skills and knowledge of individual farmers, but on action taken by local groups or
communities as a whole. Yet throughout the history of agricultural development,
it has been rare for the importance of local groups and institutions to be recog-
nized. Development professionals have tended to be preoccupied with the indi-
vidual, assuming that the most important decisions affecting behaviour are made
at this level. As a result, the effectiveness of local groups and institutions has been
widely undermined. Some have struggled on. Many others have disappeared
entirely.
Studies of agricultural development initiatives increasingly show that people
who are already well organized, or who are encouraged to form groups, and whose
knowledge is sought and incorporated during planning and implementation, are
more likely to continue activities after project completion. If people have respon-
sibility, feel ownership and are committed, then there is likely to be sustained
change.
The process of establishing self-reliant groups at local level must be an organic
one (Ostrom, 1990; Röling, 1994). In the early stages, groups focus on establish-
ing agreed rules for management and decision making. These can then be used by
members as a vehicle to channel information or loans to individual members.
Confidence grows once small homogeneous groups have successfully achieved ini-
tial goals, such as the conservation of a hillside. It is then common for members to
turn their attention to development activities that will benefit themselves as well as
the community at large. This may involve the nomination of individuals to receive
specialized training, such as in soil and water conservation, pest control, veterinary
practice, horticulture or book-keeping, so that they will be able to pass knowledge
back to the whole group in their new role as paraprofessional or extension volun-
teer (Shah and Shah, 1994; Pretty, 1995a). Alternative institutional mechanisms
such as farmer-to-farmer extension and village-managed extension systems have
helped to scale up soil and water conservation effectively.
As confidence grows with success, and resource bases expand and group activ-
ity can evolve to an entrepreneurial stage where common action projects are initi-
ated. These are held under group ownership and might comprise investing in fruit
orchards, afforesting an upper watershed, terracing a hillside, investing in agricul-
tural tools and draught animals for hire to the community, community pest manage-
ment, organizing community-run wildlife utilization schemes, and building housing
for poor families (Murphree, 1993; Fernandez, 1994; Shah and Shah, 1994). These
group activities benefit group members as well as having a wider ecological and
social impact, and become the mechanism for sustained conservation activity.
Local institutions help to mobilize local resources, particularly savings to get access