Alternative livelihood, essential component for behavioural change – Specialist
A Behavioural Change Specialist, Mr. Sumaila Saaka has stated that there is the need for organizations to realize that behavioural change mostly goes with the provision of alternative Livelihoods.
He said there were many instances where a lot of Behaviour Change Programmes had failed because of failure to provide alternative livelihoods for the targeted group people.
Speaking to the Ghana News Agency on Thursday on the sidelines of a two day workshop organized by World Vision on “Behavioural Change on Natural Resource Management”, at Pusu-Namongo in the Talensi-Nabdam District of the Upper East Region, he stressed the need to provide alternative livelihoods when embarking upon advocacy for behavioral change.
“Information and knowledge alone on behaviour change may not be enough and it also takes time for behaviour of people to change”, he emphasized.
He cited instances such as bush burning and indiscriminate felling of trees in the three Northern Regions and said despite the fact that there had been a lot of advocacy programmes, the situation was not getting any better.
He appealed to government, NGOs and Philanthropists to provide alternative sources of livelihoods to the people in the three northern regions who were engaged in environmental degradation activities so as to take them off such acts.
Mr. Saaka indicated that behavioural change also often took a long time to make an impact and said what was needed was the continued and sustained behavioural change programmes to make it effective.
He therefore called on public and private organizations including government to bear in mind the need to continue hammering on Behavioural Change through sustained programmes.
Mr. Peter Abugah, Project Manager of Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) of World Vision, said World Vision, Talensi-Nabdam Area Development Project had put in place a lot of interventions including advocacy programmes, forest management plans and land use and alternative livelihoods in the District as part of World Vision’s Farmer Management Natural Regeneration (FMNR) Project, being implemented in the area.
He explained that under the FMNR, trees that grew naturally were protected and farmers were trained and empowered with skills to prune them at their tender age, to aid the growth process.
He said currently, through training programmes provided by World Vision, it had scaled up the programme from four communities to ten communities in the District and mentioned the communities as; Balungu, Yindure, Shia, Sepaat, Gorogo, Wakii, Yemeriga , Namolgo, Yagzore and Tongo-Beo.
“A total of 120 hectares of degraded land has been recovered and farmers are extending the practice to nearby communities.
“In fact the FMNR is the best method of conservation of natural resources. Although tree planting is good, usually the returns are not as good as FMNR”, he said.
According to Mr. Abugah, despite the numerous interventions on the management of natural resources put in place by World Vision, it was still grappling with the problem of bush fires hence the two-day workshops on the Behaviour change on Natural Resource Management.
The 40 participants made up of Assembly Members, Opinion Leaders, Teachers, National Disaster Management Organization officials among others, were charged to replicate what they have learnt at the workshop in their various communities through community mobilization techniques to influence behavioural change on Natural Resource Management issues.
It was also aimed at building the capacity of the stakeholders on how to adopt behavioural change programmes through community mobilization to support natural resource management.
Source: GNA.