Factors influencing adoption of environmental sustainability interventions: a case of the Millenium Villages Project, Ruhiira Site

Abstract

The Millennium Villages Project (MVP), designed as a pilot project to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), is being implemented in 10 countries across Sub Saharan Africa. The project was designed to demonstrate what it takes, in different agro ecologies, to meet the eight MDGs in rural villages of Sub-Saharan Africa. For Ruhiira Millinnium Villages, which is one of the project sites located in Uganda, implementation for all the MDGs started in March 2006. Despite the implementation, it was not clear to what extent the communities in the Ruhiira project area were adopting the environment interventions to subsquently attain MDG 7. Therefore the current study investigated factors influencing adoption of appropriate intervention technologies geared at ensuring environmental sustainability in Ruhiira MVP site. The specific objectives of the study were to determine the socio-economic factors that influence adoption of appropriate interventions aimed at achieving sustainable development (SD) in Ruhiira; and assess the extent of adoption of tree planting, soil and water conservation practices and agrobiodiversity practices in Ruhiira.

Data was collected from 200 households using stratified random sampling from four parishes basing on a 3:1 ratio of male and female headed households, respectively. Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), structured interview schedules and field observations were used to collect data. Data was entered in MS Access and analysed in SPSS computer package. Correlations were run to determine the relationships between the independent and the dependant variables. Statistical summaries were presented in tables, graphs and charts.

The results revealed that participation in MVP activities, land size and ownership, and household size were significant (P< 0.01 and < 0.05) factors in influencing the adoption of environmental sustainablity interventions. Besides, the male headed households adopted the SD interventions more than female headed households. This was attributed to the males having a significant access to land especially through inheritance and having the required labour to impelement the intervetions contrary to the females who had less access to these two factors. The influence of household income on adoption of environmental interventions in Ruhiira was not statistically significant. Tree planting was adopted to a higher level (67%) compared to soil/water conservation (30%). Crop variety diversity was promoted by MVP through intercroping and a number of gardens (68%) in Ruhiira were planted with more than 3 crop varieties in one season. Adoption of organic production practices in Ruhiira is limited to only 32% of farmers. The study recommends designing interventions by MVP that are not labour intensive and even suit female headed households. Further research should be done to find out how many trees, per unit of land, can farmers plant in their gardens.