Our theory of change defines how a development program induces expected outcomes and impacts by describing the causal interrelationships from the programs activities to outputs, outcomes and impacts, based on the underlying science for understanding the nature of change in the operational systems. The theory of change of ORRISSA program on Dryland Local Seed Systems takes valuable aspects of contemporary systems theories – ranging from classical General System Theory to emerging Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) and Socio-ecological Systems (SES) theories – as the basis for understanding the nature of change in dryland agricultural livelihood systems (ALS).
This new systems science knowledge together with a traditional wisdom based local agriculture system approach designed to integrate interventions to leverage positive changes in human actors’ cultural facets, symbiotic relationship with the local natural resources, systemic knowledge, skills, resilience and attitude, which are essential for sustainable management of ALS.
The Dryland Local Seed Systems’ Integrated Local Resource based Agroecology Systems approach focuses on conservation of local in-situ (local traditional seeds) conservation as the entry point level of socio-ecological system analysis. This is concerned with total-system performance, which includes the aspects of resilience, knowledge, practices, wisdom, robustness, equity, adaptability, cost, total farm productivity, efficiency and social acceptability. The performance of the system therefore depends more on how its parts (material conditions and social construction) and external drivers interact, than on now they act independently of each other.
Agricultural livelihood system is embedded in larger socio-ecological systems (SES) that provide context containing external drivers (e.g., biophysical regime, politico-cultural environment and regional economic development) for decisions made about livelihood strategy and activities. A consideration of context implies that sustaining agricultural livelihood systems over time requires managing processes at multiple levels and multiple domains. This means that the entry point level process needs subsequent integration in to the other processes in order to capture cross-level relationships that shape livelihood outcomes.
The initial point of Dryland Local Seed Systems” Generic Impact Pathway (Figure 1) is to analyze the problems of dryland agricultural production and livelihoods and establish integrative intervention strategies in a holistic, yet structured way. This is fundamental difference between the analytical-reductionist approach in commodity-based agricultural intervention programs and the systems approach in the dryland systems. The integrated systems analysis involves the identification of performance gaps of representative agricultural livelihood systems across dryland regions, and key drivers including constrains and opportunities for closing the performance gaps. This analysis further identifies interactions between material/technical farm components and the human/social construction (human actor roles, social relations and adaptive decision-making) determining the system behavior and performance.
The result of this integrated system analysis is to identify context and system-specific entry and leverage points for initiating positive system transitions, and to envision integrative intervention strategies.
