Land degradation' is widely recognised as a critical environmental problem in the mountains of Lesotho. Lesotho is renowned for its "prominent soil erosion. that stands out (in satellite imagery) in stark contrast to the surrounding well vegetated landscape of South Africa.... a stage only one above that of desert" The highland farmer and his livestock are commonly blamed for such spectacular depletion of Lesotho's natural resources.
In Lesotho, much effort has gone into documenting the obvious phenomena of degradation, i.e. soil erosion and range degradation, and their negative impact on rural livelihoods. Apart from various individual research projects aimed at specific aspects of land degradation, a number of large multidisciplinary research programmes (e.g. the Maluti/Drakensberg Catchment Conservation Programme and the Lesotho Highlands Water Project Baseline Biological Surveys) have reported, directly and indirectly, on various aspects of environmental degradation. However, despite these efforts, degradation appears to be continuing unabated and 'solutions' to the problem are not obvious, especially in the face of increasing demand for scare resources. Part of the failure to halt, or at least reduce, the rate of land degradation could be due to a poor understanding of the patterns and processes of degradation. Fundamental data on several processes do not exist, e.g. rates of soil erosion, and such lack of data may lead to spurious prognostications and unrealistic projections. More importantly, the complex causes and effects of degradation and feedbacks between the user and the land cannot be understood from isolated studies. What is required is an integrated perspective on the multifarious nature of degradation; where the patterns, processes and ramifications of degradation are understood in the socio-economic context of the land user.
Multidisciplinary projects, such as the M/DCCP, which involved a number of studies on various aspects of the environment and socio-economy of the eastern mountain catchments of Lesotho, have failed to provide an integrated view of the mountain environment. Although the scope of these projects were broad, and the individual studies comprehensive in nature, the process of investigation did not involve integration of questions, methodology and field work right from the start. Consequently, synthesis of individual studies at the end of the research programmes did not provide the requisite holistic understanding of the ecological and sociological dynamics. An interdisciplinary approach to studying environmental problems, such as degradation, is therefore imperative.
The Lesotho Mountain Research Group (LMRG) was formed in 1995 to facilitate integrated, interdisciplinary research in the mountains of Lesotho. The LMRG (with a current membership of over 60) comprises a network of researchers and practitioners from a number of natural and human science disciplines who are interested in co-ordinating their research efforts and in the exchange of information relating to the mountain environment. As one of its first actions, the LMRG convened a workshop in September 1996 to examine the role that a multidisciplinary group, such as the LMRG, may play in researching critical environmental issues. The focus of this workshop was the complex nature of land degradation in Lesotho.
