Locations
By Basma Albanna, Andreas Pawelke and Hodan Abdullahi
In every community, some individuals or groups achieve significantly better outcomes than their peers, despite having similar challenges and resources. Finding these so-called positive deviants and working with them to diffuse their practices is referred to as the Positive Deviance approach. The Data-Powered Positive Deviance (DPPD) method follows the same logic as the Positive Deviance approach but leverages existing, non-traditional data sources, in conjunction with traditional data sources to identify and scale the solutions of positive deviants. The UNDP Somalia Accelerator Lab was part of the first cohort of teams that piloted the application of DPPD trying to tackle the rangeland health problem in the West Golis region. In this blog post we’re reflecting on the process we designed and tested to go from the identification and validation of successful practices to helping other communities adopt them.
Uncovering Rangeland Success
Three years ago we embarked on a journey to identify pastoral communities in Somaliland that demonstrated resilience in the face of adversity. Using a mix of traditional and non-traditional data sources, we wanted to explore and learn from communities that managed to have healthy rangelands despite the severe droughts of 2016 and 2017.
We engaged with government officials from various ministries, experts from the University of Hargeisa, international organizations like the FAO and members of agro-pastoral communities to learn more about rangeland health. We then selected the West Golis as our region of interest with a majority pastoral community and relative ease of access. Employing the Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI) and using geospatial and earth observation data allowed us to identify an initial group of potential positive deviants illustrated as green circles in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1: Measuring the vegetation health within 5 km community buffer zones based on SAVI.
Following the identification of potential positive deviants, we engaged with 18 pastoral communities from the Togdheer, Awdal, and Maroodijeex regions to validate whether the positive deviants we found using earth observation data were indeed doing better than the other communities.
The primary objective of the fieldwork was to uncover the existing practices and strategies that could explain the outperformance of positively-deviant communities compared to other communities. The research team identified a range of strategies, including soil and water conservation techniques, locally-produced pesticides, and reseeding practices as summarized in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Strategies and practices that emerged from the fieldwork
Data-Powered Positive Deviance is not just about identifying outperformers and their successful practices. The real value lies in the diffusion, adoption and adaptation of these practices by individuals, groups or communities facing similar challenges. For this to succeed, both the positive deviants and those learning about their practices must take ownership and drive the process. Merely presenting the uncommon but successful practices of positive deviants to others will not work. The secret to success is in empowering the community to take charge, overcome challenges, and leverage their own resources and capabilities to effect change.
In 2023, we designed an intervention that was based on these principles and which aimed to support communities in the West Golis region to share and learn from the practices and strategies of positive deviants. We worked with villages that had contrasting rangeland health conditions but similar sociodemographic and biophysical conditions, resources, exposure to interventions and livelihoods. Specifically, we selected a village with underperforming rangeland health, XW, and an outperforming one, Q, for a peer-learning experiment. This intervention consisted of a simple three-step process: Buy-in, Discovery, and Action (BDA).
Step 1: Buy-in
We first wanted to secure buy-in for the sharing and learning process from community members and local leaders of the XW (Anonymized for the privacy of the village). Fostering a sense of ownership among those involved is crucial for the success of any intervention that heavily relies on participatory and collective elements. During initial meetings, we discussed the rationale and value of learning from positive deviants. We also presented the remote sensing analysis results, demonstrating how similar communities had maintained their rangeland health. We then asked the village community to choose three representatives who would visit the positively-deviant village (i.e Q- anonymized to protect the local community) to discover, discuss and learn from practices and strategies that they developed. Despite some initial skepticism, the community opted to participate in the Discovery visit and selected a male agro-pastoralist, a female trader, and an outspoken young farmer as their representatives.
Step 2: Discovery
During the Discovery visit, the three members from XW visited the outperforming village and learned about the practices and strategies developed and employed by different individuals, families and groups to tackle the health of their rangeland. The visit aimed to inspire the members of the XW and to help them adopt or adapt some of the successful practices to their own contexts and challenges. We utilized the socioecological model (SEM) developed by UNICEF to understand the factors influencing behavior and enabling the practices of positive deviants to emerge (Figure 5). This model considers five layers of influence for individual and collective behavioral change: 1) Individuals, 2) Family and friends, 3) Community, 4) Institutions and services, and 5) Policy, society, and environment.
Figure 3: Factors influencing behavior in the SEM
The two-day visit began with an interview of the Q village leader to uncover external factors that may have enabled the emergence and implementation of the solutions. The discussion covered topics related to the village’s governance structures, meta-norms, and support programs received from the government or other actors. This was followed by a focus group discussion with the village members to explore their solutions to the rangeland problem. The three representatives led all the discussions, while the field team acted mainly as facilitators. At the end of the first day, the representatives selected a number of solutions to visit the following day that they found both relevant and interesting: public land enclosures, the Wallgab process , soil bunds, water harvesting structures, production of organic pesticides, and honey-bee farming
The solutions were clearly not isolated from the larger system, as the different layers of the SEM model played a crucial role in the creation and sustainability of the solutions. In Q, communal land ownership enabled the establishment of public enclosures in 2017 (Figure 7). World Vision provided seedlings and fencing materials for these public enclosures, while the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations offered additional training. Initially, 46 households participated in growing the seeds, with two households assigned to guard the enclosures at all times. Each household is given two piles of grass per day, and they are prohibited from taking their animals inside to prevent the introduction of invasive species. Rules and regulations have been put in place to restrict unauthorized access to the enclosures, and these were deposited in the mayor's office to ensure enforcement. Currently, the public enclosure serves 250 households within the village and neighboring communities.
Step 3: Action
In the final step of the BDA process, representatives of XW shared their observations and insights from the Discovery visit with their village members. Together they discussed how these practices could be adapted and implemented more broadly within the village. They reached an agreement on six potential interventions for their village and developed an action plan to implement these changes.
An interesting observation during the Action step was that it revealed latent positive deviance. The BDA process created a climate of inquiry in which the XW community members came up with new solutions "just waiting to be hatched" as they discovered the practices of the positively-deviant village. For example, the representatives already knew of the solutions suggested by the Q village to combat Prosopis. But, upon their return to their village and during the Action meeting, they conceived of a new idea—the large-scale peeling of tree trunks to make them dry up—as a way to fight Prosopis. They were also interested in shifting towards organic pesticides after seeing their positive impacts at Q, but they not only thought of replicating the mixes that were developed there, but they also recalled a mixture that was created by their ancestors and decided to incorporate elements of it in the pesticide mixtures they decided to develop.
Action plan developed by the XW village members. They decided to take on six interventions: 1) Establish new rules and governance structures, 2) Developing natural pesticides, 3) Small Streams/Daagas to prevent rangeland degradation and social erosion and regenerate forests, 4) Prosopis eradication, 5) Women’s savings group and 6) Alternative livelihoods and sources of income.
Scaling Up
As part of the pilot we convened a workshop in Nairobi that brought together key stakeholders to reflect on the experience and chart a path forward.
A scaling strategy emerged from these discussions with three distinct scaling pathways:
- Single Peer-Group Scaling: This first pathway focuses on villages within West Golis that share similar contextual characteristics. The approach involves organizing structured learning and diffusion events where multiple villages can learn from positive deviants, while maintaining the peer-to-peer learning model that proved successful in our pilot.
- Multiple Peer-Group Scaling: This pathway acknowledges the diversity within West Golis by identifying and clustering different types of villages (e.g., highland versus lowland pastoralists). Each cluster would undergo its own sharing and learning process, allowing for solutions tailored to specific contexts.
- Scaling Beyond West Golis: This involves extending the DPPD method to other pastoral regions in Somalia. This would require conducting fresh analyses to identify positive deviants in new regions, while applying the lessons and methodological refinements from our West Golis experience.
The pilot itself as well as our workshop discussions emphasized that scaling is not simply about replicating successful practices. We learned that effective scaling is fundamentally about facilitating learning processes that enable communities to also adapt (see the "latent positive deviance" we observed in XW) rather than merely adopt practices.
What’s more, applying the SEM model revealed that successful practices in Q weren't solely the result of individual knowledge or actions. Rather, they emerged from a complex interplay of factors across multiple levels, from individual capabilities to family dynamics, community structures, institutional support, and broader policy environments.
This suggests that successful scaling will require a flexible, multidimensional systems-aware approach that follows the core principles of community-led learning and adaptation, while acknowledging the unique contexts and capabilities of each community involved.
The journey of amplifying positive deviance within Somali rangelands demonstrates the power of community-driven solutions and collaborative learning. By engaging local stakeholders and leveraging both traditional and non-traditional data, we have not only identified successful practices but also facilitated their adaptation across communities. The insights gained through the Data-Powered Positive Deviance approach highlight the importance of fostering an environment where communities can share, learn, and innovate together. Ultimately, empowering these communities to take ownership of their solutions is essential for sustainable change, paving the way for a resilient future in the face of ongoing challenges.