17/02/2026
Wrapping up our time in Chiang Rai.
Over the past few days, conversations with farmers, community leaders, and partners — kept circling back to one simple question:
What actually makes change stick?
From a social and behaviour change perspective, the answer is rarely technical transfer alone.
Academic knowledge matters.
Training matters.
But adoption spreads when people see someone like them making it work.
This is where positive deviance becomes powerful.
In both lowland and highland communities, change accelerated when trusted community members diversified crops, adjusted land practices, or participated in forest rehabilitation — and others could see the results with their own eyes.
Not theory.
Not instruction.
Proof.
When upstream and downstream farmers recognise their interdependence — water, soil, forests, markets — the landscape approach stops being abstract. It becomes practical.
The photo here is of a community forest that was rehabilitated by the community itself.
No one forced it.
People saw benefits — and followed.
That is how behaviour shifts.
And that is how landscapes recover.
Proud to have explored this through our ISRL work with GIZ.
