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Chapter: Landcare on the Poverty-Protection Interface in an Asian Watershed

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Relation http://oar.icrisat.org/7028/
 
Title Chapter: Landcare on the Poverty-Protection Interface in an Asian Watershed
 
Creator Garrity, D P
Amoroso, V B
Koffa, S
Catacutan, D
Buenavista, G
Fay, P
Dar, W D
 
Subject Agriculture-Farming, Production, Technology, Economics
 
Description Serious methodological and policy hurdles constrain effective natural resource
management that alleviates poverty while protecting environmental services in tropical
watersheds. We review the development of an approach to integrate biodiversity
conservation and agroforestry development through the active involvement of
communities and their local governments near the Kitanglad Range Natural Park in the
Manupali watershed, central Mindanao, the Philippines. Agroforestry innovations were
developed to suit the biophysical and socioeconomic conditions of the buffer zone.
These included practices for tree farming, and conservation farming for annual cropping
on slopes. Institutional innovations improved resource management, resulting in an
effective social contract to protect the natural biodiversity o f the park. Fruit and timber
tree production dramatically increased, re-establishing tree cover in the buffer zone.
Natural vegetative contour strips were installed on several hundred sloping farms. Soil
erosion and runoff declined, while the buffer strips increased maize yields by an average
of 0.5 t/ha on hill-slope farms. The scientific knowledge base guided the development
and implementation of a natural resource management plan for the municipality of
Lantapan. A dynamic grassroots movement o f farmer-led Landcare groups evolved in the villages near the park boundary, which had significant impact on conservation in both the
natural and managed ecosystems. Encroachment in the natural park was reduced 95% in three
years. The local Landcare groups also restored stream corridor vegetation. This integrated
approach has been recognized as a national model for local natural resource and watershed
management in the Philippines. Currently, the collaborating institutions are evolving a negotiation
support system to resolve the interactions between the three management domains: the park,
the ancestral domain claim, and the municipalities. This integrated systems approach operated
effectively with highly constrained funding, suggesting that commitment and impact may best
be stimulated by a “drip-feed” approach rather than by large, externally funded efforts.
 
Publisher CABI Publishing in association with CIFOR
 
Date 2003
 
Type Book Section
PeerReviewed
 
Format application/pdf
 
Language en
 
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Identifier http://oar.icrisat.org/7028/1/Landcare_BookChap_2003.pdf
Garrity, D P and Amoroso, V B and Koffa, S and Catacutan, D and Buenavista, G and Fay, P and Dar, W D (2003) Chapter: Landcare on the Poverty-Protection Interface in an Asian Watershed. In: Integrated natural resource management: linking productivity, the environment and development. CABI Publishing in association with CIFOR, Oxon, UK, pp. 195-210. ISBN 0-85199-731-7