On farm conservation of crop diversity poses obvious policy challenges in terms of the design of appropriate incentive mechanisms and possible trade-offs between conservation and productivity.

This study addresses three main research questions: 1) What projects are most successful in promoting the objectives of raising agricultural productivity, improving natural resource management and reducing poverty? 2) What approaches enable them to succeed? 3) What nonproject factors also contribute to achieving these objectives?

In recent years the planting of eucalyptus trees in Ethiopia has expanded from State owned plantations to community woodlots and household compounds. In an environment suffering from severe woody biomass shortages water scarcity, erosion and land degradation, fast growing and resilient eucalyptus species perform better than most indigenous woodland and forest tree species (as well as most crops).

The worsening degradation of natural resources urgently requires the adoption of more sustainable management practices. This need has led to growing interest and investment in monitoring systems for tracking the condition of natural resources. This study is concerned with the design of monitoring systems that have direct relevance for the management of natural resources. We call these Policy Relevant Monitoring Systems (PRMS). Such systems have several key characteristics.

Agriculture is vital to the economies of Sub-Saharan Africa: two-thirds of the region’s people depend on it for their livelihoods. Nevertheless, agricultural productivity in most of the region is stagnant or declining, in large part because of land degradation. Soil erosion and soil nutrient depletion degraded almost 70 percent of the region’s land between 1945 and 1990; 20 percent of total agricultural land has been severely degraded. If left unchecked, land degradation could seriously threaten the progress of economic growth and poverty reduction in Africa.

Drought is a recurrent and often devastating threat to the welfare of countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) where three-quarters of the arable land has less than 400 mm of annual rainfall, and the natural grazings, which support a majority of the 290 million ruminant livestock, have less than 200 mm. Its impact has been exacerbated in the last half century by the human population increasing yearly at over 3%, while livestock numbers have risen by 50% over the quinquennium.

Community-based Natural Resource Management (NRM) is increasingly becoming an important approach for addressing natural resource degradation in low income countries. This study analyzes the determinants of enactment, awareness of and compliance with by-laws related to Natural Resource Management (NRM) in order to draw policy implications that could be used to increase the effectiveness of by-laws in managing natural resources sustainably. We found a strong association between awareness and compliance with NRM bylaws.

A Case Study of Semi-Formal Financial Institutions in Tanzania Background In Tanzania, as in other parts of Africa, lack of credit severely constrains sustainable agricultural development. Deficient or inappropriate collateral, credit rationing, lender preferences for high-income customers borrowing large amounts, and bureaucratic procedures in the formal financial sector are often identified as key factors contributing to low access to credit among most rural dwellers.

Land degradation, in the form of soil erosion and nutrient depletion, threatens food security and the sustainability of agricultural production in many developing countries. Governments and development agencies have invested substantial resources in promoting soil conservation practices, in an effort to improve environmental conditions and reduce poverty. However, very limited rigorous empirical work has examined the economics of adopting soil conservation technology.

Contents: Welcome And Introduction; Opening of the Workshop; Policies for Improved Land Management in Uganda: Project Objectives, Activities, and Opportunities; Summary of Main Themes and Key Findings; Development Pathways and Land Management in Uganda: Causes and Implications; A Spatially Based Strategic Planning Framework for Sustainable Land Use in Uganda; Alternative Growth Scenarios for Ugandan Coffee to 2020; Potentials And Constraints to Coffee Development: Aiding the Coffee Replanting Program; The Relationship Between Socio-Economic Characterisitics of Maize Farmers and Household Fo

This paper reviews hypotheses about the impacts of rural population growth on agriculture and natural resource management in developing countries and the implications for productivity, poverty, and natural resource conditions. Impacts on household and collective decisions are considered, and it is argued that population growth is more likely to have negative impacts when there is no collective responses than when population growth induces infrastructure development, collective action, institutional or organizational development.

Numerous methods are available for increasing crop and livestock production in the Ethiopian highlands. Both national and international research institutes have developed technologies that are technically appropriate for these conditions. Examples of such technologies are the broad-bed maker for vertisols and cow traction (Zerbini, Woldu, and Shapiro 1999) and use of a single ox to pull the plow (Ouwerkerk 1990). However, farmers’ adoption of these technologies has been very limited, and farming is still characterized in most areas by low input use and limited use of improved technologies.