Institutional issues and political challenges in scaling up agroforestry: the case of land care in the Philippines

Agroforestry has considerable potential to address the twin problems of rural poverty and environmental degradation in the Philippine uplands. The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) has been promoting agroforestry by working with a range of partners including local governments and communities. In particular, ICRAF helped initiate the Landcare Program, a successful farmer-led extension program bas ed on community landcare groups, in the Municipality of Claveria in the northern Mindanao. The Landcare Program has resulted in widespread adoption of agroforestry practices and, as a consequence, has been scaled up to several other sites to achieve wider adoption, and increase the impacts of agroforestry. Results of four case studies to assess the factors promoting effective scaling up of agroforestry within the Landcare Program are presented. It was found that Landcare was associated with rapid adoption of soil conservation and agroforestry technologies in the different sites, due to the strong latent demand for the technologies. Landcare groups were the key to success but required on-going support to function well. Reliance on local governments as the ‘lead institution’ tied the Landcare program to political and budgetary cycles, undermining sustainability. The case studies indicate that scaling up agroforestry practices depends on the viability of the landcare approach. It was also found that some features of the local context, the effectiveness of implementing strategies, th e relevance of the landcare approach, and institutional capacity promoted successful scaling up. Furthermore, institutional and political barriers to scaling up should be removed, and broader institutional and political support should be in placed to promote rapid scaling up of agroforestry.

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