Ecological Literacy - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 160

in competition. The resulting impacts, such as in the Philippines and Sri
Lanka, typically involve increased rice yields, increased farmer contrib-
utions to the design and maintenance of systems, dramatic changes in the
efficiency and equity of water use, decreased breakdown of systems, and
reduced complaints to government departments. More than 60,000 water
users' groups have been set up in the past decade or so in India, Nepal,
Pakistan, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. 29
Microfinance institutions
One of the great recent revolutions in developing countries has been the
emergence of new credit and savings systems for poor families. These
systems lack the kinds of collateral that banks typically demand, appearing
to represent too a high a risk. They are therefore trapped into having to
rely on money-lenders who charge extortionate rates of interest. A major
change in thinking and practice occurred when professionals began to
realize that it was possible to provide microfinance to poor groups, and
still ensure high repayment rates. When local groups, in particular women,
are trusted to manage financial resources, they can be more effective than
banks. The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh was the first to help people find
a way out of this credit trap by helping women to organize into groups.
Elsewhere in Bangladesh, the non-governmental organization Proshika has
helped to form 75,000 local groups. Such microfinance institutions are
now receiving worldwide prominence: the 50 microfinance initiatives, in
Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, China, the Philippines, Fiji, Tonga, the
Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Malaysia, have 5
million members in 150,000 groups. Remarkably, these poor people have
mobilized US$130 million of their own savings to finance their own
revolving credit systems. 30
Joint and participatory forest management
In many countries, forests are owned and managed by the state. In some
cases, people are actively excluded. In others, some are permitted the right
to use certain products. Governments have not been entirely successful
in protecting forests, and in recent years have begun to recognize that they
cannot hope to protect forests without the voluntary involvement of local
communities. The most significant changes occurred in India and Nepal,
where experimental local initiatives during the 1980s increased biological
regeneration and income flows to the extent that governments issued new
policies for joint and participatory forest management in India in 1990,