Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
of stakeholder workshops. In some way, the extended tasks of scientists and their
engagement in providing information at different stages of the land use policy cycle
also came at a cost in terms of scientific output.
Evaluation workshop
In the workshop, to assess the projects dealing with rural development and sustainable
agriculture in Africa and Asia, 12 scientists and 3 policymakers of the Ministry of
Agriculture, Nature Management and Food Quality participated. The main criteria
were based on the objectives and expected outputs of the theme 'Rural Development
and Sustainable Agriculture' as formulated in the work programme at the start of
phase 2 of the DLO-IC programme. The objectives formulated for this theme were:
•
To research and develop sustainable intensified agricultural systems;
•
To study farmers' decisions and their effects on the environment;
•
To formulate promising policy measures that promote adoption of sustainable
land use systems, based on local environmental conditions, aims and objectives.
The discussion was structured around the four expected outputs of this theme:
•
Multi-stakeholder platforms established for each case study region;
•
Biophysical potentials, resource use and environmental risk assessed for alter-
native technology options;
•
Farmers' behaviour analysed and innovative farming systems designed;
•
Decision support tools developed for land use scenario analysis to examine
impact of technical and policy changes at farm and regional levels.
Multi-stakeholder platforms established for each case study region
Different forms of stakeholder participation were facilitated, i.e., stakeholders were
involved at various stages during the research process:
•
At the start, to support problem identification and definition of researchable issues;
•
During data collection, processing and interpretation via input and exchange of
knowledge. Stakeholders often are critical in obtaining relevant data and knowledge
to resolve problems or transfer knowledge to farmers and resource managers;
•
During the final phase to transfer knowledge and tools developed by the project
to end users.
The case study-specific political and socio-cultural settings exerted considerable
influence on the way stakeholder participation was realized. In Asia, differences
among countries were observed in the intensity of interactions between scientists
and stakeholders and in the proportion of non-government interest groups involved.
For example, in the Philippines and Malaysia more intensive and more diverse
groups were involved than in Vietnam and China. Similar experiences were reported
from Africa, where the degree of decentralization appears to determine the availability
of the means for and effective participation of different local stakeholder groups in
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