Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
IRMLA
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Integrated resource management and land use analysis in East and South-east Asia
A) Project setting
1) What was the background and motivation of the project?
IRMLA is a follow-up to the SysNet project, a research collaboration between IRRI,
Wageningen UR and four NARS in South and South-east Asia, operating between
1996 and 2000. The aim of SysNet was to develop systems approaches and applica-
tions to regional land use scenario analyses. Main donor was the Ecoregional Fund
(www.ecoregionalfund.com). Co-sponsors included IRRI and DLO International
Cooperation Programme (330).
IRMLA was set up to bridge the gap between ongoing work on Natural Resource
Management (NRM) problems at plot/field/farm level and regional land use explo-
rations, and, henceforth, develop a multi-scale approach to land use analysis and
associated tools; these were supposed to be evaluated under different biophysical
and socio-economic settings in Asia. This set-up responded to earlier specific requests
made by local stakeholders (planners, local government officials, mayors) during the
final SysNet stakeholder meetings. Summarizing, the overall goal of IRMLA was to
expand the SysNet land use analysis methodology in width, in length and in depth:
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In width (stronger incorporation of environmental impacts)
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In length (incorporation of long term effects)
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In depth (incorporation of farmers' decisions)
Context: Growing populations, expanding economies and urbanization in South,
East and South-east Asia have brought issues concerning competing claims on
natural resources to the fore. As agricultural systems intensify and diversify in order
to meet the multiple objectives of rural societies (food security, higher income and
increased employment) they must do so by optimizing resource use efficiency.
Research on resource-use efficient technologies at field or farm level alone will not
suffice to solve the problems, but needs to be combined with resource use and policy
analyses at different higher or 'regional' (district, provincial) decision levels.
To this end, IRMLA project aimed at development and application of research
tools to enable the identification of potential conflicts among resource uses and
support the search for land-use options that best would match the various rural
development objectives. Evaluation and application was performed in four case
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Questionnaire received 2006, revised May 2007; Project leader R. Roetter (Alterra)
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