Making Soil and Water Conservation Sustainable 397fertilizers and pesticides, increased numbers of trees, birds and other wild-
life.Despite the differences in cultural, political and bio-physical contexts, there are
important common elements. All emphasize the use of locally adapted resource-
conserving technologies that provide immediate returns to farmers, rather than the
use of externally derived technologies. All focus on encouraging action by groups
or communities at local level, rather than working with individual farmers. All
involve supportive government and/or non-government institutions working in
partnership with each other and with farmers.
As conditions and knowledge change, so farmers and communities must be
encouraged and allowed to change and adapt also. Sustainable soil and water con-
servation must not impose models or packages. Rather, it should become a process
for learning and perpetual novelty.
The challenge now is to identify and encourage the conditions that will foster
the further spread of these innovative efforts. Most of these are still only islands of
success. This is partly because favourable policy environments are missing. Most
agricultural policies still actively discriminate against sustainability. Existing policy
frameworks are now one of the principal barriers to the spread of a more sustain-
able and productive agriculture, and this is where future changes will be essential.
Acknowledgements
This paper is one output from the research project New Horizons: The Economic,
Social and Environmental Impacts of Participatory Watershed Development. This was a
2-year programme of research support and institutional collaboration between the
Sustainable Agriculture Programme of IIED and partner institutions in Asia, Africa,
Latin America and Australia. The project was funded by the Swedish International
Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), the Swiss Development Cooperation
(SDC), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), the Ford
Foundation, the British Overseas Development Administration, and the Australian
International Development Assistance Bureau (AIDAB – now AusAID).
The authors are grateful for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper
by participants at the November 1994 joint IIED/ActionAid conference in Banga-
lore, together with those of two anonymous referees. Any errors and omissions are,
of course, the sole responsibility of the authors.
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