Visayas Communal Irrigation and Participatory Project
Visayas Communal Irrigation and Participatory Project
Visayas Communal Irrigation and Participatory Project
Visayas is one of the most economically depressed regions of the Philippines. Poverty is acute and widespread, and high population growth, together with slow economic growth, led to an increase in the number of people living below the poverty line. The project built on the experiences and lessons learned from the previous communal Irrigation Development Project, financed jointly by IFAD and the World Bank. IFAD designed the second phase of the project with the aid of technical assistance grants from the Government of the Netherlands and the Canadian International Development Agency. The project targeted the poorest communities and made sure that activities were both financially and physically sustainable.
The overall objective was to assist the government in helping rural poor people increase food production and achieve greater self-sufficiency in basic food requirements. The project strengthened support for communal irrigation programmes, benefiting poor, small-scale farmers in a region where 51 per cent of farms consisted of less than 0.5 ha of land.
Activities focused on:
- rehabilitating and building communal irrigation systems
- supporting pilot systems of on-farm water management
- promoting watershed development and erosion control
- strengthening irrigators’ associations
- strengthening national and local institutions
- reinforcing and coordinating agricultural support services
- monitoring and evaluating results
