The project addresses several development problems:

* the need to arrest productivity declines as a result of erosion.

* the need to empower resource-poor farmers to implement conservation measures in the face of political indifference.

* the need to prevent further deforestation as a result of relentlessly increasing marginalisation of hillside farmers.

The investment by international donors in the last decade into land-use impovement programmes has resulted in a plethora of technical prescriptions for soil and water conservation. However, the response of state and national authorities to implement the findings has been, in general, poor. In the developing countries, the environment rarely figures with any political importance in the face of more pressing economic problems to the, largely, urban-based voting population. In the past, environmental policy has had its basis in the premise that stewardship over natural resources was primarily the responsibility of the state. Policies have been formulated to enforce conservation measures, however the lack of resulting success in soil conservation has increased the awareness at the technical level of the need to move away from a narrow focus on soil conservation per se, and instead to support farmers' responses to a changing resource base. Of particular importance is an assessment of the role of 'social capital' as well as just 'natural capital' as a prerequisite for the establishment and maintenance of more sustainable production systems.

Environmentally benign forestry management practices to improve service functions on sloping lands, developed and promoted. The project willl examine completed projects in this area, and note the successes and failures in implementation of the practice in order to formulate future research design and promotion of results.

• Documentation and review of factors leading to the uptake of improved SWC practices by farmers, recommendations for future participatory research and extension work, and socially and culturally sensitive land husbandry strategies for SWC.
• Promotion by national and state authorities of socially and culturally sensitive SWC strategies which have proved acceptable to farmers.