ABSTRACT

Concerned about poverty, equity, and natural resource degradation in rainfed areas, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has financed a number of land improvement projects in the Asia-Pacific Region. During the 1970s and 1980s, ADB focused its assistance on forestry development projects, recognizing the important role of the forests in the control of siltation in irrigation schemes, reservoirs, and rivers, and in the prevention of flooding in the lowland areas. During the 1990s, ADB diversified its financial assistance on land improvement to other types of projects, such as watershed management, upland crop development, soil and water conservation, and shifting cultivation stabilization projects. The total capital investments and technical assistance provided by ADB to the land improvement sub-sector during the past three decades was relatively modest, about 5% of its total investments in the agriculture sector. With competing demands for scarce government resources, ADB member country governments are reluctant to use loan funds to finance long-term land improvement projects, and many policy-makers have not appreciated the importance of investing in natural resource improvement for future generations. A key unresolved issue is whether the cost of land improvement projects should be financed jointly by the project beneficiaries in the upland areas and the people in the lowland areas who benefit from the investments in soil and water conservation in the upland areas. Lessons learned from past ADB land improvement projects provide guidance for formulating and implementing future projects.