Community Agriculture & Watershed Management Project

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The Community Agriculture and Watershed Management Project seeks to build the productive assets of rural communities in selected mountain watersheds, to increase sustainable productivity, and curtail the degradation of fragile lands, and ecosystems, while the global environmental objective will entail protection of significant mountain ecosystems, by mainstreaming sustainable land use, and biodiversity conservation considerations, within agricultural and associated, rural investment decisions. The rural production investments component entails farm productivity improvement, through inputs for annual crops, horticulture, livestock, agro-processing, distribution, leasing, and credit facilities. In addition the land resource management sub-component will foster sustainable uses of fragile lands, and provide land use certificates after three years of maintenance, subject to continued good land use. The combination of appropriate income-generating investments, with soil conservation will enhance the organic content of the soil, thus create incentives for sustainable land use by interested local people. Rural infrastructure investments will also be supported, while contribution requirements and budget constrains, will be addressed by beneficiaries, who shall contribute their own resources in the form of labor, material and cash, for at least 20 percent of the total investment value. Under the institutional and capacity building component, support will be provided for seed and seedling production, livestock breeding and animal health and husbandry improvements, in addition to market and enterprise analysis and development. Training will be provided, including support for small mobilization grants for each village, information, and experience sharing. Finally, project management will support coordination, procurement, disbursement, financial management, reporting, monitoring, and evaluation, at both the national level, and each of the project watershed areas, while building on administrative capacity and implementation arrangements.