2000 : Strategic Plan for the Mekong River Commission Agriculture Irrigation and Forestry Program

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IID provided a team leader and a junior professional under it’s mentoring program to assist the MRC and officers from each of the Mekong riparian states to prepare a new strategy for it’s Agriculture Irrigation and Forestry Program. The work was undertaken as an iterative series of participatory processes over a period of one year.

Stage 1 work began with a workshop in Phnom Penh attended by representatives from each riparian state during which a new vision for the program was developed and agreed. This featured a focus on three key areas:

Water Use Efficiency - in recognition of the need to collaboratively investigate ways to improve the sustainability and efficiency of water use;
Catchment Management - in recognition of the importance of considering resource use in an integrated way, particularly where catchments cross borders between the riparian states;
Capacity Building - in recognition of the need to build networks of officials and institutions working in a collaborative way on activities related to agriculture irrigation and forestry.

The second stage involved participatory workshops in each riparian state to discuss some 50 project ideas proposed by the riparian states and to inspect the projects agreed to have priority in each state. More detailed proposals were then formulated for the next stage.

The third stage involved a presentation to the MRC joint committee and the donor representative group and upon agreement a final presentation to the Joint Council for approval and adoption as part of the MRC program of works.

Details of the Mekong River Commission and the Agriculture Irrigation and Forestry program (AIFP) can be found at www.mrcmekong.org.

IID was also contracted to undertake a Mid-Term Review of the National Dry Land Salinity Program of Australia (NDSP); Phase II. Some $A135 million per year is spent in Australia between federal, state, local government and statutory bodies on addressing dry land salinity with the NDSP, the peak coordinating institution linking these activities. The goal of the program is to be the main knowledge broker researching, developing and extending practical approaches to effectively manage dry land salinity across Australia. The program contracts specific studies on institutional, technical and market based mechanisms to address salinity and in monitoring the evolving salinity situation around Australia. Details of the NDSP can be seen at www.ndsp.gov.au.

IID assembled and lead a multi-disciplinary team made up of a communication unit, a technical unit and an institutional unit to review progress of the program against objectives, with particular reference to identifying changes that might improve results that enable people to take action on the ground. A particular recommendation of IID was to implement more on-ground demonstrations of apparently successful techniques with the more progressive farmers and land managers. This resulted in a major new initiative known as the Sustainable Grazing of Saline Lands (SGSL). SGSL is a sub-program of Land, Water & Wool (an initiative of AWI, with LWA) delivered in association with the NDSP. Additional investors (as at Dec 2002) include MLA, Dept of Agriculture WA, CSIRO, Salinity CRC, SARDI, PIRSA, UA, DWLBC, NRE, plus producers and producer groups across southern Australia.

See details at http://www.lwa.gov.au/media.asp?media=16.

Salinity is recognised as one of the most pressing environmental problems facing Australia with the Prime Minister of Australia announcing an increase of funding to $A1.5 billion over 7 years at the end of this review.

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