The SARD Retrospective Study: Looking Back to Look Forward
One of our best teachers is the past. As the SARD Initiative began, it chose to revisit a few projects that were viewed as successes in the past. A retrospective study was carried out to better understand what really seems to remain in place long after project funding has concluded. Following a desk review of several hundred cases, retrospective studies in Honduras, Zimbabwe and the Philippines were carried out to draw lessons on sustainable dimensions of good practices long after project completion.
The retrospective study brought some lessons of process and practice including those related to partnerships and participation, building trust and ownership, inclusiveness, exit strategies, and many related to extending and enhancing knowledge and building individual and institutional capacity.
The impacts that appeared to be truly sustainable included those resulting from implementing practical conservation agriculture practices and building human confidence and skills in decision making, networking and negotiation.
Compendium of LAND and SARD Cases
A Compendium of LAND and SARD Cases has been compiled as a supporting document to the 2002 Task Managers' Report to CSD+10 on the Land and Agriculture Cluster for Chapters 10, 12 and 14 of Agenda 21.
The report draws together 63 cases from 39 countries illustrating the many features of land management and SARD implementation. These are intended to provide important supporting and empirical evidence to answer five key questions for decision-makers:
- What technical innovations are leading to improvements in food production with SARD?
- What novel institutional partnerships and joint working arrangements have been developed for better land use policies and SARD?
- What examples of enabling policies have been implemented by governments to support sustainable land management and SARD?
- What rural development outcomes have occurred with successful implementation of SARD?
- What wider environmental outcomes have been achieved with successful implementation of land use policies and SARD?
Cultivating our Futures
In conjunction with Maastricht Conference in 1999, the Government of the Netherlands and FAO gathered SARD success stories in which multiple dimensions of sustainability were addressed.
UN-CSD Success Stories
The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division of Sustainable Development collected stories from multiple stakeholders from 1997-2001 related to topics on the CSD Agenda.
South South Transfer of Innovative Experiences on SARD
This project is an initiative of the Ministry of Agriculture, Guyana. It is implemented by the Guyana Office of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and financed by the Perez-Guerrero Trust Fund (through UNDP) and IICA.
InfoAgrar Database of SARD Projects
InfoAgrar is the agricultural information and documentation service of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. It maintains a global database of SARD projects, which can be accessed by region, by topic, by title or by history.
The Livestock and Rangeland Knowledgebase
The Livestock and Rangeland Knowledgebase is a product of IFAD's Thematic Group on Community-Based Management of Natural Resources. It is based on case studies of a range of IFAD projects that support livestock production among pastoralists, agro-pastoralists and smallholders and is meant for planners, policy-makers, front-line staff involved in the design and implementation of sustainable livestock projects.
People Centred Development Successes
Improved participatory methods and tools are needed to ensure the participation of all stakeholders, especially the rural poor, in the formulation, implementation and monitoring of policies, programmes and institutional measures. The focus on the rural poor - men and women - in food-deficit and economically marginal areas, as well as socio-economically marginalized groups in favourably endowed areas, is aimed at more equitable sharing of benefits from development. Good practices cases with this focus can be accessed from the FAO Participation website and the website of the Livelihood Support Programme.
