Conservation farming projects in the Philippine uplands: Rhetoric and reality

The phenomenon of agricultural land degradation in the Philippine uplands has been regarded by scientists and policy-makers as a major environmental and rural development problem. Numerous conservation farming projects have been implemented in the past two decades to address this problem, apparently with little success. Most of these projects have espoused the currently fashionable principles of community-based sustainable development. This paper examines case histories of three completed upland conservation projects. The aim is to compare the rhetoric of project documents and evaluations with the reality of on-going land management practices as seen from the perspective of the land managers themselves. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

The rhetoric of sector-wide approaches for health development

The past decade has witnessed an increasing concerns over the effectiveness of project-based development assistance and the promotion of sector-wide approaches (SWAps) to health as a means to increase donor collaboration, consolidate local management of resources and undertake the policy and systems reform necessary to achieve a greater impact on health issues. The concept has gained the support of both the World Bank and the World Health Organisation, as well as key bilateral donors, and dominates current initiatives in development assistance for health. This paper examines the proposal of SWAps as rhetoric, and seeks to understand how that rhetoric functions, despite the variable application of its constituent elements and the range of contexts in which it operates. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.