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Environmental degradation, diminishing food productivity and high population growth are common problems in rural areas of northern and central Mindanao in the Philippines. An IFAD-funded project is demonstrating that an integrated, holistic approach to development, driven by the communities themselves, can generate substantial and lasting change.

Poor rural people manage vast areas of land and forest. They have the potential to be important players in protecting natural resources and providing important environmental services. An IFAD-supported project has helped build momentum and public interest in rewards for environmental services and has developed ways to offer incentives to poor farmers who protect ecosystems at the national level in China, Indonesia, Laos, Nepal, the Philippines and Viet Nam.

One of the objectives of IFAD-funded operations is to strengthen communities so that they can determine their own needs and mobilize resources to meet them.  Small enterprise development and credit are central to this endeavour.  Working with farmers, women and indigenous groups, IFAD and its partners have helped change the attitudes and economies of villages and municipalities in southern Philippines, even in areas affected by conflict.

Lando had to produce 116 sacks of rice each year to pay his rent. But with an average yield per harvest of only 85 sacks, even with three plantings, he had trouble meeting his obligations. His cultivation methods were part of the problem: he had no access to the latest tools or techniques, and the synthetic pesticides and fertilizers he relied on depleted the soil and ate away at his yield. His costs were high, and his returns low; the local processors and intermediaries paid so little for his crops that he was trapped in a cycle of debt he couldn't seem to escape.

Socorro Gazo finally has a place to call home. Three years ago, she moved into a brand-new 26-square-metre house in Kabankalan City in the western Philippines. The 32-year-old city employee and her husband, a soldier stationed in Mindanao, could never have raised the $5,620 to build on their own.
Source: CIDA

In the far-flung town of Sadanga in Mountain Province, synergy is not at all farfetched. The townspeople even have a name for it, “og-ogbo”, which literally means “working together.” Local officials, media practitioners, students and teachers did just that when 32 campus journalists of two high schools in Sadanga attended a three-day training on the basics of journalism last July.

“In my class, it’s mostly boys who drop out”, said Vernelou Kidro, 16, during a recent theater rehearsal at a community centre in Tondo, a Manila neighbourhood with thousands of tiny, ramshackle houses. “Often, they lack interest or are just too poor to afford school”.

A small IFAD-funded grant project in Western Mindanao took up the challenge of helping former combatants return to civilian life not long after decades of conflict had formally ended. The project provided life skills and technical support to participants, helping them win acceptance in their villages as productive and peaceful farmers and fishers.

The Northern Mindanao Community Initiatives and Resource Management Project helped develop the abilities of poor rural communities to play an active role in their own economic and social development. One way the project achieved this was by setting up a poverty alleviation fund in selected municipalities. The fund provided a combination of seed money and much-needed credit to organized groups of poor producers, fishers, indigenous peoples and women who had, with project assistance, developed viable plans for sustainable livelihoods.

Poverty, illiteracy and unemployment levels are high among the 18 indigenous groups that live in Mindanao. The IFAD-funded Northern Mindanao Community Initiatives Resource Management Project has helped empower tribes to take the lead in the education of their children and in their own self-governance – two important routes to a better future.

Fishing communities in Cortes, Surigao del Sur, watched with alarm as fish in their waters grew smaller and scarcer. Coastal degradation was threatening their livelihoods. Through capacity-building and other support, the IFAD-funded Northern Mindanao Community Initiatives and Resource Management Project has helped the municipal government and local organizations first halt and then reverse this trend.