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March 2000

Dear WOCATEER!

Since a long time we envisage the production of a regular newsletter to keep you up to date with the developments in the WOCAT programme, but there were always good reasons why it was not done. However, we consider the feedback to all WOCATEERS essential, whether they are participants in a regional or national workshop, involved in one of the many participating institutions, or just interested individuals.

In principle, this will be a bi-annual newsletter but in the case of special events the frequency may be higher. It will as much as possible be distributed by Email to reduce printing and postage expenses. Therefore it is very important that we have a list with up to date Email addresses! Please inform the secretariat in Bern if your Email address is not correct, when it changes, or if for some reason you still prefer a hard copy instead of Email. You can also provide us with the (Email) addresses of other people who would like to receive WOCAT news. The newsletter will also be published on the WOCAT Website (WWW.WOCAT.NET).

This first Newsletter gives an overview of the developments of the past year (in reversed chronological order).

Please send any comments or additional information to the WOCAT Secretariat or to Godert van Lynden who is responsible within the Management Group for this newsletter.

Latest News of WOCAT: March 2000

Planned activities for 2000:

· New PR material (brochure, video), guidelines on how to conduct national and regional WOCAT initiatives. The new brochure will be available by early April 2000, the video by August 2000.

· Further development of the database (validation and updating of existing data, new documentation of technologies and approaches, mapping).

· Testing and finalization of the mapping methodology incl. a first prototype for Kenya.

· New CD-ROM Version 2. Diverging from version 1 (’98) this CDROM will only contain validated data, as well as the entire methodology (ACCESS databases, also in run-time version), documentation and illustrative material.

· WOCAT on the Internet: development of the WOCAT Website (WWW.WOCAT.NET). Most of the CD ROM contents will be available on this site but a special interactive module will be developed to query the database. The refurbished Website will be ready by April 2000.

· WOCAT outputs (overviews/handbooks). A first example for Kenya was presented during the Annual Workshop in Thailand in September 1999 (see below).

· Further development of global and regional/national programmes through taskforces.

· English versions of the Questionnaires on Technologies (QT) and Approaches (QA) are available at CDE, Hallerstrasse 12, CH – 3012 Bern, Switzerland. The Questionnaire on the Map (QM) as well as the French and Spanish translations of all questionnaires are only available as draft copies yet.

· The next annual workshop (WWSM5) will be held at the International Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC), Wageningen, The Netherlands from 5 to 9 September, 2000.

The Steering meeting will be held on September 11, 2000.

Report on progress September 1999 to March 2000

Since the Annual Workshop in Thailand (September 1999), considerable progress has been made at various levels:

· ICARDA/Syria: WOCAT questionnaires translated into Arabic. Ongoing work on data-collection and translation of questionnaires into Russian.

· S.Africa: Over 25 questionnaires on technologies and approaches filled in. Work on mapping planned, including linking to ongoing SOTER activities and S. African land degradation assessment, which was based on the WOCAT mapping methodology.

· Niger: Updating of national database on Technologies and Approaches, quality control.

· Philippines: formalisation of a WOCAT National Committee through the issuance of the Secretary of Agriculture of a Special Order. 12 members of the Committee chaired by the Bureau of Soils and Water Management. Various offices concerned with soil and water conservation are represented in the Committee. A first meeting was held on Oct. 23. One of the important functions of the committee aside from the documentation of successful SWC technologies is to initiate policy recommendations on issues related to conservation. The committee agreed to meet quarterly. A proposal to the Bureau of Agricultural Research regarding the documentation of indigenous SWC technologies is being prepared. Documentation of the technology and approach regarding the natural vegetative strip (NVS) was completed and data entered in the database.

· Switzerland: following the suggestion by the WWSM in Thailand that activities also be undertaken in "developed" countries, a student from Bern University has started data collection on SWC measures in the Swiss canton Wallis. The WOCAT questionnaires are translated into German for this purpose.

· A technical working meeting was held in Bern, 7-11 February 2000 between Hanspeter Liniger, Godert van Lynden, Gudrun Schwich, Karl Herweg and Hans Hurni. Issues discussed were:
a. Distribution of co-ordination responsibilities
b. Organisation of Wageningen WOCAT workshop and Steering Meeting, September 2000
c. QM development / QT and QA corrections
d. CD ROM and Website
e. WOCAT guidelines and evaluation criteria
f. PR: Brochure, video, participation in conferences, publications

On the last day an Internet conference was set up with Rod Gallacher and Wolfgang Prante at FAO in Rome.

· If you have more news that you wish to be included in the newsletter and the webpage, please let us know and send us short reports of WOCAT activities.

Annual WOCAT Workshop and Steering Meeting, 
Thailand, 6 – 11 September 1999

Since 1996, WOCAT is holding Annual Workshops and Steering Meetings to bring together the main collaborating and funding institutions and core collaborators, to assess the progress, and further develop the program and plan for the future. The first three meetings were held in Switzerland (Sigriswil, Murten and Twann - reports available from the Secretariat).

Main topics of this meeting were:

1. Activity reports of regional and national initiatives, taskforces and financial report.
2. Outputs:
· New brochure (Presentation of final draft and approval for printing).
· Guidelines for national and regional WOCAT activities (Presentation of final draft and approval for printing).
· Finalizing WOCAT datasets.
· CD-ROM Version 2 (Presentation of final draft and approval for printing).
· WOCAT on Internet (Proposal and approval).
3. Plans and program for the next 1 year / 3 years (Steering meeting: 10/9/99).

Download a report of the workshop (PDF, 650 Kb) or order a hard copy at the secretariat.

WOCAT Regional training workshop for ICARDA countries,
6 – 13 June 1999, Aleppo, Syria.

The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) in Aleppo, Syria, has the mandate to cover the Central Asia, West Asia and North Africa (CWANA) Region. The Center organized a first training workshop to introduce ICARDA staff and members of three National Institutions in Syria to WOCAT (World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies).

Fourteen participants were trained in the use of the questionnaires, database handling and the initiation and implementation of new WOCAT initiatives in the region. It was a 'training the trainers' workshop including a field visit to test the methodology in an area with Roman terraces, which are still used today for fruit orchards. Hanspeter Liniger (CDE Bern), Godert van Lynden (ISRIC, Wageningen) and Wolfgang Prante (FAO, Rome) of the WOCAT coordination group facilitated the workshop. Through their learning-by-doing approach, they created a lot of incentives and enthusiasm in the group.

As a first action, the participants of the training workshop in Aleppo will launch WOCAT with the documentation of three technologies that have proven successful in the drylands of Syria:
(i) Stonewall bench terraces for steep-lands, introduced by the Romans more than a thousand years ago;
(ii) loose-rock embankments which can be found widely in stony areas to enable mechanized dryland cereal farming;
(iii) a combination of range pitting and re-seeding to rehabilitate denuded and degraded arid and semi-arid rangelands.

Syria: old Roman terraces (Photo: Godert van Lynden)

There is a wealth of living traditional and new conservation technologies and approaches in the region. It is a great challenge for the continuation of the WOCAT programme to document and analyze additional successful conservation systems in the CWANA region. Another big task ahead is the translation of the WOCAT questionnaires into Arabic and hopefully at the later stage into Russian.

This will help to better communicate with local farmers and extension staff.

ICARDA, as the WOCAT node for CWANA Region, will now start promoting WOCAT in the region and together with national collaborators a regional database and exchange forum will be established.

ICARDA and the new WOCATeers that were trained during the workshop in Aleppo will be instrumental in organizing workshops and promoting WOCAT in other countries of the region.

WOCAT training workshop Niamey, Niger, 3 – 7 May 1999.

A WOCAT workshop was held for updating and finalising the datasets for Niger and initiating the process for neighbouring countries. Institutions involved were: ICRISAT (host and organiser), INSAH (Institute du Sahel), OSS, OSWU (Optimising Soil Water Use). 19 participants from development projects, Universities, NGOs and international organisations in Niger attended the workshop as well as 5 regional representatives from Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Cap Verde. Charles Bielders, Hanspeter Liniger, Gaussou Traoré were WOCAT resource persons. This was a first test of the French WOCAT database and appro-val of questionnaire translation. WOCAT and its Information Management System were much appreciated. Concrete plans including a national and regional committee were made: until August 1999 the most important Technologies and Approaches should be documented for CD-ROM Version 2, and afterwards the process should be continued to build up a national WOCAT database. For the Sahel region plans were made to start new initiatives in the other Sahel countries co-ordinated through ICRISAT / INSAH.

Niger:Zai/Tassa System (Photo: PDRT/GTZ, Tahoua)

WOCAT taskforce meeting on Database Management, CD-ROM version 2, Guidelines and Brochure, 
19 – 24 May 1999, Bern, Switzerland.

With Godert van Lynden, Wolfgang Prante, Karl Herweg, Hans Hurni, Hanspeter Liniger, Gudrun Schwilch. Treated issues: Database Management System; successful work on the integration of a map viewer into the Map Access Database. Further development of multi-language version of all databases.

Establishment of table of content for CD-ROM version 2. Draft of new brochure and the guidelines.

Discussions on the Internet concept for WOCAT.

WOCAT workshop South Africa, 15 – 19 March 1999, Stanger, South Africa.

This national workshop was the first to be organised purely as a training/ familiarisation exercise, following recommendations of the annual WOCAT meeting in Twann, Switzerland in September 1998. 34 delegates from nine provincial agricultural departments, from the National Department of Agriculture and the Institute for Soil Climate and Water in Pretoria (the lead organisation), as well as from Universities and NGOs participated in the workshop, with Hanspeter Liniger and Godert van Lynden from the WOCAT core group being present for technical assistance. As a result WOCAT will be used to build up the national database for SWC. This justifies the long process for the development of the methodology and the numerous revisions of the questionnaires. The South African experience can be used as a model case for the Southern African region as well as any other national initiative. For the South African region SADC, which was invited to participate, needs to be further involved.

South Africa: Vetiver strips on sugar cane plantation 

(Photo:Robert Marie Joseph Maxime)

Presentation of WOCAT in Nicaragua in the 4th seminar on SWC, 9 – 10 March 1999,

Managua, Nicaragua.

Organized through PASOLAC. Considering that WOCAT is completely unknown in the region (apart from CIAT), the primary objective of the presentation was to present WOCAT to institutions with potential to collaborate in WOCAT in Central America. Principal aspects of WOCAT were presented based on the brochure (see Annex I) to approximately 100 participants of the seminar. The availability of a draft Spanish version of the questionnaires and database was of great help.

Next steps: Forming a small group of institutions interested in WOCAT by the end of June through contacting other institutions and writing a proposal for Central America to be presented by CIAT at the next Annual Meeting of WOCAT in Thailand, September 6-11, 1999.

Download the Nicaragua report or order a hard copy at the secretariat.

Taskforce Meeting and Workshop for WOCAT Kenya and East Africa, 18 – 21 January 1999, Nanyuki, Kenya.

With Donald Thomas, Joseph Mburu (AIC) and Kithinji Mutunga (Ministry of Agriculture), Johan Rockstorm (RELMA) (partly), Hanspeter Liniger (CDE), Gudrun Schwilch (CDE).

Identification of the gaps (based on the Machakos workshop data). Setting – up of program to collect 14 SWC Technologies and 10 Approaches from Kenya. Further discussion of useful outputs based on the data collected.

Download the report of the Kenya Task Force Meeting or order a hard copy at the secretariat.

National workshop in Nairobi to finalise 12 Technologies and 7 Approaches for Kenya; 3 –7 May 1999.

guided by Donald Thomas, Joseph Mburu and Kithinji Mutunga,

Third Annual Workshop and Steering Meeting, 25 August – 1 September 1998, Twann, Switzerland.

Download the Proceedings of the Workshop (856 KB) or order a hard copy at the secretariat.

WOCAT External Evaluation 1998

An external review of the WOCAT program in was carried out in 1998 by Dr. M. Stocking, from University of East Anglia – UEA, Norwich, United Kingdom, and Dr. A. Pozzi, Private Consultant, Zurich, Switzerland. The review analysed the WOCAT program and made recommendations for its future development.

Download the Review report or order a hard copy at the secretariat.