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THE WOCATEER (No. 13 - December 2006)
(WOCAT Newsletter)

The WOCAT Newsletter is distributed by Email to those who are subscribed to the WOCAT-L mailing list (or as hard copy to those without Email).
It is distributed only in English for the time being, but Websites like http://babelfish.altavista.com/ or http://www.google.com/ language_tools offer fairly good translation facilities. The result is not perfect but quite understandable.

Le bulletin de WOCAT est distribué seulement en anglais pour l'instant, mais des sites Internet tels que http://babelfish.altavista.com ou http://www.google.com/language_tools offrent des moyens de le traduire qui sont assez utile. Le résultat n'est pas parfait, mais plus ou moins compréhensible.

Por el momento el noticiario de WOCAT existe solamente en inglés, pero algunos sitios web como http://babelfish.altavista.com o http://www.google.com/language_tools. ofrecen buenas/aceptables facilidades de traducción. El resultado no es perfecto pero se puede comprender.

WOCAT Overview Book now available!

The long awaited global WOCAT overview book is now available! “where the land is greener ” looks at soil and water conservation from a global perspective. 42 soil and water conservation technologies and 28 approaches are described – each on four pages with photographs, graphs and line drawings – from more than 20 countries around the world. See WOCATEER #12 for examples and/or download the book flyer (pdf, 1.3 MB; low resolution 209 KB ).

This unique presentation of case studies is drawn from WOCAT's extensive database and is the result of an intensive collaboration between many “WOCATeers”. As such it is a true WOCAT product. The book is furthermore a prototype for national and regional compilations of sustainable land management practices (see below)

Various land use categories are covered – cropland as well as forest and grazing land. The technologies range from terraces to agro-forestry systems; from rehabilitation of common pastures to conservation agriculture; from vermiculture to water harvesting. Several are well established successes – others are innovative, relatively unknown and full of promise.

The technologies are matched by studies of the ‘approaches' that have underpinned their development and spread. Some of these approaches are descriptions of projects, but there are also fascinating explanations of how spontaneous development and spread has taken place. The book does not stop with case studies: there are two analytical sections, taking the technologies and approaches in turn. These uncover common elements of success, and offer hope for productive conservation at local level with simultaneous global environmental benefits.

Finally there are policy points for decision makers and donors, who are challenged to invest further – to make the land greener.

The price of this invaluable book (365 pages), which should not miss in your collection, is US$ 45,-. Click here to order. For nationals of ACP (Africa, Caribbean , Pacific) countries working in agriculture and rural development, to receive the publication for free please see www.cta.int or write to CTA, BP 173, 6700 AD Wageningen, The Netherlands.

National Overview Books

Parallel to and more or less simultaneously with the global overview book (where the land is greener), several national overview books have been or are in the process of being produced. South Africa was in 2004 the first country to produce a loose-leaf “fact sheet” book (4.8 Mb!) with “light” (1 page) technology descriptions.

This year the BANCAT team produced a nice booklet on 30 technologies and 9 approaches in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (Bangladesh). Please contact the BANCAT team (mailto: (replace % with @): skhisha%yahoo.com; jushoaib%aitlbd.net; shoaibju%yahoo.com)) to obtain copies (@ US$ 10,-).

Other overview books are under preparation, e.g. in Ethiopia, Eritrea and for the ICIMOD region.

11th WOCAT Annual Workshop & Steering Meeting

23-28 October 2006, South Africa

The 11th WOCAT Annual Workshop & Steering Meeting was held in Cape Town and was organized by the South African Dept. of Agriculture (DoA) and Institute for Soil Climate and Water (ISCW) in Pretoria . Including twelve delegates from the Southern African Development Council (SADC) who joined the meeting during the first two days before a SADC Land and Water meeting later in the week, a total of 52 participants from 29 countries in Asia, Africa and Europe attended the meeting. Last minute visa or ticket problems unfortunately once again prohibited five participants from coming.

Considerable progress over the last year was reported by national or regional institutions during the first two days and it became obvious that WOCAT is playing a role at institutional /departmental level in various countries. It is also evident that the low number of case study contributions to the global WOCAT database in the past year does not reflect the much higher number of case studies documented at the national level (often in a national language).

Although not all Task Forces could report significant progress, this was the first time since many years that the overall results of the Task Forces could be evaluated positively, in particular the Mapping TF (largely driven by the South African team working and even investing considerable funds on it), the Questionnaire revision TF (though largely run by CDE staff), the WOCAT in Research and Education TF and the WOCAT Strategy TF. No results were reported by the Use of WOCAT TF.

A photo impression of several participants during the workshop (Photos Hanspeter Liniger)

A special topic session on Conservation Agriculture and on Rainwater Harvesting had been scheduled and included 8 interesting presentations from Europe (UK/SOWAP, Switzerland), Africa (ACT, S. Africa, Kenya) and Asia (Philippines , C.Asia , Pakistan). Another special session was intended to enable some participants to present specific highlights regarding the use of WOCAT in their country, although this was not fully reflected in all presentations.

The WOCAT mapping activities received special attention and the S. African team demonstrated the progress made with the on-line mapping system (ARC-IMS based) and the off-line viewer. The discussion was coupled to a more general discussion about the need as well as the pros and cons of changing from the current off-line data management system to an (interactive) on-line system for the mapping and also the technology and approaches databases. Currently the databases can be consulted on-line but no data can be entered or added. An on-line system will reduce the workload of the Secretariat and the database team, as users can directly enter and edit information themselves (password protected). A problem however might be the lack of sufficiently fast Internet connections, but this is likely to change soon in the near future and also only applies to a relatively low number of potential contributors.

The option of entering WOCAT case studies in Google Earth was also demonstrated and discussed. Though there was agreement that there was considerable overlap between this and the WOCAT World Map under development, it was decided to maintain the WOCAT World Map activity, as this allows quick addition of very basic information on new case studies through the World Map form on the Website (which, however, has yielded very few data in the past few years). This form could also be used as a pre-screening form for documentation of Ts or As, a strategy that has proven successful on the S. African AGIS Website.

A discussion was held about WOCAT as a tool for decision support, and initially also about what was actually meant by a Decision Support System: a sophisticated expert system, or basically WOCAT in its present form as a tool to document and evaluate either someone's own activities or to assess the potential of a documented technology or approach from somewhere else. The agreement was it should be somewhere in between, with a more elaborated form of the current “Assessment indicators” system.

The draft WOCAT Strategy document was discussed and priorities for the national and regional level were identified in regional group meetings. A small assessment of the demand encountered so far as well as the opportunities and strengths in respect to the identified fields of activities and objectives helped to further shape WOCAT's future course.

Finally activity plans for the next year were refined and presented (quite a few repeating what they presented in their reporting on the first day) and Task Forces identified for issues needing follow-up, e.g. mapping/digital products, impact monitoring, questionnaire revision, WOCAT in research & education, decision support tools, WOCAT strategy.

On the last day organizational matters were discussed, e.g. the continuation of the current Management Group (MG), the location of the Secretariat, the funding. For the composition of the MG FAO made clear that its role will largely depend on the WOCAT role within the LADA project. ISRICs role has largely been financed from SOWAP sources in the past few years and this is bound to come to an end, hence an uncertain situation regarding the continuation of inputs at this level. WOCAT on the other hand is increasingly incorporated in other “external” project such like SOWAP, e.g. DESIRE, Green Water Credits, LADA, etc. In budgeting for these projects a certain “overhead should be calculated to contribute directly to WOCATs core activities, which after all also benefit these projects.

Willi Graf (SDC) first expressed his disappointment at the low number of case studies documented in all those years, but this turned out to be based on a misunderstanding and it was explained that while the Overview book has a selection of “only” 42 technologies and 27 approaches, the global database contains about 3 times more “quality-controlled” cases, and even many more requiring light or heavy validation or updating and that national/regional databases may contain a multiplicity of cases, but often (still) in national languages and hence not (yet) suitable for the global db. Graf was subsequently impressed by individual country representatives who approached him afterwards to explain how important the SDC support was to them and assured that WOCAT will remain an important programme to SDC.

Participants provided feedback to their expectations at the beginning of the week with overall scores indicating their satisfaction with the workshop (between 3 and 4 on a scale of 5).

Workshop participants during the field trip near Stellenbosch. (Photo Hanspeter Liniger)

A full-day field trip was held on the Wednesday halfway during the workshop to the areas N and NE of Cape Town. After a visit to a recent conservation area where planted Eucalyptus trees were killed / removed to give way to the original (and more water-efficient) “Veenbosch” vegetation, we traversed the Swartland region with large areas under Conservation Agriculture for wheat (with some vineyards and olive orchards), later the Wynland with – as the name indicates – extensive wineries and olive orchards, again much under Conservation Agriculture, and some annual cropping.

Finally, the meeting accepted the offer of the Philippines (among a few others) to host the next WWSM , which will take place from 12-17 November 2007 . Please note these dates in your diary if you intend to participate. We will try to send out a formal announcement well ahead of time to enable everyone to timely arrange ticket and visa. Please do not wait until the last moment with this!

This year in S. Africa many participants were sponsored by WOCAT, which enabled the high attendance of the meeting. It is clear however that this cannot be repeated at this scale next year so we urge everybody to bear (or at least share) the costs of their own participation in the Philippines ! Sponsoring will also be made more depending on contributions to the global WOCAT database or other WOCAT activities (e.g. Task Forces).

The full WWSM11 Proceedings are expected to be finalised in January 2007. Please check the WOCAT Website for this.

News from National and Regional Initiatives

This Newsletter does not contain any specific news on national or regional initiatives, since these are contained in the forthcoming WWSM11 Proceedings. For the next Newsletter (probably late spring, early summer) however we do make an appeal herewith to send us reports on progress or other interesting WOCAT-related issues.