This first in a series of regional conferences on this subject brought together more than fifty agricultural scientists and policymakers from China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and from international agricultural research centers and the Asian Development Bank to discuss how best to promote "sustainable agricultural intensification"--natural resource management that safeguards productivity of the natural resource base while meeting economic growth and poverty alleviation objectives. The regional conference series began in East and Southeast Asia partly because of the area's already broad experience with intensified farming systems on high potential lands alongside shifting cultivation, or upland or hillside cultivation, on more marginal, fragile lands. The group could thus reflect not only on these two contrasting agroecological zones, but on the links between them.

Conference participants were optimistic that the region's countries would find their way out of the "environmental dilemma" many developing countries face: a choice between continuing along the path of agricultural intensification, which has sometimes led to environmental problems associated with the misuse of modern inputs, or, in failing to intensify, driving growing populations of the poor onto new, often more environmentally fragile lands to seek subsistence. Both scenarios threaten not only biodiversity and natural habitats, but the very productivity of natural resources, and ultimately, human livelihoods.

The pressures of rising demand due to population growth and growing incomes, participants agreed, preclude any strategy that turns its back on higher productivity of available resources--natural and human. Agricultural intensification specifically, and national development strategies more generally, need not entail irreversible degradation of the natural resource base. Still, there is no guarantee that sustainable intensification will occur in the region unless policymakers and researchers revamp current, often-distorted incentives for natural resource use. At the same time, they must take a hard look at reforming incentives inside government agencies and research institutions for the planning, design, and implementation of policies to promote sustainable intensification.

The group traced many of the region's environmental problems back to government and policy failure. In some instances, this was a failure to act--as in failure to set clear, secure property rights that would provide incentives for efficient use of, and investment in, land and water; or intervene where market failure (for example, to account for externalities) led to degradation. In other instances, it was failure to consider incentives created by policy actions--as in failure to account for environmental consequences from overuse of publicly subsidized inputs such as land, water, pesticides, and fertilizers. In still other instances, the failure was institutional--as in failure to structure public irrigation agencies with incentives built in to encourage efficient water allocation.

Some steps recommended by the group for government policy to improve incentives for sustainable development follow directly from the failures cited above: setting well-defined, secure, and enforceable farmer property rights to land and water, noting that, where strong traditional rights to land and water exist, governments may be better off supporting existing mechanisms to enforce recognized property rights than imposing new titling schemes; eliminating subsidies on water, fertilizer, and pesticides; and strengthening the incentives for public irrigation agencies to allocate water more efficiently.

Other recommendations and insights emerged from debates during the four days over how to incorporate environmental concerns into existing planning and research structures. The group warned against assuming that policies designed for growth combined with improved natural resource management will necessarily always and everywhere alleviate poverty. Since not all degradation is caused by the poor, nor do all poor people degrade the environment, poverty alleviation deserves a high priority in both the research and policymaking agendas in its own right. Still, failure to carefully target poverty alleviating strategies can lead to leaks that distort incentives in food production and food consumption--with potentially deleterious effects on the poor, the environment, and the public purse.

The group also cautioned against repeating mistakes of the past while incorporating the new policy objective of "sustainable growth." A large, centralized bureaucracy charged with addressing sustainable intensification concerns might not have the incentive structure; the institutional links with other government departments, state and local governments, or researchers; or, perhaps most importantly, the ties with the targets of policies--farmers, community organizations, and other private sector actors--to meet with success.

What are the ingredients for success in bringing natural resource management into the set of objectives for policymakers and researchers? Conference participants brought a range of country experiences and policy and research perspectives--different economic development paths; different government roles in shaping those strategies; different institutions and mechanisms for government planning; different population densities, country sizes, natural resource richness, and level of food security--to the table for four days in grappling with this question. In the process of taking into consideration actors other than the government, levels other than the national, and mechanisms through which effective institutional links can be forged, the participants did not always reach consensus. Their debate, however, brought to light major issues to be researched and resolved along the way to "sustainable intensification."

In a format of morning plenary session papers and discussion followed by afternoon working groups, participants first reviewed regional trends in agricultural growth, poverty alleviation, and environmental degradation, examining the extent to which the three are linked in East and Southeast Asia (Day 1).

Next, the conference turned to the "nuts and bolts" of integrating natural resource management into policymaking and research agendas alongside objectives of growth and poverty alleviation. While one subset of participants wrestled with how to improve government planning regimes and implementation of policy with that goal in mind, a second subset wrangled with how such a new focus might shift national and international research priorities, project design, and dissemination of technology (Day 2).

The third day of plenary/working groups had two key resources--land and water--as its focus: "land" and "water" groups explored how to improve each resource's productivity, sustainability, and equitable use by altering the institutions, policies, and rights governing access to them. The plenary reconvened on the fourth day to sum up recommendations.

To order a workshop summary paper, please fill out an online order form, email ifpri-ept@cgiar.org or send requests to Environment and Production Technology Division, IFPRI, 2033 K Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006, U.S.A.