Project Detail

Building a community demonstration model of applying traditional methods and advanced technologies in sustainable use of water and land resources, contributing to the prevention and control of land degradation and desertification in Ninh Thuan and Binh Thuan provinces

Ninh Thuan and Binh Thuan are the 2 furthest South Central provinces with very severe natural conditions and biggest threats of desertification in Vietnam. Deforestation and unsustainable farming practices are the main causes of land degradation and desertification. In recent years, desertification seems to speed up in Ninh Thuan and Binh Thuan due to the prolonged droughts. Lots of Government programs and projects have been implemented with an aim to search for water source, water reserve as well as to increase the forest coverage. However, the lack of water for community daily life and production, especially in the dry season, remains a great challenge.In addition to the government efforts, the local community have had to face with difficulties of severe natural conditions of the dry climate and prolonged droughts with traditional measures in using water and land resources, such as water storage, anti-evaporation farming measures, hillside cultivation, together with having crop structures and crops that can survive droughts. These traditional measures are plentiful, diversified, simple and do not require a lot of investment capital, thus are easily and widely spread among communities. However, they are not yet to be collected and documented and widely shared for application. Even worse, in some places, these valuable measures gradually fall into oblivion because the local community is becoming more tuned in to advanced technologies and tend to more depend on complicated and expensive measures, such as building big irrigation systems to deal with prolonged droughts. Traditional measures are mainly small scale, with low productivity and they are unlikely to prevent desertification efficiently. However, these popular and traditional measures are a good scientific starting point from which to combine with advanced technologies for the improvement of the traditional measures in preventing desertification in dry areas.The project VN/04/010 is planned to implement in 2 communes of Phuoc Hai commune, in Ninh Phuoc district, Ninh Thuan province, and Hong Phong commune, in Bac Binh district, Binh Thuan province. The key objective of this project is to combine traditional measures and new technologies for sustainable use of water and land resources for community life and agroforestry production, contributing to solving the problem of land degradation and desertification in the project area. The project will also give priority to develop technical guidelines and to train technical staff for relevant agencies, local government and communities to promote the project sustainability and replication.

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Project Snapshot

Grantee:

The Gardeners? Association of Binh Thuan Province

Country:

Viet nam

Area Of Work:

Land Degradation

Operational Phase:

Phase 3

Grant Amount:

US$ 50,000.00

Co-Financing Cash:

US$ 41,899.00

Co-Financing in-Kind:

US$ 29,674.00

Project Number:

VN/04/010

Start Date:

3/2006

End Date:

3/2008

Status:

Satisfactorily Completed

Photo Gallery

Rain water harvesting for use in dry season

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Project Characteristics and Results

Policy Impact

- The idea of ?applying traditional measures in collecting, storing, and protecting soil and water resources in the fight against desertification? has contributed to changing the thinking in investment management: in addition to focusing on large hydraulic works on the rivers with great investment capital and immediate efficiency for a number of residents, it is also advisable to pay attention to developing and improving traditional measures in order to create in-place sources of water to serve household activities, husbandry, and production in localities where the access to water in rivers and streams is impossible.

Notable Community Participation

- The project gives priority to community participation. During the project design phase, knowledge and traditions of local people were studied and taken into consideration in project design. The local people were in consultations about the project issues and solutions at community meetings and through surveys/interviews. During the project implementation, the community contribute traditional experience in collecting and storing water for domestic and productive use; devising measures to prevent evaporation, erosion and soil degradation; and deploying plants in agriculture and forestry production; - In order to promote the role and responsibilities and to ensure community ownership, during the project implementation and M&E, the project will: - Provide the community with full information on the project. Representatives from the community will be given the opportunities to attend project opening, mid term and final meetings, and project workshops. - Give community opportunities to participate in all project activities. - The community select among themselves the participating community based on the selection criteria developed by the project team. - The community is given opportunities in project monitoring and evaluation. - Mobilising the community to invest their labor and resources in model building. - The project take into consideration the community needs and cultivation techniques when developing training materials. - The community ownership, benefit and participation are cornerstone in project implementation and M&E.

Emphasis on Sustainable Livelihoods

- The project model of agriculture and forestry has brought about immediate benefits to the community from the cultivation of short-term agricultural trees (groundnut, melon ...); - Thanks to water storage facilities, the community can make full use of the water to increase the amount of agricultural crops (one additional crop) when perennial trees have been full-grown and need no more watering; - Perennial trees include the xerophilous margose and the bottle tree. Margose leaves, fruit and wood can be harvested when the trees reach 5-10 years of age; after 5 years, the bottle tree yields sap (similar to latex) which can be made into a beverage and exploited continuously in successive years with increasing amounts and high economic value; - Once replicated to neighboring areas, this model can help form a forest belt warding off the wind and sand, and conserve moisture for the inner agricultural cultivation area, hence contributing to improve the output of agricultural plants in the area; - As the project area is close to the tourist site, there will be a probability of developing eco-tourism after 5-7 years.

Gender Focus

- Women are given prioroties in the project capacity building activities. - Women take part in most activities of the project model building, including making seedlings, planting, caring, harvesting, and selling products.

Promoting Public Awareness of Global Environment

Promoting public awareness of global environment 1. One of the key objectives of the project is to enhance awareness and understanding of the project stakeholders on the following issues. - global environmental issues such as biodiversity conservation, climate change, land degradation and desertification - linkage between poverty and enviornemntal degradation - enviornemntal protection and sustainable development - millenium development goals (MDGs) 2. The project has awareness raising activities on global enviornmental issues, focusing on the project issue of land degradation and desertification. - Oragnising training workshops, dialogues, community contests on the issue of land degradation and desertification - Mainstreaming the project issue in the gardeners? association activities and programmes - Using public media when possible - Attending in exchange visits, workshops and environmental communication activities organised by GEF SGP where GEF issues are discussed.

Capacity - Building Component

The project capacity building activities include the followings. - Training workshops in collecting and storing rainwater. - Community meetings and workshops for assessment on project model building on collecting and storing rainwater and agro forestry models. - Training items include (1) methods of collecting and storing rainwater systems, using proper materials and managing the operation of the constructions; (2) setting up the model of agro forestry cultivation combined with hydraulic works (agriculture-forestry-hydraulic works), (3) deploying cultivation plants (local and drought tolerant plants) suitable to arid conditions; (4) using the amount of water collected and stored in supplementary watering, and (5) sustainable land management techniques. - In addition to the project capacity building activities, the project team members attend exchange visits, training workshops on project design and implementation, M&E as well as themtaic workshops for sharing experience and lessons learned organised by GEF SGP. - In addition to the project capacity building activities, key community members attend exchange visits, themtaic workshops for sharing experience and lessons learned organised by GEF SGP. - Training participants are project participating farmers, and commune key farmers and extension workers of participating commune.

Project Results

- The project has investigated local traditional solutions for water conservation and land protection, including:
+ Drilling wells for irrigation water
+ Water Storage at the foot of the sand dunes by pipes and ponds
+ Collection of rain water in ponds
+ Sub-basin lake for water storage
+ Covering against evaporation
+ Soil plough for moisturization for farming
In general, the traditional solutions were effective for farming in drought conditions, but that only meet a fraction of the demand for water during the dry season.

- The project has developed two models
collection of underground water storage for farming activities combined with measures to agriculture and forestry.
1. Groundwater storage model for household daily demands: 4 well systems to take underground water for 20-50 households. The system includes storage wells (concrete wells buried underground), pipes (HDPE soft pipes connected to the wells and heading to water tanks), system of filter tubes covered with sand, a focal filter pool of 20m3, with 3 compartments (incoming water compartment, filtering compartment and water storage compartment).
Water in the well was fairly clean, suitable for daily life use, water filtration system is relatively stable.
Structure of the system of underground wells is guaranteed: The filter pipe system was installed 3meter deep from the natural ground, 20-50cm deeper than the water level on dry season. The lids of wells were made of reinforced concrete M200 1.5m deep underground. The tank wall was 22cm thick, the bottom and lid were placed on the original ground. Therefore the durability capacity of the structure from mechanical forces (the weight of the cattle, rudimentary ...) was high.
Stored water is mainly used to cultivate 10 hectares of agricultural land, forestry and fish farming of 01 households. Systems for water storage was somewhat effective for the livestock activities of the household and bring confidence to the community about the feasibility of water storage system construction.
2. Model of underground water storage for farming
Constructed one water storage pond at the foot of the hill. The pond was trapezoidal with roof slope of m = 1 and 3m deep, 15m long and - 2m wide bottom , 2 m long on the top, 8m wide on the top. The pon was reinforced in order: waterproof fabric, macadam (10cm), rocca stone (30 cm) to avoid sand sedimentation and landslides pond.
Water storage capacity: always obtain stable ground water (90m3)
Pumps and pipe systems were installed along the hillside to the water pump.
On an area of 3ha, plants layout of shelter agricultural model , from outside to inside includes:
+ Fences: native bushes (cactus, etc.) have high tolerance to drought, to shield low-level wind
+ Long-term forest circle (Neem) planted in 4 rows (3x3m), to shield medium-level wind
+ Fruit tree circle: big tree height, prefer sun (mango, cashew, etc.) planted in five rows (5x5m), to shield high-level wind
+ The center of the land is for short-term agricultural crops (melons, beans, etc.)
Results: The plants in the model grew better than in the surrounding farming areas.

- The project has changed the farming habits of the community: instead of just farming in the rainy season, people have cultivated in the dry season as well, crop has grown 2-3 times thanks to enough irrigation. People have increased farming, thus improving family income.
- Many people have found out about the effectiveness of the project and followed by themselves. Water collection and storage model for daily life was replicated by Thanh Tin Village to improve the collection system of water storage areas.
- Technical solutions of the model was highly appreciated by the local goverment and the experts. It also won the Vietnam Creation of Science and Technology Award (VIFOTEC) in 2008.

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