This report is based on a research project financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to conduct a regional study for the development of effective water management institutions (ADBRETA no 5812). Research activities were conducted in five river basins in Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal, China and Sri Lanka for a period of three years commencing from 1999. The river basin studied in Sri Lanka was the Deduru Oya river basin in the North Western Province of the country. This report contains the findings of the Deduru Oya basin study.

In the fields of environmental governance and biodiversity conservation, there is a growing awareness that gender has an influence on resource use and management. Several studies argue that empowering women in resource governance can lead to beneficial outcomes for resource sustainability and biodiversity conservation. Yet how robust is the evidence to support this claim?

The study provides a comparative analysis of the devolution and empowerment process in 14 case studies drawn from eight countries in southern Africa. Each case study examined the extent to which policy and legislation devolves significant control over decision making and benefit flows to communities; the legitimacy and power of different community institutions and their relationship with other stakeholders such as local authority structures, NGOs, donor agencies, and the private sector; and lastly the relationship and divisions between different actors and groupings in the community.

Local people in South-east Asia are often cited as skilled forest managers. It is barely acknowledged that an essential part of this forest management does not concern natural forests, but forests that have been planted, often after the removal of pre-existing natural forests; forests that are cultivated not by professional foresters, but by sedentary or swidden farmers, on their farmlands; forests that are based not on exotic, fast-growing trees, but on local tree species, and harbour an incredible variety of plant and animal species.

A farmer explains his system of using drip irrigation with harvested rainwater to grow vegetable crops