The integrated ecosystem approach capitalizes on diversity, rather than attempting to blanket the drylands with simple one-size-fits-all solutions. Since solutions for one location will be different from those for another, land users will need to intensively experiment, learn and share their newly-gained knowledge.

This intensified knowledge-sharing is not a one-way street. Research and development experts have as much to learn from local land users as the other way around. The best solutions are those that build synergies between local and formal institutional knowledge. Communities must be able to exchange views with governments; farmers, agriculturalists and ecologists must learn from one another, for example. This is why broad participation is so central to the DDPA approach.

But finding practical means for intensifying knowledge-sharing in rural dryland settings poses many challenges. Knowledge-sharing with land users and local communities may be impeded by cultural, language and distance barriers. Institutional stakeholder groups such as governments, non-governmental, private-sector, national, regional, international, and academic groups have their own cultures and constraints to knowledge-sharing.

Knowledge flows among all these actors must be observed and understood, and constraints to them relieved. Pre-existing as well as emerging knowledge and expertise must be brought to the surface and focused in laserlike fashion on the appropriate problems at just the right times and places.

Improved systems for the physical flow of information to and from these isolated areas are one part of the challenge. The information technology revolution is creating unprecedented opportunities for breakthroughs in this area. Rural telecenters, sometimes run on solar or battery power have shown great promise to connect remote villages to the world beyond, when appropriately implemented (MSSRF undated; PANTLEG 1999; UNDP 1999).

Skilled community facilitators find out what information and knowledge the inhabitants want, relaying those needs to information specialists who locate and transmit it back to them. Drought early-warnings, ecosystem management practices, crop management advice, product price trends, natural resource management advisories, and land-user feedback to national and international bodies are just a few of the innumerable information and knowledge resources that can be rapidly shared in this manner.

Expected outputs for impact include: design and implementation of a Stakeholder Dialogue process to enable the participatory evolution of the DDPA agenda, and to ensure continuing understanding and ownership of its priorities, processes and outcomes; user-friendly internet systems and associated processes for integrating global, regional, national, and community knowledge resources related to the Program's domain of work; knowledge flow maps and knowledge network analyses identifying and providing an understanding of knowledge flows and bottlenecks among key partners and stakeholders, and means of easing them; rural telecenter models developed and piloted based on community ownership and participation; and enhanced flows of DDPA research findings to clients and other stakeholders.

Initial core partners

ICRISAT (rural telecenter expertise), IDRC (global telecenter assessments and insights), UNV (community e-volunteers as moderators), DRFN (community participation and knowledge-sharing expertise).

References

PANTLEG 1999. Success stories of rural ICTs in a developing country: report of the PANAsia Telecenter Learning & Evaluation Group's mission to India, involving visits to the Foundation of Occupational Development and the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, November 1999. Ottawa, Canada: International Development Research Centre.

UNDP 1999. Innovating with the Internet. Box 2.5 on P. 64 in UNDP Human Development Report 1999. New York: United Nations Development Programme. Web URL: http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/1999/en/pdf/hdr_1999_ch2.pdf