Quesungual slash and mulch agroforestry system (QSMAS): Improving crop water productivity, food security and resource quality in the sub-humid tropics

The knowledge and principles generated by CPWF-PN15 confirm that QSMAS can be a model production system for implementing conservation agriculture to achieve food security and sustainable development in drought-prone areas of hillsides in the sub-humid tropics, while providing ecosystem services in the face of land degradation and climate change. As an adoptable option to replace the slash and burn traditional system, QSMAS can improve smallholder livelihoods through eco-efficient use and conservation of natural resources. Participatory validation activities suggest that the conservation agriculture principles embedded in QSMAS can be readily accepted by resource- poor farmers and local authorities in similar agroecosystems

Sistema Agroforestal Quesungual (SAQ): Mejorando la productividad del agua la seguridad alimentaria y la calidad de los recursos en el trópico sub-húmedo

For too long, environmental policymaking has relied on trial and error, without adequate or systematic learning from either the trials or the errors. Systematic program evaluation research has been remarkably scarce relative to the overall number of environmental policies adopted in the United States, as well as relative to the amount of evaluation research found in other fields, such as medicine, education, or transportation safety. This paper examines the role that program evaluation should play in environmental policy making, distinguishing such research from other types of analysis, including risk assessment, cost-effectiveness analysis, and cost-benefit analysis. It explains the kinds of methodological practices that researchers should use to isolate the causal effects of particular environmental regulations and policies. By adhering to the program evaluation methods discussed in this paper, researchers will be better able to isolate the effects of specific policy interventions and help inform future policy decisions. A renewed and expanded commitment to program evaluation of environmental policy is needed to move environmental policy making closer to an evidence-based practice, and conditions are probably more ripe now for fostering such a commitment than they have ever been before