Impact Evaluation of the Sustainable Land and Water Resource Management Project 2016-2019

The Sustainable Land Water Resource Management Project (SLWRMP) provides 55 small-scale irrigation kits in the southern province of Gaza, Bali. The project is implemented by the provincial agriculture offices in four districts along the Limpopo River and Save River, chosen for their elevated climate risk and suitability for irrigation infrastructure.

The primary intervention is the provision of small-scale irrigation kits, each covering 5 or 10 hectares of land. The beneficiaries are designated a maximum of 0.5 hectares of land inside the kit, allowing 10 or 20 farmers to benefit, depending on the kit size. In addition to the physical infrastructure, the project provides training and monthly visits from district extension agents.

The sampling design involves two steps: 1) selecting suitable areas for irrigation based on technical considerations, and 2) identifying participants within these areas. The selection process is randomized at community level, with some communities using the Smallholder Priority Protocol (PMT) and others using a Decentralized Community Meeting approach.

Under the PMT, farmers are selected according to a fixed set of criteria for placing the schemes and priority is given to the smaller farmers in the community (between 0.5 and 1 hectare). In the Decentralized Community Meeting approach, communities have the freedom to decide on beneficiaries using subjective criteria provided by the project. Both groups were stratified at the district level, and the size of the kit was also taken into account to achieve equal representation in the four districts.