This evaluation report investigates the impact of ten years of comprehensive land-use planning in the Philippines. Characterized by fundamental developmental challenges associated with scarce land resources, environmental degradation, natural hazards and persistent poverty, land-use planning plays a crucial role in finding answers to these pressing challenges. The impact evaluation assesses a technical approach to enhanced land-use planning and capacity development from community to national level, supporting decentralized planning, natural resource governance, and resilience to natural hazards and climate change. The so-called SIMPLE (Sustainable Integrated Management and Planning for Local Government Ecosystems) approach by the Philippine-German cooperation, managed by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), was implemented in two regions of the Visayas. The ambitious intervention operated in a challenging environment with multiple stakeholders, overlapping mandates, and imprecise legal frameworks. In cooperation with GIZ, the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB) rolled out the related enhanced Comprehensive Land Use Planning (eCLUP) guidelines nationwide. Based on a mixed-methods and quasi-experimental design, the evaluation generates relevant findings for the improvement of land-use planning and local governance interventions, for sustainable natural resource management, disaster risk management, and for welfare improvements of communities and beneficiaries. It shows relevant factors for the successful implementation. The report draws important lessons for local planning and the national framework, and suggests solutions to the fundamental gap between planning and plan implementation, improved innovation diffusion and efficient processes, effective community participation, and public accountability.
Land requires fair and transparent management to allow for equal participation and for its sustainable use among rivaling stakeholders. Land use planning is the mechanism to allow for this kind of resource management and the reconciliation of diverging interests. It is thus not surprising that the governance of land resources has become a prominent topic among donors and development practitioners in the last decade. It is theorized that good administration and management of land is crucial to poverty reduction, conflict transformation, disaster risk management, improvement in the quality of local governance and ultimately sustainable economic growth. The report at hand presents first results derived from a quantitative impact evaluation of an intervention for enhanced land use planning in the Philippines. The SIMPLE (Sustainable Integrated Management and Planning for Local Government Ecosystems) approach embedded in the Philippine-German cooperation's "Environment and Rural Development (EnRD)" program was implemented between 2006 and 2015, managed by the Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). The report draws upon quantitative cross-sectional data collected in 2012 on household, village and municipal level. It provides first insights into program outcomes and impacts. A follow-up impact evaluation of the intervention, based on a rigorous before-after design, will be published in 2017.