In Algeria and the former Soviet Union republics, the transition to a market economy has not yet been accomplished and land regime is still uncertain as the former stateowned farms have completely disappeared and conditions for gaining access to land are not clear.

Many countries such as Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia have adopted a capital-intensive model of agricultural development at the expense of small-scale farming systems. This model is capitalistic and export oriented and based on private property rights of water and land.

The Green Revolution increased agricultural production, as, for example, in Pakistan: "The Green Revolution generated tremendous increases in yields, particularly in large agricultural irrigated plains where cropping intensity was high because of efficient water management. But even in the regions where the Green Revolution occurred, smallscale farmers could not invest to develop their production systems and to progress. Although the Green Revolution can be extended in terms of yield and production to other areas where natural resources are available . . . it will not alleviate poverty neither provide food for hundreds of millions of small scale farmers" (Mazoyer, 2001).

Infrastructure and financing for agricultural development

The capitalistic model mentioned above has spread in many countries thanks to infrastructural development. There are discrepancies in infrastructure within CWANA. In countries where market-oriented agriculture has been adopted, infrastructure has been improved although there are still pockets of subsistence farming. In countries like Syria, where agricultural policies have led to self-sufficiency, roads and highways link production areas to major marketing centers.

Governance

Good governance is characterized by participation, rule of law, transparency, responsiveness, consensus orientation, equity and inclusiveness, and effectiveness, efficiency and accountability. Several indices are used worldwide to measure governance, and aid has been tied to good governance indices. Most CWANA countries rank low in all these indices. For most CWANA countries, the environmental governance corruption index is below 4, in a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is most corrupt. Most CWANA countries rank below average in the environmental policy and freedom index (Kaufmann et al., 2003).

Local knowledge

Local knowledge has been generated for centuries; it is empirical, based on farmer experience. According to the ecosystems they live in, communities have developed knowledge that is quite diverse. It varies according to physical conditions such as climate, soil and vegetal cover but also social and economic conditions. Local knowledge encompasses agricultural practices and techniques concerning cropping patterns and animal husbandry, and also resource management systems like water-harvesting, water-management and rangeland-management systems. Small-scale farmers have also manufactured locally used tools such as plows. Managing biodiversity and conservation is also considered part of local knowledge.

Some research has been done on biodiversity management and conservation, water management systems (especially in arid areas) and rangeland management systems but very little on local agricultural techniques and practices such as cropping patterns. Local knowledge can easily be transferred from farmer to farmer as it has been generated at a small scale. Generally, farmers do not need major investments to adopt it.

As aridity is widespread in the region, local knowledge about water management and conservation is quite developed. Community-managed irrigation networks, water- and land-conservation systems such as tabias and jsour in Tunisia are mostly located in arid areas in southern and central Tunisia where rainfall does not exceed 200 mm. Water- and land-conservation systems are mostly small-scale catchments built manually to harvest rainwater.

Those systems are no longer maintained and are disintegrating as other job opportunities with higher opportunity costs are available in nearby regions. Community technologies no longer play their traditional role in managing resources because most present-day activities are large scale, like constructing dams or reclaiming land, and are carried out by government agencies. Village or community watermanagement systems have almost disappeared, but individual farmers still maintain their own small water works.

Highly sophisticated irrigation networks have been set up by communities in areas where the main constraint has been water scarcity. Irrigation systems were based on community organization; village dwellers contributed to their maintenance (foggaras) by cleaning up drainage and irrigation canals. Local grassroots organizations were in charge of water management and distribution. In the beginning of the 1970s, because of the evolution of technology, major waterharvesting works of dams and drilling were carried out, and new irrigation systems have been adopted.

In southern Morocco, water for irrigation came from the Atlas Mountains and downstream communities in the Draa Valley and Tafilaelt developed irrigation areas. They used their own techniques for capturing, conveying and managing water-techniques adapted to the local conditions of labor available for digging and maintaining the canals, water flows, and social organization. In the 1970s, the government built two dams upstream and created huge irrigation schemes downstream. Communities could no longer manage irrigation, the amount of water available per hectare decreased, and profitability was not as high as before. The combination of these factors plus Bayoudh disease among date palms caused a decrease in date fruit production (Ben Zid, 2002).

Moroccan date palm production has declined by 80% since the 1920s (Ben Zid, 2002). This decline is because the production system changed. The former system was viable because cheap labor was used to maintain the irrigation system. In 1920, laborers started migrating to France and northern Morocco, so less labor was available, affecting the whole system.

Because Bayoudh disease had decreased date production, farmers tried to keep date palm biodiversity by growing and multiplying indigenous cultivars that bore disease-resistant genes.

Farmers have their own way to distinguish date palm varieties, which is quite different from the researchers'