Participatory irrigation management in the Philippines: National irrigation systems

The Philippines was a pioneer in involving farmers in irrigation planning and management. Building on a centuries-old tradition of local communities developing and managing small irrigation systems, in the mid-1970s the Philippines began to systematically adapt and apply community management principles,first to government-assisted communal irrigation systems and then, beginning in 1984, to larger national schemes. This incremental process was termed "the learning process approach".