During the past 15 years, the Philippines has witnessed an explosion in the number of NGOs. Growing disillusionment with government in the waning years of the Marcos administration spurred many socially minded individuals to initiate private development efforts. The restoration of democratic structures, the positive attitude of the Aquino administration toward NGOs, and the availability of foreign and local funding allowed these groups to flourish.

Many NGOs, alarmed by environmental devastation and deepening poverty in the uplands, turned their attention to the plight of upland farmers. They helped people take advantage of the government's new willingness to issue 25-year stewardship certificates to farmers in the uplands. And they began promoting agroforestry farming techniques, which show promise on hilly lands in combining the objectives of increasing production with conserving soil and water. More recently, many NGOs are helping farmers obtain contracts to reforest denuded hills.

A problem that many NGOs face is their relatively small size and their isolation. Most operate in only a handful of villages and have no systematic linkages to NGOs undertaking similar work in other places. Their isolation limits the organizations' legal and technical knowledge and weakens their ability to address broader structural problems facing the villagers with whom they work.

To address these problems, seven Manila-based institutions formed the Upland NGO Assistance Committee (UNAC), a consortium designed to assist provincially based NGOs working with upland farmers. UNAC held a consultative workshop in April 1990 at which 28 NGOs identified assistance they needed to strengthen their work. Such assistance included courses in agroforestry, land tenure, community organization, and marketing strategies. The NGOs also requested opportunities to exchange information with other NGOs engaged in similar work and to confer with government agencies regarding national policies and programs. In response, each UNAC member developed programs suited to its distinctive competence.

In some cases, research institutions and other organizations have played important roles in community advocacy, technical assistance, and mediation between governments and local people. This is especially true in countries where the NGO sector is not well established, which illustrates the importance of using different institutional arrangements to suit particular social and political conditions. The village of Laobaozhai in Zhenxiong County in southeastern China, for example, is under pressure from the county agricultural department to manage steeply sloping upland fields as pasture, while the forestry department intends to convert the same land to a timber