Presented by IWMI DG Claudia Sadoff at a meeting on 'Smallholder Farmer Adaptation to Climate Change' on April 23, 2019, at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, WA, USA.

1. Claudia Sadoff
Director General
International Water
Management Institute
April 23, 2019

2. WHAT DOES CLIMATE CHANGE LOOK LIKE TO A SMALL FARMER?
Greater water variability and uncertainty
• Rainy days decrease, precipitation intensity increases in tropical SSA1
• Monsoon likely to strengthen in South Asia2
Increased water scarcity in driest parts of SSA and SA
• 1.1 billion, most in SA, EA and MENA, face serious water shortage3
More frequent and severe droughts and floods
• Increase in droughts in West and Southern Africa4
• Significantly increased high flows expected in SA5
Impacts include:
• Food insecurity and loss of livelihoods
• Migration pressures
• Farmers/pastoralist tensions
• Farmer suicides
• Violence against women6
• Intergenerational stunting7
1. Water storage and lift for irrigation
2. Water-related information for productivity & risks
3. Enabling environment of appropriate institutions,
finance & supply chains
Smallholder Adaptation Challenges in Water
Priority Water Interventions for SHF Adaptation
Sources: 1Déqué et al. (2017); 2Krishnan et al. (2019); 3Kummu et al. (2016); Hoegh-Guldberg et al. (2018); 4Naumann et al. (2018); 5Hoegh-Guldberg et al. (2018);
6Sekhri and Storeygard (2014); 7Damania et al (2017)
Water is a key medium through which farmers will feel climate change, a ‘front line’ issue for adaptation

3. WATER STORAGE IS ESSENTIAL FOR SHF ADAPTATION
As hydrology becomes more variable and less certain, water storage becomes more important
Caveats on small reservoirs
• Under the driest climate scenarios, small reservoirs
perform marginally less well (< 4-8%)1
• Small reservoir tend to underperform due to weak
institutions, sedimentation, poor site selection,
inadequate maintenance2
Small reservoirs hold significant
untapped potential in sub-Saharan Africa1
Sources: 1 Giordano et al.(2012); 2Saruchera and Jonathan Lautze (in press); 3Amarasinghe et al. (2016); 4Owusu et al. (2017)
Manage aquifer recharge (MAR) is a promising
storage alternative for smallholders
Managed aquifer recharge can
• Utilize rains, floods, treated wastewater
• Replenish groundwater & enhance baseflows in rivers
• Reduce saltwater intrusion & land subsidence
Widespread suitability in Africa,
dependent on3
• Landscape characteristics
• Soil and aquifer properties
• Availability of surface water
32% of Northern Ghana4 suitable for
MAR Bhungroo MAR structure
369 million
people
reached
$20 billion
revenue
annually
22 million
hectares
irrigated

4. GROUNDWATER CAN POTENTIALLY PROVIDE MORE RELIABLE WATER
Groundwater delinks farmers’ welfare from the timing of the rains and is relatively under-developed in SSA
Africa is water abundant, only 3% of
renewable water resources are
withdrawn for agriculture. About 4%
of arable land is irrigated.1
Groundwater could enable a 20-fold
extension of irrigated area in Africa2
the potential to increase sustainable
irrigated agriculture from 2m to 40m ha
In SSA, about 10% of irrigation
water is groundwater. Globally,
groundwater is about 40% of
irrigation water, In India it is 60%, in
Bangladesh 86%. 4
SSA has 25 times the renewable
groundwater of South Asia relative
to its irrigated area. South Asia has
3,100m3 renewable groundwater per
hectare area under crop, SSA has
80,000m3/ha.3
Sources: 1 FAO (2011); 2Burney et al. (2013); 3Shah and Namara (2018); 4Giordano et al. (2012)

5. Asia’s widespread uptake of motorized pumps drove dramatic growth, still largely untapped in Africa
In sub-Saharan Africa, motorized pumps could2
• Increased rice yields 70-300% with dry season irrigation
• benefit 185 million people
• increase net revenues by $22 bn/year
Sources: 1Shah and Namara (2018); 2 Giordano et al. (2012); 3Lefore et al. (2019); 4Wani et al. (2009); Lefthand map - IWMI Irrigated Area Map Asia (2000-2010) and Africa
(2010); Righthand map - Shah and Namara (2018).
In South Asia, farmers installed more irrigation in the past 50
years than gov’t in the past 200 years1
Motorized pumps increase farmer incomes, diminish drudgery,
promote gender parity, give more agency to farmers
■ Irrigated Single Crop
■ Irrigated Double Crop
■ Irrigated Triple/
Continuous Crop
Rainfed
Gravity
flow
Manual lift Motor pump
Farmer investment in irrigation nil nil
US $ 49
(15-155)
US $ 1016
(350-2650)
# of crops per year 1-2 1-2 3-5 3-9
Input intensification
(US $/acre)
59 72 84 178
Value of output/acre ($) 405 414 398 1413
Value added/family worker ($) 319 325 307 1092
IWMI
Buckets were used for water lifting in 60% of surveyed households
in Tanzania, 40% in Ethiopia.3 In SSA, 95% of farmed land in rainfed.4
MOTORIZED PUMP IRRIGATION STRENGTHENS RESILIENCE & INCOMES
■ Rainfed Single
■ Rainfed Double
Comparison of water lifting methods in nine SSA countries2

6. SOLAR PUMPS ARE SPREADING FAST (‘CELL PHONE’ OF IRRIGATION)
Clean accessible energy, falling costs and the water-food-energy impact of solar contribute to its uptake
Solar drops the marginal cost of lifting water to
zero: a hazard for groundwater sustainability
Sources: 1Government of India (2018); 2Lefore et al. (2019); 3Schmitter et al. (2018); Lefthand figure from Shah (2018) unpublished, an historical observation not
data-based; Righthand figure from Closas et al. (2019 forthcoming).
In Ethiopia, solar PV pumps could transform 18% (3.7m
ha) of the country’s rainfed agricultural land and replace
11% of the current hydrocarbon fuel pumps3
Two-thirds of Africa’s rural areas are not linked to grids2
Solar can provide clean power off-grid for multiple uses
In India, solar is spreading rapidly: ~4,000 in 2012;
~135,000 today; projected 2,750,000 by 2027 as a result
of government scaling programs1
Make solar
equitably accessible
Make solar
environmentally sustainable
Solar
irrigation
for SHF
Sustainable water
resource management
Irrigation management
systems and efficiency
Feasible outscaling
Access to finance
Access and adoption
of approproiate
technologies

7. ON-GRID AND OFF-GRID SOLAR BUSINESS MODELS
Providing on-demand water access and non-agricultural income
On-grid systems: Sell solar ‘as a crop’ to mitigate overexploitation of
groundwater & enhance incomes1
Off-grid systems: Can provide energy access, food and livelihood
security, access to water2
Benefits of the model
• Reliable day-time
energy for irrigation
• Feed-in tariff for selling
excess electricity to grid
• Supplementary,
counter-seasonal
incomes for farmers
• Diversified, cleaner
power grids
Sources: 1 Shah et al. (2018); 2 Otoo et al. (2018)
Technical Design
Benefits of the model
• Reduced prohibitive
upfront costs
• Distribution of risk
among scheme
(government), lender
and borrower
• Tailored financing to
farmers’ needs (e.g.,
repayment schedules)

8. DIGITAL INNOVATIONS DELIVER INFORMATION FOR ADAPTATION
Increasing climate variability and uncertainty raise the value of climate-related advisories and forecasts
Sources: 1 Naab et al. (2019); Geoscience Australia (2019).
Advisories and warning to
farmers to enhance food security
and livelihoods under climate
uncertainties
Data-based irrigation advisories
through mobile phones apps
telling farmers when and how
much water to apply to optimize
yields and minimize crop failure
Drought monitoring and early
warning system combining local
information on soil moisture
with remote sensing and
artificial intelligence
Remediation will be
needed as climate
impacts grow, robust
evidence for claims will
be essential to create
customer trust and
ensure transparency and
equity in compensation
Insurance schemes
require flood and
drought damage
assessments of
crops quickly and
reliably
Integrated information platform for
water planning, management and
monitoring to manage more variable,
scarce and contested water resources
Data cube of geographical and
geophysical attributes, upon which
applications can be built to provide
geo-spatially tailored information
IoT, AI, Blockchain could help monitor
usage, overexploitation, water quality,
water rights, water productivity
Water accounting estimations of
sources, availability, and uses of water
to enable better planning, allocation,
monitor, enforcement & stewardship
Digital innovations generally require contextualization, ground truthing and suitable dissemination pathways1

9. AN ENABLING ENVIRONMENT IS NEEDED FOR SHF ADAPTATION
The institutions that manage water as well as policies regarding credit and technologies will affect SHFs options
Institutions
• Robust to frequent & severe droughts & floods
• Strong integrated R&D programs and information systems
• Secure water rights for SHFs (these are usually informal)1
Finance
• Credit that is affordable, appropriate (i.e., longer than a
single season) and accessible to women and men2
• Credit packages combined with insurance3
• Tax & import policies to promote adaption investments4
Supply chains5
• Access to technologies, complementary inputs,
maintenance and repairs
• Rental markets for pumps and other irrigation services
Sources: 1 van Koppen, B.; Schreiner, B. (2018); 2Merrey and Lefore (2018); 3 Otoo et al. (2018); 4 Lefore et al. (2019); 5 Lefore et al. (2019).

10. TAKEAWAYS – INTERVENTIONS IN WATER TO SUPPORT SHF ADAPTATION
Technologies
to adapt to greater variability and
scarcity
Water storage
small reservoirs and
managed aquifer recharge
Water lifting/irrigation
motorized pumps, including solar
Mindful of sustainability, cost & equity
Information
to adapt to changing
climate regimes & extremes
Digital extension services
irrigation and crop advisories
Enhanced forecasts & warnings
including seasonal forecasts
Remediation
weather and crop based insurances
Mindful of context, capacity & demand
Enabling Environment
to manage increasingly
unpredictable & contested water
Strengthened water resources
management institutions to ensure
availability, access, equity
Access to credit, technologies & supply
chains for SHFs to invest in adaptation
Research and development that is
supported, scaled up and scaled out
Mindful of political & economic feasibility
Water is a primary medium through which climate change will impact SHFs.
Water management is therefore a good place to take early actions for adaptation –
interventions that provide basic needs now and resilience for the future.

11. Thank You

12. Amarasinghe, U. A.; Muthuwatta, L.; Smakhtin, V.; Surinaidu, L.; Natarajan, R.; Chinnasamy, P.; Kakumanu, K. R.; Prathapar, S. A.;
Jain, S. K.; Ghosh, N. C.; Singh, S.; Sharma, A.; Jain, S. K.; Kumar, S.; Goel, M. K. 2016. Reviving the Ganges water machine:
potential and challenges to meet increasing water demand in the Ganges River Basin. IWMI Research Report 167. Colombo,
Sri Lanka: International Water Management Institute (IWMI). 42p.
Burney, J.A., Naylor, R.L., Postel, S.L. 2013. The case for distributed irrigation as a development priority in sub-Saharan Africa.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110(31): 12513-12517.
Closas, A, Lefore, N., Schmitter, P. 2019 (forthcoming) Making solar irrigation sustainable for small-scale agriculture and the
environment.
Closas, A., Rap, E., 2017. Solar-based groundwater pumping for irrigation: Sustainability, policies, and limitations. Energy Policy
104, 33-37.
Damania, R., Desbureaux, S., Hyland, M., Islam, A., Moore, S., Rodella, A-S., Russ, J., and Zaveri, E. 2017. Uncharted Waters: The
New Economics of Water Scarcity and Variability. Washington, DC: World Bank.
Déqué et al. 2017. A multi-model climate response over tropical Africa at +2oC. Climate Services, 7, 87-95.
FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). 2011. The state of the world's land and water resources for food
and agriculture (SOLAW) - Managing systems at risk. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; and
London: Earthscan.
Geoscience Australia. 2019. Geoscience Australia, Australian Government. https://www.ga.gov.au/.
Giordano, M.; de Fraiture, C.; Weight, E.; van der Bliek, J. (Eds.). 2012. Water for wealth and food security: supporting farmer-
driven investments in agricultural water management. Synthesis report of the AgWater Solutions Project. Colombo, Sri Lanka:
International Water Management Institute (IWMI).
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