This is a general presentation on WLE made by Andrew Noble for his trip to visit partners and donors in July 2014. Provides an overview of the WLE program and a number of examples of its work.
7. Unitingagricultureandnatureforpovertyreduction
IWMI’S APPROACH TO RESEARCH:
An award-winning, world-leading team:
110 scientists
Regional offices in Africa (5) and Asia (6) and representation
in Washington (US) and Leiden (NL)
Multi-disciplinary:
Diverse perspectives on any issue or problem
Multi-regional:
On the ground, on the frontlines: 68% of staff in the field
Diverse perspectives from 12 countries
Deeply connected to driving “outcomes”:
Uptake team works across multi-country network
Close relations with policy-makers, NGOs, farming groups
8. U N I T I N G A G R I C U LT U R E A N D N AT U R E F O R P O V E R T Y R E D U C T I O N
Led
by:
ABOUT WLE
10. Unitingagricultureandnatureforpovertyreduction
VISION
A world in which agriculture thrives within vibrant ecosystems, where
communities have higher incomes, improved food security and the ability to
continuously improve their lives
MISSION
Develop policies, institutions and investments toward sustaining ecosystems and
their services as a prerequisite for sustainable and resilient agricultural
intensification and improved livelihoods
WLE VISION AND MISSION
13. Unitingagricultureandnatureforpovertyreduction
ECOSYSTEM SERVICES AND RESILIENCE
Almost 30% of Bangladesh fish
come from flood plains.
Building community based
organizations to increase fish
production using ecosystem
based approaches.
Led to increases in catches and
important livelihood benefits to
landless farmers.
Understand trade-offs and synergies, both short and long term, on how mixed use
landscapes can be managed for their multi-functionality.
Managing floodplains for livelihoods in Bangladesh
15. Unitingagricultureandnatureforpovertyreduction
GENDER, POVERTY AND INSTITUTIONS
Gendered decision making – Identifying livelihood
options in resettled communities in the Mekong
Men
Upland rice control limited (material,
relational and subjective costs)
Fishing control increased
(material benefit)
Livestock control decreased
(material cost)
Women
Riverbank gardens control
decreased (material cost)
Weaving control increased
(material, subjective benefits)
Education increased participation
(relational and subjective benefits)
Decisions result in benefits or costs to men and women.
These are social (relational), cultural (relational/subjective),
emotional (subjective) as well as economic (material).
Identify where, when and how women can gain equitable access to water, land
and other natural resources
16. Unitingagricultureandnatureforpovertyreduction
REVITALIZING DEGRADED ECOSYSTEMS
Reduce land degradation and increase resilience of small scale farming
communities in sub-Saharan Africa and other hot spots across the globe.
Licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra) for amelioration of salt-
affected soils and income generation, Uzbekistan
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Netincome,USD/ha
Net profit from Licorice production
Natural conditions
Cultivated crop
Salt-affected soils in Syr Darya, Uzbekistan, 2005
Growing licorice on abandoned salt-affected soils can:
Ameliorate salt-affected soils
Return them to productive use
Improve fertility of soils
Generate high income for poor farmers
17. Unitingagricultureandnatureforpovertyreduction
INCREASING WATER AND LAND PRODUCTIVITY
Banking on groundwater: How policies can
lever change in India
Agricultural growth in West Bengal
had slumped by more than half.
Research identified a major block to
agricultural productivity was getting
access to groundwater.
Policies recommended by IWMI
were adopted to improve
groundwater access for smallholder
farmers.
Estimated rise in irrigated area from
3 to 4.8 mill ha and an additional 4.6
mill tons of paddy per year.
Develop technical, managerial and institutional solutions for
managing water and land
19. Jyotigram in Gujarat – separate feeders
• Pragmatic solution - separation of
electricity supply to villages and pumps
• Outcome - reduced electricity use, less
groundwater use, improved power
supply to domestic users
Tushaar Shah, IWMI
20.
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RECOVERING AND REUSING RESOURCES
20 promising business models for the safe reuse of human waste
based on 200 case studies across Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The first investment pledges exceed $4m with several banks in the
pipeline.
Outputs being used by WHO, FAO, UNEP and UNU (Global
guidelines, assessments, methodologies, databases and training).
Reduce the negative urban footprint on ecosystems and human health through market
driven incentives that promote investments in water and energy recovery and reuse
Business models and innovative partnerships
23. Resource recovery and reuse -
Sustainable waste and wastewater treatment
Source: Drechsel
Water Energy Nexus
benefits:
Energy reduction in: Water
treatment, chemical
fertilizer production and
transport
Environmental benefits:
Reduced pollution of water
bodies, reduced nitrogen
and phosphorous demand,
reduced GHG emissions
24. Unitingagricultureandnatureforpovertyreduction
MANAGING RESOURCE VARIABILITY AND COMPETING USES
Assist decision makers to reconcile natural variability, competition among sectors and
trade-offs, and the importance of equitably sharing these resources
Sharing water benefits in the Andes
Institutional innovation to improve
how benefits of water are shared
up-stream and downstream:
Developed Benefit Sharing
Mechanism for Caneta Basin,
funded by IFAD and Peru
Government.
Inputs and advice into to
developing new PES Law in
Peru.
Support to implementing BSM in
more than 30 locations
throughout the Andes.
25. Unitingagricultureandnatureforpovertyreduction
Managing resource variability and competing uses
Assist decision makers to reconcile natural variability, competition among sectors and
trade-offs, and the importance of equitably sharing these resources
Resolves water variability by accelerating
surface–subsurface interactions
Process:
Extract groundwater before monsoon
Fill sub-surface storage using distributed
recharge mechanisms during the
monsoon
Results:
Increased water for dry season irrigation
Reduced downstream flood impact
Increased river flow in the dry season
Ganges Aquifer Management for
Ecosystems Services (GAMES)
26. Unitingagricultureandnatureforpovertyreduction
INTEGRATING ECOSYSTEM
SOLUTIONS INTO POLICIES AND INVESTMENTS
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct No
v
Dec
Dry season
Integrated solutions in Southern Bangladesh
System productivity can be increased from 3-6 tons per
hectare to 11-19 tons per hectare, depending on location.
Planning Commission has directed key departments to
adopt improved planning, maintenance and management
of polders.
Sub-watershed management recommendations taken up
by Blue-Gold project and Delta plan sponsored by DGIS.
Wet season
Shrimp Rice + Fish
Provide policy makers, private sector, NGOs and donors with evidence based research to assess the
long-term impacts, risks and trade-offs of large-scale investments and strategies in a given region
27. Unitingagricultureandnatureforpovertyreduction
STRENGTHENING DECISION ANALYSIS
Use information analysis tools to help governments and investors reduce risk
and enhance rural farm livelihoods
Merti Aquifer
Working with Government of Kenya to assess impacts of
120 KM pipeline using probabilistic decision-making
models.
Convening stakeholders and engaging them in model
building has shown potential to overcome some of the
controversy surrounding the Merti aquifer project.
Important aquifer for Wajir City, Somali refugees and
pastoral communities and outcomes will support their
development needs.
28. Unitingagricultureandnatureforpovertyreduction
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Yes we can feed a 9 billion global
population, however:
Key to this is how we manage our
natural resources on which our entire
food system is contingent upon.
There are no magic bullets or quick
fixes to the challenges we face.
Our current production systems and
approaches to food production need
radical change that place
sustainability first.
To achieve this will require greater
perseverance, hard decisions and
political will.
29. U N I T I N G A G R I C U LT U R E A N D N AT U R E F O R P O V E R T Y R E D U C T I O N
Thank you
Learn more at wle.cgiar.org
Agriculture and Ecosystems Blog:
wle.cgiar.org/blogs
Hinweis der Redaktion
Sound ecosystems are the basis of human well-being. WLE brings science to bear on agriculture for improved human well-being and environmental sustainability. The Nexus is a key WLE research-for-development cluster to support this approach.
Notes:
This section aims to describe the vision, goals and main impacts that WLE will have both over the short (3-5 year) and long-term (10-15 years).
Ten WLE target basins and regions are: the Andes, Limpopo, Zambezi, Volta, Niger, Nile, Indus and Ganges, Mekong, Amu Darya and Syr Darya, and Tigris and Euphrates.
As the map above shows, current WLE investments are in some of the poorest regions of the world where there are pressing water-related problems. For instance, it works in sub-Saharan Africa where there are high levels of food insecurity and rainfall variability. Many of its activities in Southeast Asia focus on addressing water, food and energy-related issues, where hydropower needs to be balanced with other development needs such as agriculture and fisheries.
WLE Focal region focuses on two main goals:
Investment support: Better define and geographically target through appropriate landscape and water resources analysis and planning sustainable agricultural investments to ensure that farming is sustainable and effective in feeding the region.
Valuation of Ecosystem services and sustainable land and water use under pressure. Value and better manage ecosystem services to deliver improved and sustainable land use under increasing demands on water, food and energy
Each program should have a strong focus on transforming decision-making processes to ensure women and socially excluded groups have greater decision-making power
Programmatic shift:
The “new” is how all these work together:
Working at different scales (landscape, basin, global, information)
Integration (across sectors, disciplines, scales)
Partnerships (co-design and co-production of knowledge and delivery of outcomes)
Leveraging and marshaling the unique capacities and purposes of partners along the delivery pathway to maximize for impact
Learning and communication as integral parts of the research process
Critical Issues: Ecosystems
10 million hectares of farmland are lost every year due to ecosystem degradation.
Radical overhaul of agriculture can create farms which enhance rather than degrade the world’s ecosystems.
66% of wetlands are used for agriculture in Africa and 48% in Asia.
Seasonal floodplains in Bangladesh provide a diverse range of livelihood and ecosystem services, and require broad-based consultation to identify solutions for sustainable use. They are also an essential source of food for some of the poorest in the region. WorldFish has worked in six sites of the floodplains of Bangladesh and India to strengthen community-based organizations (CBOs), by building leadership skills, ensuring access and benefits to the poor, and increasing fish production. The seasonal floodplains are under private, public/private and public ownerships. CBOs lease an area from a land authority for three years, and pay rent to private ditch owners within the floodplains (fish are plentiful in the ditches at times). During the wet months, CBOs stock fingerlings by setting up fences in water inlets. This allows un-stocked small fish from surrounding areas free movement for breeding. Both the production of stocked fish and un-stocked small fish have increased as a result, providing benefits to fishermen, poor landless people and consumers. The floodplains under the fish culture project also make it easier to grow rice with less water and fertilizer, which is a topic that is similarly being studied in the Tonle Sap floodplains of the Mekong. Pilot farmers are successfully demonstrating new crops and practices, which are being adopted by other farmers.
Floodplain area 2.82 million ha covers almost two-third of inland open water, producing 780,000 metric tons of fish - 24% of country’s total fish production.
It provides essential source of food, income and livelihoods of millions of people but is undervalued
Conversion for drainage, flood control, agriculture, changes in nature, grabbing
Latest trends use of floodplains for aquaculture like closed water:
it increases fish production and income
but floodplain ecosystem is under stress with loss in diversity of wild fish, other aquatic animals and plants and reduction in ecosystem services
loss of access and benefits of the poor including fishers, landless
Use Community Based Fish Culture (CBFC) and Integrated Floodplain Management (IFM): Establish Sanctuaries, Habitat Restoration, Conservation and Enhanced Fisheries Management (stocking, regulation)
Critical Issues: Gender
More than one-third of the female workforce is engaged in agriculture, while in regions like sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia more than 60% of all female employment is in this sector.
Two-thirds of the world’s 796 million illiterate adults are women.
Only 29% of researchers in the world today are women.
Slide:
In Laos, IWMI through CPWF/WLE has been working with the Theun Hinboun hydropower company to find ways to improve the livelihoods options for impacted communities.
For a resilient future gender and social inclusion needs to be placed at the forefront: To understand the impacts of different interventions women, men, poor and socially excluded groups have to be included in the decision-making process.
The study on gendered decision making in relation to sustainable hydropower demonstrated that decisions result in benefits or costs. These are social (relational), cultural (relational/subjective), emotional (subjective) as well as economic (material)
In changing or replacing livelihoods in the context of hydropower development, it is necessary to disaggregate the costs and benefits to women and men, as well as ethnic groups separately. These costs and benefits need to be assessed not only in material, but in relational and subjective terms as well.
In the resettlement site, men and women had to adapt to a new area and lifestyle where traditional livelihood activities have been significantly changed and the new livelihood options had different implications to men and women. For example;
Upland rice - men’s control limited by new land use patterns (material, relational and subjective costs)
Fishing – men’s control has increased (material benefits)
Riverbank gardening – women’s control has decreased (material costs)
NTFP – women’s control has decreased (material costs)
Weaving – women’s control has increased (material and subjective benefits)
Livestock – women’s control unchanged; men’s control over cattle decreased (material costs)
Education – men’s control unchanged but women have increased participation in decisions (relational and subjective benefits)
Therefore in changing or replacing livelihoods in the context of hydropower development, it is necessary to disaggregate the costs and benefits to women and men, as well as ethnic groups separately. These costs and benefits need to be assessed not only in material, but in relational and subjective terms as well. This provides insights into why some household members may accept and others reject livelihood options offered by hydropower development.
A combination of material, relational and subjective factors contribute to decisions made by women and men. Hydropower companies generally focus on the material aspects of wellbeing within their resettlement and livelihood packages. Ensuring joint assets and equity in capabilities (education and health) can contribute to maintaining and/or enhancing joint decision making.
Critical Issues: Land degradation
One Fourth of the world’s surface is already degraded and 24 billion tons of soil are lost to erosion every year
Nearly 50% of farmland in Africa suffers from erosion and nutrient depletion
The value of nutrients lost in Africa is estimated at $4 billion per year.
34 million ha have been affected by salt intrusion globally
Critical Issues: Groundwater
30% of all liquid freshwater on Earth is groundwater.
In Africa, there is 100 times more water under the surface of the ground than on it.
A new tube well is sunk every six seconds in India.
Slide
The objective is to develop technical, managerial and institutional solutions for managing water and land that: (I) improve productivity in smallholder agricultural systems and in large-scale public irrigation systems; (ii) increase incomes and equitable benefits to women and resource-poor farmers; and (iii) enhance resilience of ecosystems services, including biodiversity and fisheries, and limit negative externalities
Separate reliable power feeds for farm and non-farm use
Gives villages 24 hour metered, three-phase power supply for domestic uses, in schools, hospitals, village industries
Targets high-quality power supply on 30-50 days of peak irrigation demand
Supports on-farm storage, rewards groundwater recharge, subsidizes drip-irrigation
Critical Issues: Wastewater
Half of the world’s people now live in towns and cities, a figure expected to reach two-thirds by 2050.
Agriculture is competing with industry and municipal users for safe water supplies.
Urban wastewater is polluting natural rivers, streams and lakes in many developing countries.
Resource recovery and reuse: Linking wastewater use and food production, it is a reality and happening in many places where we work at a much larger scale than authorities would like to admit. But it is an opportunity! This relatively secure source of water and nutrients in urban and peri-urban setting needs to be indeed captured. The SDGs will most likely include a target on wastewater treatment. We argue that decentralized treatment for reuse of water and nutrients in agriculture rather than centralized full-scale treatment is the most resource efficient and cost effective way. Apart from the obvious benefits there will also be many other Nexus benefits.
A local revolving fund is financed by the State that invests in this revolving funds through their "environmental corporations » to finance activities delivering ecosystem services, has invested in conservation agriculture by upland farmers. Revolving fund is managed directly by farmer’s organizations and the technical assistance (to ensure practices are correctly implemented) is provided by the CAR-the environmental authority.
Conservation tillage result in an increase in social benefits, but the expected gains will be modest. In the same sense a 17% of increase in net revenues in Fuquene farms could be not enough to overcome the possible aversion to risk of farmers (or other adoption barriers) and to encourage them to make an additional investment to cover initial extra costs of conservation agriculture (ie. cultivation of oat as cover crop). This fact may explain why this practice is not widely adopted in the Fuquene watershed (Currently there are about 1800 ha implementing these practices of 16933 ha under potato production in the watershed. JW mentions that even when interest rates are low most traditional farmers need at least 15- 20% or more advantage to make a change worthwhile (Byerlee et al.)
Therefore the revolving fund provides credits to farmers willing to implement conservation tillage in their potato-based production systems, and since 2005 it has incorporated about 180 small farmers every year and now uses the capital of the fund at its maximum capacity.
One important outcome we have found is that Benefit Sharing Mechanisms are an institutional innovation whereby different groups of people agree on how water should be used and
Critical Issues: Floods and Droughts
Over the past century, floods and droughts have accounted for 94% of all fatalities due to extreme weather events.
Between May and August 2010 severe flooding in China affected more than 230 million people.
In July 2012, after a prolonged drought, the United States Department of Agriculture declared natural disaster areas in more than 1,000 counties and 26 states, making it the largest natural disaster in America ever.
Click 1
Water is scarce, water is abundant, nowhere is there more evident than in the gangetic plain and coastal zones. There are vasts amount of water that flow through the area in the dry season and then small amounts during the dry season. In the rainy season farmers are constantly worried about floods and weather variability. Improving rice-fish production in the polder zone could help life millions of farmers out of poverty. A recent study CPWF survey showed that almost 80% of rural people in the polders of Bangladesh are living below the poverty line ($1.25/person/day), compared with the national average of about 40%.
This example shows how WLEbrings together the multi-disclinpinary expertise of the CG centers and local research agencies to address a true development challenge (improving livelihoods in the Southern Polder zone). Here IRRI, World Fish and IWMI work together with local parnter such as the Bangladesh Fisheries Research Insitute, BRAC and Insittute of Water Mangement to better understand how to improve water amangement to increase productivity and livelihoods rather than solely focusing on specific rice systems, water managemnet issues or fish productivity.
The integrated solution being explored in CPWF involves brackish water polyculture of shrimp plus fish (shrimp is highly risky, there are good options for polyculture to greatly increase profitability, even if the shrimp fail!) followed by rice plus fish. There are tradeoffs between water management for rice and aquaculture - the shrimp season needs to end early enough to allow drainage and leaching of salt prior to the optimum time for rice planting; the water depth needs to be shallow enough for the rice, especially early in the season, but the deeper the water the better for fish.
The use of high yielding aman varieties (HYV) coupled with good management can double yield, provided that water is managed to avoid stagnant flooding because HYVs are less tolerant to such flooding than traditional varieties. HYVs mature earlier, allowing an earlier rice harvest and earlier sowing of a dry season crop. Our on-farm trials have also demonstrated that the earlier maturity of HYV enables double- and triple-cropping with rice or with a combination of rice and high yielding or high value rabi crops (dry season non-rice crops such as maize, sunflower and water melon)
Major Impacts and potential
System productivity can be increased from 3-6 tons per hectare to 11-19 tons per hectare, depending on location.
The Planning Commission has directed the key departments to adopt the recommendations regarding improved maintenance and management of polders and better planning.
Potential to reach millions of farmers with diversified solutions
The Government of Kenya considers investing in infrastructure to draw water from the Merti aquifer to supply the city of Wajir with drinking water, through a 120 km pipeline. In addition to these future beneficiaries three water user communities already rely on the groundwater downstream of Habaswein, from where the water will be abstracted. These include pastoral communities, which rely on boreholes dispersed through the area; the more than half a million inhabitants of the Dadaab refugee camp; and beneficiaries across the border in Somalia. To assess the outcomes of the investment, the proposed research will model the risks of the upcoming abstractions affecting these current and future beneficiaries.
The Merti project has engaged an eclectic group of policy-makers, hydrogeologists, agricultural scientists, representatives of local groups and several other stakeholder groups. It also engages research partners at a university and a water consulting firm in Europe.
Convening stakeholders and engaging them in model building has shown potential to overcome some of the controversy surrounding the Merti aquifer project. While the process has not yet been finalized, the positive disposition of all stakeholders towards the probabilistic impact modelling process was very encouraging. For all decision-makers present, a group that included the senator of the affected county, the process of being explicit about their mental models of impact pathways, uncertainties and desired outcomes of the intervention, appeared to be novel and eye-opening.