Water Works

A project in Africa and South Asia identifies promising agricultural water management solutions to unlock the potential of smallholder farming.

Most of the world’s poor — some 1.7 billion people according to the World Bank — live in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Of this number, some 510 million are still considered food insecure. In both South Asia and SSA, millions of poor farmers face water scarcity, in part because they lack adequate water storage, management facilities and know-how. The anticipated effects of global climate change are likely to further increase the number of food insecure on both continents, unless appropriate interventions are undertaken.

This farmer in Ziway, Ethiopia, uses a rope pump to access water to irrigate her small plot. Photo: Nadia Manning-Thomas, IWMI, 2009, AWM Solutions Project.

To address this challenge, the Agricultural Water Management (AWM) Solutions Project aims to unlock the potential of smallholder agriculture by focusing on investments in agricultural water management. The project is funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Collaborators include two CGIAR Centers — the International Water Management Institute and the International Food Policy Research Institute — as well as International Development Enterprises (IDE), Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Stockholm Environment Institute, and CH2M HILL, Inc. AWM is a promising investment option to improve the livelihoods and food security of the rural poor. Water management interventions can help smallholders avoid yield losses during dry spells, enjoy enough water security to invest in other agricultural inputs, diversify and grow higher-value crops, and improve access to water for other productive uses.

However, water management often receives less attention than efforts to improve farmers’ access to seed, fertilizer and credit.

This project aims to identify technological, institutional and policy interventions that can significantly improve the livelihoods of poor women and men farmers through enhanced agricultural production, on-farm income and food security. It will consider a wide range of options, from rope pumps used by farmers in Ethiopia to treadle pumps in India, community-managed small reservoirs in Ghana, and multiple-use systems across Africa and Asia that provide for both domestic and productive water needs. Opportunities to enhance productivity of both irrigated and rainfed lands will be examined as part of the project. Research suggests that, in many parts of South Asia and SSA, doubling or even quadrupling rainfed crop yields is possible with existing technologies for water and nutrient management.

A farmer using a treadle pump made from basic materials to pump water for his farm in Ethiopia. Photo: Guido Santini, FAO, 2009, AWM Solutions Project.

But these technologies have been slow to spread, and it remains a challenge to reach the poorest people, including women who in many countries make up the majority of farmers.

Understanding what makes AWM successful for smallholders requires looking at the factors that influence the adoption and successful out-scaling of water management interventions, from the natural resource base to credit and land-tenure systems, markets, communication networks, stakeholder interaction, and the broader policy environment. The project will generate knowledge about AWM interventions and how they operate in particular socioeconomic and physical environments, together with successful business models for effective implementation.

The project recognizes that too many farming systems, particularly in SSA, target AWM technologies and allocate irrigated land to male “heads of households,” ignoring the critical role of women in food production and their AWM preferences. Moreover, little information is available concerning gender for evaluating the feasibility and impacts of water management interventions. The project will ensure that the needs and conditions of poor farmers, especially women, are appropriately addressed in selecting AWM solutions.

Partnerships and outreach are key components of the project. The project team will work with local, national and regional partners in project planning and implementation and jointly ensure that project knowledge and outputs get into the right hands for optimal impact.

To provide a menu of promising AWM solutions and supporting dissemination strategies, the project will develop three main outputs for use by policymakers, investors, nongovernmental organizations and smallholder farmers:

• platforms for policy dialogue and expressing investment briefs to inform AWM decision-making;
• tools and business models to evaluate the economic, social and environmental impacts of AWM interventions and support effective AWM implementation; and
• methods for selecting and applying appropriate AWM solutions.

 
The project started in February 2009 and will continue through December 2011 in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia, and the two Indian states of Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal. Activities are well under way and can be tracked on the project website at http://awm-solutions.iwmi.org/ or by joining the mailing list by writing to AWMSolutionsProject@cgiar.org.