The Department of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries is currently developing a project in conjunction with the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) to create Agri-parks in locations throughout South Africa. These Agri-parks aim to involve smallholders and local producers in the entire process of agriculture to address both food security and poverty. The Department hopes to fight issues such as the 14 million hungry South Africans, unused potential farmland, and the inequality between private agricultural business and the people.

This topic guide for government agencies, service providers and other practitioners examines various dimensions of governance that are key to deliver appropriate benefit-sharing, ensure sustainable exploitation, minimise conflict over access and control, and maximise the contribution of resources to economies. This includes decentralised and collaborative governance, multi-level and adaptive governance, and the roles of institutions and politics.

Wetlands are habitats with temporary or permanent accumulation of water. The degradation and loss of wetlands is more rapid than that for other ecosystems, and wetland-dependent biodiversity in many parts of the world is in continuing and accelerating decline. They have been confirmed to deliver a wide range of critical and important services vital for human well-being.

The "Ruhuna Basins" defined for this case study encompass three of the main rivers that flow through ancient Ruhuna, including the longest and most important river in the region, Walawe. The Ruhuna basins are important in the broader Sri Lankan context, the basin being the location of a major hydropower plant, irrigation schemes that make a significant contribution to national food production, and important nature reserves.

Although irrigation projects often provide water for more than crop irrigation, water allocation and management decisions often do not account for nonirrigation uses of water. Failure to account for the multiple uses of irrigation water may result in inefficient and inequitable water allocation decisions. Decision-makers often lack information on the relative economic contributions of water in irrigation and nonirrigation uses. This report addresses this problem.