The CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF) is a multi-institutional research for development program

that seeks to create and disseminate international public goods to improve the productivity of water in river basins in

ways that are pro-poor, gender equitable and environmentally sustainable. In doing so, CPWF contributes to efforts by

the global community to ensure that global diversions of water to agriculture are maintained at the level of the year

2000.

The authors reflect on the theory and process of creating effective strategies for adaptive river basin management. We formulate our framework from observations of responses to environmental and hydrological change in the Great Ruaha River in Tanzania. We find that problems occur in the pursuit of 'integrated water resources management' (IWRM) that can be attended to by applying a focused expedient approach in three states of the water availability regime: 'critical water', 'medial water' and 'bulk water'.

Continuous institutional changes in the rural sector in Central Asia have negatively affected the reforms and the development of other related sectors, e.g. the irrigation sector. Therefore, reforms in the irrigation sector have been carried out in an ever changing and uncertain environment. Institutional changes have so far been aimed the farm level that was formerly managed by collective and state farms. Replacement of relatively few collective farms by thousands of individual farming units has resulted in chaos and anarchy in water management at on farm level.