Rangelands in arid and semi-arid regions serve as grazing land for domesticated animals and therefore offer livelihood opportunities for most pastoral communities. Thus, the exposure of most rangelands in arid and semi-arid regions to threats that are associated with natural, social, economic, and political processes affects their capacity to provide socioeconomic and environmental support to the immediate and global communities.

The Ethiopian Government has initiated a process of water policy reform. WLE/IWMI was approached by the Ministries of Agriculture and of Water, Irrigation, and Electricity to contribute to the review. Drawing from its research, WLE/IWMI brought new ideas to the policy reform table. These ideas include the concept of multiple water values; payment for ecosystem services; irrigation cost recovery, and irrigation performance benchmarking. These options have been incorporated in the draft policy document and will strengthen climate change adaptation.

Water is an essential resource for all life, but is extremely difficult to manage productively, sustainably and equitably. Good water governance has been a major theme of multiple international conferences for at least two decades (Woodhouse and Muller 2017). Without good governance, we cannot achieve poverty reduction, food security, environmental sustainability, equity and other global development goals or respond effectively to the ravages of climate change. Achieving many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) depends on the availability of water to users.

Indonesia represents an interesting case for analysis of the relationship between multi-level governance and climate governance for three main reasons. It is a highly decentralized country; it is a major contributor to land-based greenhouse gas emissions; and it is extremely vulnerable to climate change. The chapter first provides a broad overview on Indonesia’s climate governance in the context of decentralization, and then focuses on sub-national governance of climate change mitigation in the land use sector, the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the country.

Since 2019, when WLE/IWMI reported on the impact of its research on groundwater knowledge generation and management in Laos, policies and investment programs have evolved that are benefitting groundwater-dependent communities. There is now greater recognition of the strategic importance of groundwater, and more emphasis placed on the systematic management of groundwater by responsible government agencies and in development projects.

Urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) is widely distributed throughout the Global South. Despite urban population growth and diversifying food habits, UPA delivers an important part of urban food supply, as well as other types of services to cities, such as employment and waste reuse. Nevertheless, the extent and importance of UPA varies between different urban areas, while challenges like limited recognition, land conversion, and water pollution and competition threaten the potential of UPA to contribute to urban resilience.

Governments in sub-Saharan Africa promote the expansion of irrigation to improve food security, primarily through the adoption and use of groundwater-based smallholder private irrigation. Using the case of Ethiopia, we examine farmers’ willingness to adopt smallholder private irrigation packages in response to subsidies on pump prices, loan availability and reduction in ambiguities related to borehole drilling. The results of the research highlight that subsidizing pump prices may not be the best use of public funds to expand irrigation.

While water-energy-food (WEF) Nexus is one of the most important, and widely investigated, environmental topics of our time, previous stock taking efforts possess notable limitations, namely (i) their focus is restricted to research articles, and (ii) there is less focus on nexus permutations that begin with energy and food. This paper assembled more than 900 documents and systematically categorized them according to more than 10 key parameters (e.g. scale, methods, limitations), to characterize approaches, achieved outcomes and presence of variables likely to support on-the-ground change.

This synthesis brief draws on the experiences of the Restoring Degraded Landscapes sub-program, part of the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE). The brief captures learning from a decade (2011-2021) of research in development work with different stakeholders including farmers and governments across the world to reverse landscape degradation. It provides an overview of effective approaches, innovations and solutions that can be taken forward and scaled up to meet current and future challenges from land degradation – as well as the opportunities that may arise.

Our program-level ToC is reassessed annually to accurately reflect new information (e.g. new bilateral projects) and new understanding (e.g. of how WLE delivers outcomes and impacts). 2020 adjustments applied across WLE’s flagships (FPs) include:
● A focus on three ‘foundational’ impact pathways: (1) transdisciplinary innovation; (2) policy
influence; (3) brokering practices and technologies and enhancing implementation capacity.
● Encouraging WLE interventions to address both equity and sustainability.

Lao People’s Democratic Republic is a poorly developed, surface water-rich country that has traditionally given limited priority to its groundwater resources, which has resulted in a situation of inadequate scientific knowledge, technical capacity, and policies within the sector. This is slowly changing as the role of groundwater in socioeconomic development is better recognized. This chapter presents an overview of the country’s groundwater resources. It examines the state of knowledge, challenges, gaps, and barriers for effective groundwater resource development.