In 2009, the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF) set out to “improve governance and management of rainwater and small water infrastructure in the Limpopo basin to raise productivity, reduce poverty, and improve livelihoods resilience.” Over the following four years, CPWF, led by the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) and partners, coordinated five inter-connected research- for-development projects in the basin. The program

Hydropower development: a defining issue

There are few other places in the world, perhaps none, with such intensive dams development as the Mekong Basin.

The major tensions in the Mekong revolve around dams and other infrastructure development and the shift from economies based on agriculture and primary production to manufacturing, industry and services.

Three major river basins flow out of Ethiopia into Sudan, constituting the Eastern Nile basin (the White Nile flows from the south). These are the Tekeze-Atbara flowing out of northern Ethiopia, the Baro-Akoba- Sobat flowing from southern Ethiopia, and the Blue Nile (Abay) sandwiched between the other two. The Blue Nile Basin, called the Abay in Ethiopia, is the largest branch of the Nile draining the Ethiopian highlands. It covers an estimated area of 311,437 square kilometers and is shared by Ethiopia and Sudan. It joins the White Nile in Khartoum, Sudan.

The project will identify socially acceptable land and water governance options and identify their livelihoods, health and environmental impacts, including spatial and temporal trade-offs at the watershed level.

The Livelihood Resilience project evolved around the hypothesis that better integrated

management can improve the livelihoods of poor farming communities and increase the

environmental integrity and water productivity of upstream watersheds in dry areas. This

hypothesis was tested by researchers from different Iranian research and executive organizations

and farming communities in two benchmark research watersheds in upper Karkheh River Basin in

Iran, under the guidance of the ICARDA scientists. Participatory technology development, water,