The Indus Basin Irrigation System suffers significant inequity in access to surface water across its millions of users. Information, i.e., monitoring and reporting of water availability, may be of value in improving conditions across the basin, and we investigated this via an experimental game of water distribution in Punjab, Pakistan. We found evidence that flow information allowed players to take more effective action to target overuse, and that overall activities that might bring social disapproval were reduced with information.

Wetlands occur extensively across the Nile Basin and support the livelihoods ofmillions of people. Despite their importance, there are big gaps in the knowledge about the current status of these ecosystems, and how populations in the Nile use them. A better understanding is needed on the ecosystem services provided by the difl:erent types of wetlands in the Nile, and how these contribute to local livelihoods.

This paper applies the principles of water-use accounts, developed in the first of

the series, to the Nile River basin in Northeast Africa. The Nile and its tributaries

flow though nine countries. The White Nile flows though Uganda, Sudan, and Egypt.

The Blue Nile starts in Ethiopia. Zaire, Kenya, Tanzanian, Rwanda, and Burundi all

have tributaries, which flow into the Nile or into Lake Victoria. Unique features are

Lake Victoria and the Sudd wetland where White Nile loses about half of its flow by

Accountability and adaptive management of recent global agreements such as the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Climate Agreement, will in part rely on the ability to track progress toward the social and environmental targets they set. Current metrics and monitoring systems, however, are not yet up to the task. We argue that there is an imperative to consider principles of coherence (what to measure), standardization (how to measure) and decision-relevance (why to measure) when designing monitoring schemes if they are to be practical and useful.

A sustainable food future will require reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture even as the world produces substantially more food. The production of rice, the staple crop for the majority of the world’s population, emits large quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. According to various governments, global rice production emits 500 million tons of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide equivalent) per year—or at least 10 percent of total agricultural emissions.

Following the two-day WLE Ganges Regional Research Workshop on the CPWF Delta Program, a smaller meeting was held with fourteen participants. This meeting focused on providing insights from CPWF’s work in the Ganges and developing recommendations for the design team that will develop the WLE Ganges proposal. Discussions were based on the recently drafted Ganges Focal Region Development Challenge concept note following a WLE meeting in Amman, Jordan. Participants included key members of the CPWF-Ganges research team and representatives of the WLE Ganges ‘hills’ and ‘plains’ regions.

This paper applies the principles of water-use accounts, developed in the first of the

series, to the São Francisco basin in South America. The São Francisco Basin lies wholly

within Brazil. There are several major dams and wetlands in the Basin.

Net runoff is about 16% of total precipitation. Grassland is the most extensive land use,

covering 59% of the Basin and uses 48% of the water. Rainfed agriculture covers 23%

of the basin, but uses 14% of the water in the Basin. Forest and woodland cover 16% of

The Yellow River Basin (YRB) Focal Project set out to study water poverty, water

availability and access, water productivity, and water and related institutions in the

Yellow River basin to develop and rank a series of high-priority interventions aimed at

increasing water and food security for the poor, while maintaining environmental

sustainability. The YBFP identified complex relations between water and poverty in the

YRB; identified streamflow declines in the basin despite predicted higher rainfall;