Presentation on Project Assessment of Ecosystem Services for Improving the System of Water Resources Management in Agriculture of Kazakhstan.

The dry areas face severe challenges to sustainable development. The biggest challenges – food insecurity, water scarcity, land degradation, and climate change – are closely inter-related. The effects of climate change will be felt globally, but the dry areas will be particularly hard hit. Climate change will exacerbate water scarcity, rainfall variability, and the decline in the natural resource base, and thus could have a profound impact on food security.

In 2007, ICARDA celebrated its thirtieth anniversary. The Center and its partners have worked together for three decades to improve the food security and livelihoods of the poor in dry and marginal areas. During this time, we have seen significant changes in the biophysical environment and in socio-economic circumstances. New farming technologies, new livelihood options, and better policies and institutions are speeding up agricultural development in the world's dry areas, and we are proud of the role we have played in this progress.

2013 has been a fruitful year for ICARDA marked by research accomplishments and a sense of gratitude. Our longstanding partner countries provided important support in making decentralization of the Center’s research a reality. This transition positions our research programs to more expressly target agroecosystem-based solutions, needed for wider impacts.

Agricultural production systems are a vital lifeline of the rural farming community in Central Asia. However, shrinking natural resource base, increased land degradation and severe irrigation water scarcity render current crop production practices not sustainable as these perform below their potential. Though there is considerable scope for improving productivity through bridging the yield gaps and introducing sustainable land management practices. However crop productivity and production pattern varies across scales, mostly driven by irrigation water availability, markets, and

For ICARDA, 2012 has been a time of change and evolution. We have been busy tackling the many issues of dryland agriculture and global food production against a backdrop of focusing our efforts as a force for change for people living in the world's drylands and our areas of scientific expertise.

Poverty, food insecurity, natural resource degradation and climate change are global challenges; but they impact most severely on rural communities in dry areas. Addressing these challenges requires a combination of good science, integrated research-for-development approaches, and effective partnerships. As this report illustrates, all three elements are in place, resulting in new technologies and tangible benefits in more than 40 countries.

The year 2015 will be remembered for the waves of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region looking for a safer future in other parts of the world. While millions of people crossed into Europe, the international community looked for the roots causes of the migration, recognizing that food insecurity, unemployment, drought and environmental degradation all play a role in the uprising and coalescing of conflict.

Global food production has increased by 20% in the past decade – but food insecurity and poverty remain widespread , while the natural resource base continues to decline. International research centers, which have helped drive previous improvements, must continue to deliver new technologies to support sustainable growth in agriculture; and to work with other partners to accelerate the dissemination of these technologies.

Irrational water use and mismanagement are at the root of several environmental problems in the Aral Sea Basin, including secondary salinization. Pre-season leaching (February-March) is a common practice of farmers to manage soil salinity challenges. For example, farmers in the Khorezm region tend applying up to 600 mm of leaching volume to prevent accumulation of salts in the root-zone. However, excessive leaching volume causes the water tables to rise at 1-1.5 m depth which are dangerous depths.

This final report synthesizes the results of the Iraq Salinity Project, a research partnership between five Iraqi ministries and national agencies and an international team of researchers, led by ICARDA, specializing in land and water management, crop improvement and plant breeding, geoinformatics, and socioeconomics.

The best use of irrigation water is reflected in the strategic approach of the Ministry of Agriculture and the major research objectives of institutions working on sustainable irrigation management. Related research programs can be summarized as follows:
• crop water requirements;
• irrigation techniques, especially surface irrigation;
• irrigation scheduling; and
• soil and water quality as affected by irrigation and drainage.