Inclusive community participation in bottom-up polycentric governance is at the heart of recognitional, procedural, distributional and inter-generational equity and of integrity of international, national and district-scale interventions to improve climate resilience in marginalized rural areas.
International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) organized a state consultation workshop on 14 December 2023 on ‘Policy Coherence in Food, Land, and Water (FLW) Systems: A case study of Odisha’ at Bhubaneswar as a part of the CGIAR Initiative on National Policies and Strategies Initiatives (NPS). The Food, Land and Water (FLW) project aims to identify key state-level policies in the food, land, and water systems that have a practical scope for improving coherence and hold most potential for creating an impact.
The objective of this study is to map community solutions to deal with climate variability and how information is mobilized into or interfaces with the next layer of government interventions that brings new perspectives in understanding how local solutions can be better mobilized into external solutions to climate change adaptation through horizontal and vertical integration processes, with a focus on living community-based water tenure in rural Zambia.
The polders in coastal zones of Bangladesh are vulnerable to climate risks resulting in low agricultural productivity and low incomes for the communities dependent on agriculture-based livelihoods in these regions. Bangladesh adopted a participatory approach to water governance in the 1980s to improve the equitable and sustainable use of water resources. With men migrating away for better income opportunities, women are more involved in agricultural production and dependent on water resources.
On 16 October, scientists, politicians and world leaders gathered from around the world to celebrate World Food Day. Organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the annual event urged global action to ‘start managing water wisely’ in the race for zero hunger. Stressing the connections between water and food production, this year’s World Food Day served as an important reminder that food and nutrition security can only be achieved with sufficient water of adequate quality, quantity, and reliability.
Within Nepal, water, energy, food, and ecosystems (WEFE) are vital resources not merely for the current generation, but also for future ones, especially to satisfy the demands of a growing population and to respond to socio-economic changes. The WEFE nexus approach realizes that the management of water, energy, food, and ecosystems must be undertaken in a holistic way. Nevertheless, governments, investors, and other stakeholders face challenges in the management of WEFE resources, particularly in the face of climate change.
The International Conference on Eco-Health Nexus (ICEN 2023) aimed to promote interdisciplinary dialogues and solutions surrounding cascade ecology and human well-being. Cascade ecology refers to the study of ecological interactions in connected networks of tanks, streams and wetlands that exchange water, nutrients, and organisms.
With decreasing aquifer levels, increasing groundwater pollution, inequitable access, and generally poor management outcomes, better groundwater governance has been put forward as a recipe to address these challenges worldwide. Existing recommendations focus on improved legal frameworks, monitoring and control of access and abstraction through permits or formal rights. In addition, decentralized water management, enforcement of regulations, and supply-side technological solutions are seen as cornerstone components of good groundwater governance systems.
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.
Despite the rapid extension of public service delivery since the end of Apartheid, many rural citizens in South Africa still rely on their own initiatives and infrastructure to access water. They construct, improve, operate and maintain infrastructure of different complexities, from individual wells to complex collectively owned water schemes. While most of these schemes operate without legal recognition, they provide essential services to many households.