In Ethiopia, intensification of agricultural production is the primary focus of the government’s poverty reduction strategy. Livestock constitute an invaluable resource providing essential goods and services to small-scale poor farmers and their families and communities. Production of high valued livestock products provides a route out of poverty especially where growing urban demand fuels the markets. Water security is a requisite input for livestock production and its resultant contribution to poverty reduction.

Based on research presented in the book ?Water Productivity in Agriculture : Limits and Opportunities for Improvement? by J.W. Kijne, R. Barker and D. Molden. If current trends continue, the water crisis?which is already beginning to rear its head in many countries through depleted groundwater aquifers, dried-up rivers and wetlands, and frequent water shortages?will indeed become a global problem.

Based on research presented in ?Institutional Alternatives in African Smallholder Irrigation: :Lessons from International Experience with Irrigation Management Transfer (IWMI Research Report 60)? by Tushaar Shah, Barbara van Koppen, Marna de Lange, Madar Samad, and Douglas Merrey. An international review of IMT experiences shows that for transfer to work, the irrigation system must be central to a wealth-creating agriculture within which IMT makes good economic sense to farmers. This is not the case in a majority of Africa?s smallholder schemes.

This paper discusses methodologies applied in the Deduru Oya river basin, the basin selected from Sri Lanka for the regional study on the development of effective water management institutions. The study was funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to assist the five countries, Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal, China and Sri Lanka to work out methodologies and develop effective water management institutions (ADB-RETA 5812). The Deduru Oya basin in which the empirical studies were carried out is located in the northwestern province of Sri Lanka.