As cities expand to cover farmland with roads and buildings, the conflict between traditional land rights, and modern systems of ownership and distribution become very clear. This report comes from Blantyre in Malawi, where city authorities now charge rent on land that was once freely owned.

The use of participatory tools and methods has increased dramatically in

natural resource management (NRM) over the past decade, largely because of

the recognition that sustainable NRM cannot be achieved without involving the

individuals and communities who make decisions about how resources are

used. Participation of resource users and other stakeholders is important not

only in the management of resources, but also in research oriented toward the

generation of information and innovations that shape how resources are

Modern bioenergy systems are attracting increasing attention from governments in Asia as a potential solution to a range of policy problems related to energy security and sustainable development. Despite growing interest in bioenergy systems, there is still a limited understanding of how their expansion could impact on natural resources such as water. This paper aims to shed some light on the relationship between modern bioenergy development and water depletion using a case study on the biofuel sector in Thailand.

Pans are a simple method of storing water, particularly relevant for livestock farmers in arid areas.

Ethiopia is often highlighted as a country in which a lot of foreign land acquisition is occurring. The extent to which these investments also constitute significant acquisitions of water is the subject of this paper. It is apparent that water availability is a strong driver of the recent surge of investments in agricultural land globally, and in general the investments occur in countries with significant 'untapped' water resources. Ethiopia is no exception.

This paper examines the water dimensions of recent large-scale land acquisitions for biofuel production in the Ashanti, Brong-Ahafo and Northern regions of Ghana. Using secondary sources of data complemented by individual and group interviews, the paper reveals an almost universal lack of consideration of the implications of large-scale land deals for crop water requirements, the ecological functions of freshwater ecosystems and water rights of local smallholder farmers and other users.

With water availability being threatened in many parts of the world, improved water management has become urgent...