Between 8 and 12 November 2010, the Nile Basin Development Challenge initiative (of the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food - CPWF) organized a training workshop for national researchers on ‘research methods to build understanding of the planning and implementation of rainwater management strategies’ in Ethiopia. After the meeting, we talked about the workshop with Alan Duncan (ILRI), Josephine Tucker (ODI) and Eva Ludi (ODI). The workshop was part of the ‘Nile 2’ project that focuses on technologies, institutions and policies and integrated rainwater management.

Meeting symbol/code: ALAWUC/NE/10

V3 project focuses on integrated management options at local scale for small reservoirs (SR), in a multiple use context. Integrated management of SR can aim at several objectives: (i) perpetuating infrastructures, obvious condition for socio-agro-ecosystem durability; (ii) protecting and if necessary improving the water quality for the various uses; (iii) reaching and enhancing water productivity potentials; (iv) seeking for equity (pro-poor position).

Backed by sound economic policies and until the global crisis, a buoyant global economy, many developing countries made significant movement toward achieving the 2015millennium Development Goals (MDGs), particularly those for poverty reduction, gender parity in education, and reliable access to safe water. But even before the global economic crisis, progress in achieving some MDGs, especially those on child and maternal mortality, primary school completion, hunger, and sanitation, was lagging. The global food, fuel and economic crises have set back progress to the MDGs.

The objective of the Spanish government-funded project GESMO (Gestión integral del acuífero 08.29 Mancha Oriental), is to develop new tools for the evaluation and monitoring of water policies. These tools have to be capable of matching resource exploitation with reserve sustainability, applied to aquifer 08.29 in the Eastern Mancha, Spain. A decision support system (DSS), was developed as part of the GESMO project, that integrates two different systems within one computer application. One, an hydrogeological model, simulates the River Júcar basin and its associated aquifer.

Speaking at the Launch of the Nile Basin Development Challenge program (29 September 2010), ILRI Director General Carlos Seré explains why ILRI is partnering in a program focused on improved water management in Ethiopia and the Nile Basin. He emphasized how the type of integrative science envisaged in this Program is in line with directions envisaged for the new CGIAR.