Comprehensive Assessment
of Water Management in Agriculture
CA
The CA
assesses current knowledge and experience to identify the most effective
investment and management decisions in water management for agriculture for
reducing poverty and enhancing food and environmental security.
Apologies for Cross-Postings
News
on the assessment synthesis
The Comprehensive
Assessment (CA) synthesis book is taking shape. Ten CA chapters have now been
through a second external review. The chapters target key questions of water
management in agriculture: rain-fed agriculture, irrigation, groundwater,
marginal quality water, fisheries, livestock, rice, land degradation, river
basins, policies & institutions. Final drafts are expected to be completed
by the end of February.
In January, two
cross-cutting chapters (water productivity, ecosystems) met to finalize their
second drafts, due for review early February. The Poverty chapter writing team and the Scenarios
experts also met in January, to move toward the objective of providing revised drafts
for review by the end of February. If you are not yet involved in the CA and
are interested in reviewing one of these final chapters or in contributing,
please contact
Online
Discussion
In February, join the
online discussion on gender mainstreaming in agriculture water management.
Gender
mainstreaming is not happening in practice in the water management in
agriculture. To find out more about why this is the case, have a look at the recent survey performed in a collaborative
project CA/Both-ends/Gender and Water
An
online discussion will address the results of this survey. The discussion will take up questions such
as: Why is it important to mainstream gender in agricultural water management?
What are the real issues? What could be done? What is feasible? Who should do
it? The discussion aims to bring together different points if view from the
diverse stakeholders (from policy to implementation, including research). It
aims to elaborate a "minimum agenda" that could be proposed at the
WWF4 in
To
follow the gender
Discussion
Workshops
Authors met to define the
CA Summary for Decision Makers, look at possible futures and revisit difficult
issues in some chapters. On the 11-13 January 2006, a targeted workshop was organized
involving the Coordinating Lead Authors of most of the chapters. Participants agreed on the outline and key
messages of the CA Summary for Decision Makers. The authors interacted with the
scenarios team on critical uncertainties and drivers. On the 9-10 and 15-17
January, small chapter writing teams on water productivity, ecosystems and
poverty also met to agree on the final chapter content.
These workshops and meeting were hosted by FAO in
For more, email
CA
Authors got feedback on their chapter from FAO and IFAD experts
Three short brainstorming were organized within FAO
to discuss three CA chapters: water productivity, land, and poverty. FAO
experts from different disciplines and divisions participated, including from
the
Towards
a minimum agenda for effective gender mainstreaming in water management.
The 5-6 December 2005, gender
experts and practitioners met in
CA
at conferences
Getting
feedback on CA findings
On 6-8 March 2006: The CA Rice chapter is debated at IRRI in
IRRI will be hosting the
WWF/PCARRD-organized (with FAO, PhilRice, ICRISAT)
workshop “International Dialogue on Rice and Water: Exploring
Options for Food Security and Sustainable Environment”. It will gather 50 experts, half of which are international experts
and the other half of which are from the
On
The
CA is organizing a session entitled “Assessing livelihood and environmental
synergies and trade-offs for water management in agriculture” at the Fourth World water
forum in Mexico (Session FT4.37). The CA session will challenge current ways
of thinking about management of water in agriculture. We welcome you to join us
there. Contact:
WWF4: CA messages to be discussed
in at least 10 other different sessions thanks to authors and partners.
Other Interesting
opportunities for the CA in coming months are:
Ø
7-10
March: International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development,
Ø
20-31
March: Eighth Ordinary Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the
Convention on Biological Diversity,
Ø
13-19
May: IFAP 37th World Farmers’
Congress and 60th Anniversary Celebrations,
Ø
20-26
August: Stockholm Water Week (More
information about the sessions where the CA will be participating will be
provided soon).
CA
new publications
CA research in press-(26/1)
in ID21-Small-scale fishing:
a range of livelihood benefits for poor rural people (Findings of research
on impacts of irrigation on fisheries supported by CA)
CA Research Report No. 9,
2005. Historical
Transformations of the
IWMI-CA
Policy Brief, Environment Flows: Planning for Environmental Water Allocation.
Download Brief [PDF
349 KB] based on CA research report 2 "Taking into Account Environmental
Water Requirements in Global-scale Water Resources Assessment" by Vladimir
Smakhtin, Carmen Revenga and Petra Doll [PDF
1.1 MB] and IWMI Research Report 89 “Planning for Environmental Water Allocations:
An Example of Hydrology-based Assessment in the East Rapti River, Nepal” [PDF 442 KB] and the Environmental Flows Newsletter [PDF
268 KB]
CA
Discussion Paper No. 2, 2005. Integrated Management of Water, Forest and
Land Resources in Nepal:Opportunities for Improved Livelihood, Dhruba Pant, Sabita Thapa,
Ashok Singh, Madhusudhan Bhattarai and
Other publications can be downloaded from Publications,
including the Blue Paper:
Investing in Water for Food, Ecosystems and Livelihoods, Stockholm 2004 [PDF
634 KB] and the book, Water Productivity in Agriculture: Limits and
Opportunities for Improvement [Book
index HTML]