In the Mekong River Basin, hydropower has great potential to bring economic prosperity and electrification to many rural communities while meeting the growing power demands of urban centers. Which measures can we implement to prevent any one part of society from carrying the brunt of the costs, be they monetary, social, or environmental?
In Ethiopia, access to internet is limited in most areas outside of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital city. So when you see a number of agricultural extension workers in the sprawling mountains and fields of rural Ethiopia holding e-readers, they may seem slightly out of place.
You may remember in 2003, 2007 and most recently in 2013 when Sudan was hit with devastating flash floods that displaced hundreds of thousands of people. This left hydrologists and remote sensing specialists, like myself, to wonder how we can better prepare and warn farmers of flood events.
Is the general notion of success in the emerging water sectors justified? Perhaps not completely. Decision support tools may contribute to a more strategic method selection and a more participatory process that may increase the chance of long-term success in water interventions.
A persistent problem in the Mekong is that misplaced and resettled river communities from hydropower development are unable to continue their original way of living. How can new sustainable options be created for these communities?
New ICT for agriculture project uses text messages to reach farmers. The SMS service provides information on weather and water use efficiency to farmers in Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia.
Water is perceived to be a women’s business but the business of water lacks women, said Sonomi Tanaka of ADB at a recent conference on Women in Water Leadership.
Unlike transportation, medicine, and even dam-building — all of which have experienced game-changing technological innovations during the past half century — canal irrigation has remained largely a technologically stagnant sector since the days of the Green Revolution
Scientists are asked to change, to ensure their research leads to concrete outcomes. As communicators, how can we change to support this push towards outcome-based research?
How to kill a nation’s rivers. I visited Poland, where they are doing just that. It is a terrifying lesson for the many other nations worried about floods and determined to engineer their way to a solution. Thailand, among others, please listen. There is a better way.
Wetlands and agriculture: for many this may seem a strange juxtaposition because wetlands and agriculture are often perceived to be conflicting. Today, a widespread perception is that agriculture simply destroys wetlands, undermining biodiversity and degrading all the beneficial ecosystem services that they provide.
More wetlands have been drained in the name of extending and improving agriculture than for any other reason. Yet real farmers often object, especially smallholders dependent on wetlands for parts of their livelihoods.
