Governance and policy blog posts

in 2009, CPWF redefined its objective “to increase the resilience of social and ecological systems through better water management for food production.” Why did it matter at that time, and why does it still matter today for water, food and ecosystems?

Without quantifiable metrics, will resilience languish as a buzz-word with no lasting impact? Resilience, as a unifying concept, has rapidly become a prominent targeted development goal. However, we have yet to produce a set of agreed upon metrics to quantify resilience, though we have made significant progress in this field

In our globalised society, there are virtually no ecosystems that are not shaped by people, and no human being can survive without the services ecosystems provide. A resilience thinking approach investigates how interacting systems of people and nature can best be managed in the face of disturbances, surprises and uncertainty.

As WLE invites partners to embark on a month-long blog discussion of Resilience, I would like to share an experience that galvanized my conceptual thinking around resilience.

Many lessons and experiences remain locked away in long technical and scientific reports that development managers and decision makers might find difficult to access and learn from. Find out how CPWF worked to make knowledge more accessible.

For the first time, in the latest assessment of the IPCC on impacts and adaptation, there is a much greater recognition that for poor people living precarious lives, things look much more complicated than they do in climate models. It is a breath of fresh air.

As the CPWF comes to an end, it is appropriate to take stock and reflect on its ten-year legacy. For me, it is also a time to reflect on the personal transformation that I have undergone in my perceptions and views of CPWF since becoming familiar with the program and its activities.

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.

During his time in north western Ethiopia, Dr. Steven Prager observed the complex relationship between upstream and downstream farmers in the Fogera region of Ethiopia. His results, he said, were unexpected. Dr. Prager discusses the relationship between farm plot location and resilience in this podcast.

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.