IWMI's Annual Research Meeting and Knowledge Fair 2005 was held on the 11th and 12th of November. The two-day program focused on both research and nonresearch issues, with a range of features incorporating knowledge sharing approaches including several Communities of Practice CoP) and Sharing Spaces.

Although irrigation has increased production and reduced famine, poverty persists in Asia, particularly in South Asia, which is home to more poor people than sub-Saharan Africa. The Green Revolution doubled annual cereal production to nearly 800 million tons with most countries achieving self-sufficiency in food grains, but refining strategies will be necessary to address poverty more effectively.

The CA is a multi-institute international initiative that explores innovative responses to the challenges in water management facing communities today. The Assessment is founded upon a retrospective analysis of the costs, benefits and impacts of the last fifty years of water development. It will assemble a much needed overarching picture on the water-food-livelihoods-environment nexus to guide investment and management decisions in the near future-- taking into account their potential impact over the next 50 years. This will enhance food and environmental security in support of the Millennium Development Goals.

Land degradation is usually associated with land use practices. However, the choice of those practices is often influenced by factors outside the spatial confines of the farm or village. By examining land degradation problems through a multiple-scale approach, it is possible to better understand the interconnections and drivers. Such knowledge can be used to inform policies to reverse degradation and help ensure that new policies do not have unintended consequences.

IWMI research on wastewater use looks at productive and sustainable options in low-income countries with rapidly growing populations. This ongoing program of research is supported by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), and Canada's International Development Resource Centre (IDRC).

Although sub-Saharan countries potentially have sufficient water resources to meet their future needs, most will not be in a position to actually harness and use these resources. In a climate of declining donor investments, growing water scarcity and lack of access to international markets, it is imperative that more innovative and costeffective techniques are identified to enable the continent's poorest communities to achieve food security. One possible method is harvesting rainwater. IWMI research has highlighted potential models, and offers recommendations for propagating these approaches elsewhere.

Small-scale irrigation and water-harvesting technologies can have a direct impact on some of the world's poorest people. But which technologies provide the greatest benefits? What factors encourage or impede their adoption? And what is the potential effect of widespread use on the environment and other water users in a basin? Part one of a two-part exploration.

When drought hits, the media is flooded with reports on starving communities, rioting farmers, and the outpouring of food aid from the international community. But very little is said about the positive steps farmers and water managers can take to cope with drought conditions.

Tapping and using groundwater in a sustainable way is a formidable challenge that few developing countries and local communities have been able to meet. The problem is a pressing one, with crises beginning to emerge in Asia and a serious risk to food security in India and China, where up to 25 percent of the harvest is at risk due to falling water tables, according to recent IWMI research.

Mian Abdul Wahid, Munir Ahmad and Naeem Akhtar--farmers in Pakistan's Punjab Province--are the first participants in an ambitious experiment, which aims to transfer the management of much of the province's sub-regional irrigation system to the responsibility of farmers.

As partners in the World Water Vision process, scientists from the International Water Management Institute have contributed analysis and research thinking to the Vision's report, Water for Food and Rural Development. This research offers new perspectives on water scarcity and its links to food security; the productivity of water in irrigated agriculture; strategies for water storage and groundwater; and gender, water, poverty issues.

IWMI will continue to focus on its core activity of applied scientific research on integrated water resources management. The value of this work will be enhanced by IWMI's parallel priority--to help governments and institutions use IWMI findings and tools to improve their water management situations, says IWMI Director General, David Seckler. In this interview he discusses the main points of IWMI's new draft strategy.

As the world wakens to the reality that water is a re source that is finite and becoming increasingly scarce (see Making real water savings to offset water scarcity, IWMI News, Vol. 2. No. 2.), science requires better tools to understand and manage it. Three IWMI scientists have developed a promising way to examine water basins more closely and efficiently, thus enabling better conservation of this precious resource.

Nearly 1.4 billion people- more than one third of the population of developing countries-- live in regions that will experience severe water scarcity by 2025. Slightly more than 1 billion people live in arid regions that will face absolute water scarcity. Around 350 million more, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, will face economic water scarcity-- where the potential water resources are sufficient to meet reasonable needs by 2025 but where they will need to develop water storage at considerable cost.

The idea of treating water as an economic good has wide support. But the role of water-as a basic need, a merit good, and a social, economic, financial, and environmental resource- makes the selection of an appropriate set of prices exceptionally difficult. Also, the application of price-based instruments is particularly difficult in the case of water. This is because the flow of water through a water basin is complex, and provides wide scope for external influences, market failures, and high transaction costs.

Important basic information on irrigated agriculture system performance can be gained by measuring the outputs against the key inputs of land and water. By standardizing this process, the performance of different types of irrigated agriculture systems in diverse areas can be compared.