Land, Water and Livelihoods

Goal

Identifying and testing high-potential interventions to conserve resources and increase land and water productivity for improved livelihoods, health, and equity across the continuum of water management options, within integrated social-ecological landscapes.

Overview

Food security remains elusive for more than one billion people worldwide.  About 60 percent of the rural population in tropical and sub-tropical countries experience declines in household food production. Poor farmers function within wider landscapes and political contexts which impact on their capacity to improve their livelihoods and They are driven onto marginal lands by population or policy forces, for example, and poorly designed interventions can result in resource degradation, or reduce access of the poorest to the resources they need. Poor land and water management practices and policies accelerate the degradation of agricultural lands that directly impact smallholders, and also harm downstream producers and the environment.Theme Two integrates multiple uses within landscapes, multiple stakeholders, and multiple management actors and options. This theme examines the broad range of land and water management solutions that include elements of groundwater management, institutional and policy analysis including

The theme begins with interventions that focus on the household and community scale and encompasses catchment and landscape scales to ensure sustainability and account for off-site impacts.  It adopts an action research approach that integrates national agricultural research and extension systems (NARES), farmer groups, water resources managers and NGOs into the research process to ensure the relevance and uptake of research findings, and collaborates with international research partners to contribute to scientific excellence.

Key Research Areas

		Intensifying Low Productivity Systems
		To identify and research technical, institutional and policy options for small-scale water management that can increase productivity and socio-ecological resilience of poor farmers, and address sustainable use of soil and water resources in rainfed and irrigated systems.
		Multiple Use Catchment and Systems
		To provide tools and strategies that improve water productivity and maintain landscape integrity to maximize environmental goods and services including agriculture, livestock and fisheries production, and ensure equitable accrual of benefits from increased production.
		Rehabilitation of Degraded Lands
		To contribute to the rehabilitation of degraded lands through testing and local adaptation of management systems that restore resource quality and maximize sustainable use of low quality soils and water.