• How can wetlands be managed in a way that they contribute to livelihoods as well as maintain their ecosystem functioning?
• What are the trade-offs among different uses of wetland water?
• What are the trade-offs between each of the agricultural water uses and environmental use?
• What, if any, are the negative impacts of agricultural use of wetland water?

Objectives

• The primary project objective is to increase capacity for management of wetlands through generation of new knowledge on wetland functioning, and development of sustainable land management options for wetlands.
  Specific objectives are to:
• To generate new knowledge of the way that wetlands function, their processes and linkages with the surrounding catchment, the environmental and socio-economic implications of different interventions and management strategies and best practices for sustainable development.
• To formulate improved policies and strategies arising from increased knowledge and awareness of the role of wetlands in the landscape and their importance for sustaining livelihoods; and develop an integrated framework for technical, agronomic, socio-economic, and institutional interventions for sustainable wetland use in a participatory way with implementing agencies and farmers.
• To develop and apply a trade-offs based framework for making decisions about allocations of wetland resources to specific uses, including agriculture and to determine the trade-offs among different agricultural uses of wetland water and the trade-offs between each of the agricultural water uses and environmental use; develop guidelines on acceptable levels of wetland water use for agriculture; and encourage this as best practice.
• To develop and apply methodologies that enable explicit inclusion of the wetland management and sustainable use of natural resources in the catchment context, including environmental flows and climate change adaptation;
• To enhance capacity of wetland users, researchers, extension officers, natural resource managers, and policy makers through collaborative research, training, and sharing of methodologies and tools.

Methods

• The methods reported here are those that have been adopted for the southern Africa work. The research is following a multidisciplinary approach. As such a number of methods were used to collect data for the various disciplines.
  These include:
• Mapping wetlands was carried out using Landsat data with basin wide ground truthing. The study explored automated and semi-automated techniques and highlighted the strengths and limitations of various methods, approaches, and datasets used in mapping wetlands. Detailed information of the areas by land use type in the wetlands was produced and is available in map format. Additional information and maps are available at www.iwmidsp.org.
• Literature review and analysis of existing literature on wetlands, wetlands policies and legislation, and detailed case studies on local management and governance of wetland resources. Detailed case studies to capture information on impacts of land degradation related to wetland use, livelihoods and value of wetlands, land tenure systems in wetlands, and legal, policy, and institutional frameworks were carried out.
• Socio-economic surveys and the use of economic methods and tools for livelihoods analysis.
• Seasonal land use assessments to track to track the changes in land use and link these changes to hydrological and ecological changes. Such assessments also allow the measurement of the extent to which new croplands are being developed within the intact vegetation areas, providing an indication of the extent of the cumulative loss of the natural vegetation.
• Hydrological monitoring and modeling to establish the links between the wetland uses and hydrological functioning.

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