It’s all about what we know and how we know it. On Monday we’re co-convening an event in Sri Lanka with the Women for Water Partnership [add screen grab of banner] entitled ‘Gender, Agricultural Water and ‘Big Data’ — Practical Steps and Forward Thinking under the SDGs’. With participants from over 20 countries spanning Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America we’ll explore how to set up a process to improve knowledge and data on gender and agricultural water. Why is this important? Simply put, over 70% of water abstracted goes to produce our food and fibre requirements and as these grow in the coming years pressures on water resources and those using these resources will increase drastically.
Gender is a key component in power relations and governance surrounding the relationships that will develop as these pressure grow — we need to know what’s happening on the ground, what policy options are important to develop and how the practice of water management can be improved to achieved more gender-equitable outcomes. Then on Wednesday, we’re in Addis Ababa with a group of experts holding a roundtable on a similar theme, but with a specific focus on basin-level understanding of how gender-disaggregated data can be sourced and used most effectively. Finally, we reach World Food Day itself and with the Nile Basin Initiative, we are convening a final stakeholder consultation in Entebbe with a focus on practical support to the NBI and other institutions that try and generate basin-wide benefits for peoples and ecosystems sharing a single resources through better water management at all scales.Without basin-wide approaches, the capacity of the Nile and other systems to generate the kinds of increases required in food production for a hungry 9 billion people by 2050 will be severly curtailed.
So, please join us in reading and contributing to this blog. For further information please contact j.paris@cgiar.org
Alan Nicol
Theme GP Leader
Population pressure and increasing water competition in a changing climate require us to take stock of the availability and use of water across scales. Water availability not only influences farmers’ commercial prospects but also irrigation-related enterprises and agri-businesses. Greater water scarcity could jeopardize irrigation and agricultural markets while excessive water use can lead to declining ecosystems, water quality and soil health. IWMI advises development partners and the public and private sectors on all aspects of water resource availability and use through a variety of advanced modeling and remote-sensing products and tools, including 
The ability of farmers to engage in or expand irrigation depends on the prevailing socioeconomic, ecological and political contexts, which are often complex, non-linear and changeable. Overcoming systemic barriers to farmer-led irrigation development while taking advantage of existing opportunities 
A lack of affordable credit, particularly for women and resource-poor farmers, is one of the main barriers to expanding farmer-led irrigation in low- and middle-income countries. But 
Scaling farmer-led irrigation requires strengthening human capacity and knowledge exchange among all actors and stakeholders involved. IWMI takes an action research approach, working with national and international research institutions, governments, extension agents and public and private organizations to co-develop the scaling ecosystem and strengthen capacity to drive scaling networks and collective action. We support the