Suchergebnisse

In Wheeler, S. A. (Ed.). Water markets: a global assessment. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing ; Water markets are a potential approach for reallocating and improving the efficiency of water use in river basins in which water resources are under stress as a consequence of demographic and economic pressures. However, establishing water markets is not easy and to be successful a wide range of context specific criteria, relating to the legal and institutional framework as well as political and economic conditions, must be met. We applied the Water Market Readiness Assessment framework proposed by Wheeler et al. (2017) to investigate whether adequate policy and governance arrangements were in place to enable water markets to effectively operate in the countries of the Lower Mekong River Basin. We identify a number of key gaps and conclude that more conventional regulatory approaches, along with integrated basin planning and management, will likely better serve the communities and environments of the region.

In the Blue Nile Basin of Ethiopian highlands, rainfall distribution is extremely uneven both spatially and temporally. Drought frequently results in crop failure, while high rainfall intensities result in low infiltration and high runoff causing soil erosion and land degradation. These combined factors contribute to low agricultural productivity and high levels of food insecurity. Poor land management practices coupled with lack of effective rainwater management strategies aggravate the situation. Over the past two decades, however, the Government of Ethiopia has attempted to address many of these issues through a large-scale implementation of a number of soil and water conservation measures. Despite the success of interventions, uptake and adoption remains low. The conceptual framework of this study is based on the premise that farmers are more likely to adopt a combination of rainwater management technologies as adaptation mechanism against climate variability and agricultural production constraints. This contrasts the previous work that typically examined a single technology without considering the interdependence between technologies. Data used in this study come from household survey in seven watersheds in the Ethiopian Blue Nile Basin. A multivariate probit model was used to account for the potential correlation and interdependence of various components of rainwater management technologies. Our results suggest that rainwater management technologies are related with each other; hence, any effort to promote the adoption of rainwater management technologies has to consider such interdependence of technologies, or failure to do so may mask the reality that farmers face a set of choices in their adoption decisions.

Across Africa and Asia water resources are being affected by a complex mixture of social, economic, and environmental factors. These include climate change and population growth, food prices,oil prices, financial disruptions, and political fluctuations. The need to produce more food will have one of the largest impacts on water and will continue to re-shape the patterns of agricultural water use in major food-growing regions.With this increasing demand on water for agriculture, from large-scale irrigation to intensification of rainfed systems, it is becoming increasingly important to ensure that water resources decision-making has access to information that captures the spectrum of water uses, across seasons, and over time. Furthermore, the major sectors that place demands on water and otherwise affect the resource need water-related information to inform their decisions. In this paper we consider two cases where the range of agricultural water management uses have been examined. We examine the methodologies and approaches used, the utility of this information to decision-making in the water and agricultural sectors, and the limitations of the information gathered.

Located on the Bahr el Jebel in South Sudan, the Sudd is one of the largest floodplain wetlands in the world. Seasonal inundation drives the hydrologic, geomorphological, and ecological processes, and the annual flood pulse is essential to the functioning of the Sudd. Despite the importance of the flood pulse, various hydrological interventions are planned upstream of the Sudd to increase economic benefits and food security. These will not be without consequences, in particular for wetlands where the biological productivity, biodiversity, and human livelihoods are dependent on the flood pulse and both the costs and benefits need to be carefully evaluated. Many African countries still lack regional baseline information on the temporal extent, distribution, and characteristics of wetlands, making it hard to assess the consequences of development interventions. Because of political instability in Sudan and the inaccessible nature of the Sudd, recent measurements of flooding and seasonal dynamics are inadequate. Analyses of multitemporal and multisensor remote sensing datasets are presented in this paper, in order to investigate and characterize flood pulsing within the Sudd wetland over a 12-month period. Wetland area has been mapped along with dominant components of open water and flooded vegetation at five time periods over a single year. The total area of flooding (both rain and river fed) over the 12 months was 41 334 km2, with 9176 km2 of this constituting the permanent wetland. Mean annual total evaporation is shown to be higher and with narrower distribution of values from areas of open water (1718 mm) than from flooded vegetation (1641 mm). Although the exact figures require validation against ground-based measurements, the results highlight the relative differences in inundation patterns and evaporation across the Sudd.

Abstract Background The widespread land degradation in Ethiopia has necessitated extensive soil and water conservation interventions over the last four decades. Despite these the degradation of land continues. The conservation interventions in most cases were, and still are, predominantly top-down approaches following government directives. The success of these blanket approaches has been limited and an alternative approach needs to be devised. This paper attempts to identify alternative options for selecting appropriate soil and water conservation technologies based on the biophysical suitability of the landscape. Results The results of this study suggest that with appropriate soil and water conservation measures, it is possible to reduce soil loss within the Blue Nile Basin by up to 600 million tons 46% within 5–10. The statistics on net soil loss reduction also indicate that successful implementation of conservation measures in only four administrative zones (out of 17) can potentially reduce up to 60% of the total soil loss in the Basin. Conclusion Landscape level modeling of soil and water conservation has enabled identification of appropriate conservation measures that can are suited to particular biophysical niches. A targeted approach to soil and water conservation is more efficient in terms of both financing and labour, in contrast to the traditional blanket approaches of the past.

Located on the Bahr el Jebel in South Sudan, the Sudd is one of the largest floodplain wetlands in the world. Seasonal nundation drives thehydrologic, geomorphological, and ecological processes, and the annual flood pulse is essential to the functioning of the Sudd. Despite the importance of the flood pulse, various hydrological interventions are planned upstream of the Sudd to increase economic benefits and food security. These will not be without consequences, in particular for wetlands where the biological productivity, biodiversity, and human livelihoods are dependent on the flood pulse and both the costs and benefits need to be carefully evaluated. Many African countries still lack regional baseline information on the temporal extent, distribution, and characteristics of wetlands, making it hard to assess the consequences of development interventions. Because of political instability in Sudan and the inaccessible nature of the Sudd, recent measurements of flooding and seasonal dynamics are inadequate. Analyses of multitemporal and multisensor remote sensing datasets are presented in this paper, in order to investigate and characterize flood pulsing within the Sudd wetland over a 12-month period. Wetland area has been mapped along with dominant components of open water and flooded vegetation at five time periods over a single year. The total area of flooding (both rain and river fed) over the 12 months was 41 334 km2, with 9176 km2 of this constituting the permanent wetland. Mean annual total evaporation is shown to be higher and with narrower distribution of values from areas of open water (1718 mm) than from flooded vegetation (1641 mm). Although the exact figures require validation against ground-based measurements, the results highlight the relative differences in inundation patterns and evaporation across the Sudd.

Agriculture is the main sector of the Ethiopian economy, as is the case in many sub-Saharan African countries. In this region, rainfall distribution is extremely uneven both spatially and temporally. Drought frequently results in crop failure, while high rainfall intensities result in low infiltration and high runoff, causing soil erosion and land degradation, which contribute to low agricultural productivity and high levels of food insecurity. High population growth and cultivation of steep and marginal lands, together with poor land management practices and lack of effective rainwater management strategies, aggravate the situation. Over the past two decades, the Government of Ethiopia has attempted to address these issues through the large-scale implementation of a range of soil and water conservation measures, including stone terraces, soil bunds and area enclosures. Despite these efforts, adoption of the interventions remains low. Studies from the Ethiopian Highlands show that the adoption of rainwater management technologies is influenced by a variety of factors, including biophysical characteristics such as topography, slope, soil fertility, rainfall amount and variability. However, even when technologies are appropriate to a particular biophysical setting, they may not be implemented, because farmers usually consider a variety of factors when making their decisions to adopt technologies. Thus, gaining an understanding of the factors that influence the adoption of rainwater management technologies is crucial for improved management of land and water resources. In this context, this study has been carried out within the framework of the Nile Basin Development Challenge (NBDC) project of the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF), which aims to improve rural livelihoods and their resilience through a landscape approach to rainwater management in the Ethiopian part of the Blue Nile River Basin.

In the Blue Nile basin, crop cultivation is predominantly rainfed and water availability is highly variable across both space and time. As a result, it often constitutes a limiting factor for reaching full agricultural potential in the region. While one third of the basin is estimated to have no soil moisture limitations, the remaining two thirds are crop water constrained in various ways. Analysis shows that across approximately 40% of the basin available soil moisture is utilized sub-optimally with smart management and crop water limitations can be alleviated. In contrast, across a further 25% of the basin, water deficits strongly limit plant growth. While rainfed agriculture is still possible in some of these areas, appropriate management is even more important. A great deal of variation also exists in terms of market access for agricultural inputs and produce. Travel time to markets in the basin can be up to 12 hours. One's distance to market centres influences the accessibility of farm inputs such as fertilizers, improved seeds and veterinary services. Inaccessibility vs. accessibility to population dense areas also determines the potential for agricultural production and the marketing of crops and livestock products, in particular for perishable produce. To capture the complexity and heterogeneity regarding both crop water limitations and agricultural market access, this study combines information on rainwater management potential and market proximity to map so-called water investment domains (WID). Context-specific recommendations for each of the domains are provided. In the short term, the results point to a need for agricultural produce strategies that are spatially differentiated and in the longer term for investment in infrastructure in order to enable full utilization of the agricultural potential across the entire basin. The results are intended to guide policymakers and other rural development actors in the identification of appropriate investment decisions and for improved planning of rural development strategies. Thus, the study aligns to the 'water-centred agricultural growth' strategy adopted by the Ethiopian Government, developed in response to the poverty and food security challenges faced in the country. The approach is widely applicable, easily replicable and can be used to inform decision-makers beyond the Blue Nile basin.

Wetlands are too often perceived as standalone elements and are poorly integrated into river basin management. The Ramsar Convention recognizes the critical linkage between wetlands, water and river basin management; the governments that are party to the Convention have committed to conserving their wetlands within a framework of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). The �Critical Path� approach and related guidance have been adopted by Contracting Parties of the Ramsar Convention in order to effectively integrate wetland conservation and management into river basin management planning and decision-making. However, despite international acceptance of the approach, it is not widely implemented. This paper provides one of the first case study based assessments of the Critical Path approach. The analysis of two contrasting Ramsar sites is presented in order to better understand the barriers to implementation in different development contexts. These are the Lobau wetland in Austria, where management institutions and regulatory frameworks are highly developed; and the Inner Niger Delta in Mali, where the capacity to implement IWRM is less evolved. A planning approach is proposed which involves structured and transparent methods for assessing ecosystem services and institutional capacity, and is suitable as a tool for identifying, prioritizing and negotiating trade-offs in ecosystem services and improving livelihoods. Based on the analysis, two main barriers to implementation are identified; mismatch between local and national or basin level priorities, and a lack of recognition of the ecosystem services provided by wetlands.

Wetlands are too often perceived as standalone elements and are poorly integrated into river basin management. The Ramsar Convention recognizes the critical linkage between wetlands, water and river basin management; the governments that are party to the Convention have committed to conserving their wetlands within a framework of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). The "Critical Path? approach and related guidance have been adopted by Contracting Parties of the Ramsar Convention in order to effectively integrate wetland conservation and management into river basin management planning and decision-making. However, despite international acceptance of the approach, it is not widely implemented. This paper provides one of the first case study based assessments of the Critical Path approach. The analysis of two contrasting Ramsar sites is presented in order to better understand the barriers to implementation in different development contexts. These are the Lobau wetland in Austria, where management institutions and regulatory frameworks are highly developed; and the Inner Niger Delta in Mali, where the capacity to implement IWRM is less evolved. A planning approach is proposed which involves structured and transparent methods for assessing ecosystem services and institutional capacity, and is suitable as a tool for identifying, prioritizing and negotiating trade-offs in ecosystem services and improving livelihoods. Based on the analysis, two main barriers to implementation are identified; mismatch between local and national or basin level priorities, and a lack of recognition of the ecosystem services provided by wetlands.