IWMI at World Water Week 2020

Climate change remains a significant threat to farm households, especially in developing countries. It exacerbates their vulnerability to food insecurity by reducing agricultural productivity and raising agricultural production costs. Adoption of climate smart-agricultural (CSA) practices is a promising alternative to build resilient farm households. In this study, we assessed the impacts of adopting CSA practices on climate resilience and vulnerability among farm households in Bale-Eco Region, Ethiopia. A power calculation was used to determine the sample size, and 404 farm households were randomly selected to collect data using structured questionnaire. We estimated household climate resilience index using categorical principal component analysis, and vulnerability index using vulnerability as expected poverty approach. Endogenous switching regression model, which is conditional on the adoption of multiple CSA practices and used to control selection bias and unobserved heterogeneity, was used to assess the impacts of CSA practices on household climate resilience and vulnerability. We employed counterfactual approaches to assess the impacts. The results show that the average treatment effects for most CSA practices are statistically significant and positive for resilience, but negative for vulnerability. This provides empirical support for interventions in climate-smart agriculture, which can help farm households build resilience and reduce vulnerability. We, therefore, suggest that agricultural policies should encourage the adoption of CSA practices and provide incentive packages to farm households that promote this.

Market is the structure for the development and delivery of innovations that are able to address environmental, societal, and economic challenges. The lack of enabling conditions for market development has resulted in low investment levels and economic stagnation, impacting livelihoods in Africa. Although there have been efforts to implement market-driven reforms, challenges such as inadequate policies, weak legal frameworks, transparency issues and bureaucratic inefficiencies pose significant risks for public and private investments and for their potential to reach the target beneficiaries. This situation also discourages development partners and businesses from investing in the region.Technical assistance is crucial to improve the investment climate. This paper presents a framework to help governments create a more conducive environment for agricultural market development and the private sector to navigate through the existing challenges. Traditional technical assistance practices have faced criticism for adopting a one-size-fits-all approach that overlooks local contexts. Recently, however, there has been a shift towards more context-based and adaptive assistance, which informs this framework. This framework emphasizes key elements that contribute to an enabling environment, including institutions, such as policies, regulations, and legal frameworks, as well as clear market and regulatory information that help reduce transaction costs. The framework is theoretically based on new institutional economics and political economy approaches. It focuses on assistance in three areas with three categories of delivery partners: policy support to governments, institutional capacity strengthening (especially of National Agricultural Research and Extension Systems) and (agri)business acceleration support to small- and medium-scale enterprises. Through such assistance, this framework seeks to help create an enabling environment for the delivery of innovations that offer solutions to emerging climate, societal and economic crises. These solutions, especially those developed and scaled by the private sector, are targeted toward recipients such as farmers (including women and the youth), marginalized groups, displaced communities, refugees and migrants. The framework utilizes value chain and market development as the primary delivery structures. This framework has guided several recent enabling environment assistance practices under CGIAR’s International Water Management Institute (IWMI). This paper explores these practices and positions CGIAR as a strong technical assistance partner. While this framework offers a systematic approach to analyzing the enabling environment, the technical assistance driven by this framework promotes collaboration and co-creation. It actively engages governments, national research and extension offices, farmers and other stakeholders in influencing policies and business transaction advisories that directly benefit them. Furthermor

The Al Murunah project seeks to improve water security in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) by integrating nature-based solutions for water and agricultural water management strategies (Resilient Nature-Based Water Solutions, RNBWS). The “High-Resolution Climate Change Downscaling for Resilient Nature-Based Water Solutions in the MENA Region” webinar showcased the Al Murunah Project’s groundbreaking findings and insights that can shape the future of sustainable water management in the region. The webinar’s aims were to: 1) disseminate technical findings from high-resolution, bias-corrected climate change downscaling activities (full report and data available here) and 2) describe how they are being used in the Al Murunah pilot projects and can be used more widely. It focused on how data-driven insights are informing the planning and implementation of resilient nature-based water solutions (RNBWS) demonstration projects in the four pilot basins of Abu Al-Matamir (Egypt), Wadi Seer (Jordan), Ras Baalbeck Basin (Lebanon) and Wadi Al-Faria’a (OPT). The webinar highlighted the need for localized, high-resolution (temporal and spatial) climate data to address the MENA region’s unique challenges. The study data is instrumental not only for sustainable water management but also for driving broader climate resilience initiatives rooted in community engagement. A key highlight of the webinar was the presentation of the Bias-Corrected Statistical Disaggregation (BCSD) method, a cutting-edge approach for generating precise and more accurate climate projections. The model outputs explain the rising intensity of extreme weather events such as heatwaves and droughts, underscore the need for proactive planning and interventions. The importance of partnerships in turning these findings into actionable solutions was also underscored. Local communities play a central role in the project, with their insights ensuring that interventions are context-specific and sustainable, while gender inclusion and diverse stakeholder consultations are critical for equitable outcomes, particularly in addressing the needs of vulnerable populations.

Biogas technology offers a promising pathway for circular bioeconomy transitions in the Global South by turning organic waste into clean energy and nutrient-rich byproducts. Through anaerobic digestion, this approach supports climate mitigation, reduces environmental pollution, and enhances energy access and rural livelihoods. However, large-scale implementation remains limited due to complex barriers spanning political, financial, social, and technical dimensions. Drawing on case studies from Asia and Africa, this report identifies key drivers of successful biogas programs—including strong policy support, financing mechanisms, market development, and community engagement—while underscoring challenges such as fragmented governance, high upfront costs, and low public acceptance. Overcoming these requires integrated strategies that promote enabling environments, capacity building, standardization, and investment readiness. Scaling biogas technologies in low- and middle-income countries can catalyze sustainable development by aligning climate action with inclusive waste management and renewable energy.

Climate change is projected to notably impact water requirements and crop yield; therefore, it is imperative to quantify climate risk and devise climate-resilient field management practices. This study applied the AquaCrop model to Tulsipur, a sub-metropolitan city located in Western Nepal. The model was calibrated and validated on a field scale, and various scenarios were analysed for baseline (2010–2020) and future (2021–2100) periods to formulate workable management strategies for irrigation and fertilizer applications. Results showed that a deficit irrigation strategy could lead to 81% fewer requirements for irrigation in rice and 24% in wheat at the cost of a minimal (~1%) reduction in yield. Water requirement is projected to decrease and crop yield to increase for both crops for all future scenarios, except wheat water requirement, where water requirement is projected to increase by up to 13% in the future. Rainfed irrigation leads to extremely high variance in crop yields. Deficit irrigation under the nationally recommended fertilizer dose is recommended as a better option to develop climate resiliency in cereal yield in the study area.

This study aimed to assess the impact of urbanization on land use dynamics and its consequences on the local climate of the town of Bingerville for the period from 1990 to 2020. Land cover classification was based on Landsat data for the years 1990, 2000, 2015, and 2020 in order to perform a diachronic analysis of surface conditions. Precipitation and temperature data were used to assess local climate trends. A number of extreme precipitation indices (PRCPTOT, RR1, SDII, CWD, CDD, R95p, and R99p) and temperature indices (TN10p, TN90p, TX10p, TX90p, and WSDI) were calculated. The results show a sharp increase in the built-up area from 1990 to 2020, with 32.11 km² (29.68% per year), compared with forest or crops, i.e., 19.09 km² (0.62% per year), and scrubland or fallow land, i.e., 13.21 km²(1.39% per year). However, extreme precipitation indices such as annual precipitation (PRCPTOT), rainy days (RR1), consecutive rainy days (CWD), and extremely rainy days (R99p) have increased from 2011 to 2020. In addition, buildings are correlated with RR1 and CWD. This could be one of the key factors contributing to the occurrence of flooding in the town of Bingerville, which is probably linked to urbanization. As for extreme temperature indices, most show a statistically insignificant trend, except for cold days (TX10p) and hot days (TX90p), which have a statistically significant trend of 0.004 and 0.018, respectively. This means that there have been changes in these two indices. Consecutive hot days (WSDI) and TX90p increased from 2010 to 2016, and buildings also correlated with these two indices. Consequently, changes in land use could have an influence on local temperature through the urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon. However, uncontrolled urbanization has an impact on the local climate. The town authorities need to be aware of this, and be rigorous in this area, to avoid future disasters in Bingerville.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, with its arid and semi-arid climate, faces profound challenges in managing limited water resources. These challenges are further intensified by political tensions and socioeconomic inequalities, often resulting in water being an essential element in conflicts and tensions. Particularly during the last decade, the number of conflicts involving water has increased dramatically in MENA. This research explores the dynamics of water’s role in conflicts, actors and scales of conflict across five fragile MENA countries, where it serves as a weapon, a catalyst, and a casualty. The analysis revealed a significant increase in the number of water-related incidents during the last two decades in these countries, with devastating implications on multiple social, economic, and security dimensions. The study suggests a concentric circle transformation (CCT) framework with three tiers of strategies: foundational, supportive, and expansive to help move from water-conflict to water-peace in MENA. These strategies, with examples of interventions, support transformation to water-peace by integrating soft interventions like empowering local communities, raising awareness, with hard interventions such as building resilient infrastructures and leveraging the power of innovative technological solutions. The framework offers scalable and adaptable solutions for regions facing similar challenges globally.

The transformation of gender roles and responsibilities have implications for how men and women and other social groups are impacted by and cope differently with the changing climate. However, such dynamics are often not considered in formulating and implementing climate resilience interventions. Through a case study in rural communities of the northwestern part of Ghana, Africa, using a mixed-methods approach, this paper investigates the gendered nature of transformations and the implications for climate resilience building. The study found that compared to ten years ago, women have increase access to farmland, participate more in agricultural development decision-making, better access to credit, and more diverse livelihood pathways. Nevertheless, women’s ability to adapt to climate change impacts like droughts is worsening because of cultural norms that restrict women’s control over land resources and their limited adaptive capacities. To achieve positive gendered transformation outcomes while minimising negative social transformation trade-offs, policy makers must rethink the strategies for building climate resilience. There is the need to focus on strategies that support the formulation and implementation of well-funded and targeted interventions with a perspective on gender realities and dynamics that provide women with real resources and agency, enabling institutional support and transformative opportunities.

Understanding current and future crop water demand is crucial for improving agricultural productivity and managing long-term water resources in a changing climate. This study aimed to estimate how the crop water demand will change under different water management practices and climate change scenarios. The field experiment using irrigation decision-making tools was carried out in 2016 and 2017 in Lemo, Ethiopia. Crop and water management data were collected on cabbage and carrot production. The field data were used to estimate the crop coefficient (Kc), and the results were compared with the simulated Kc with the Agricultural Policy Environmental eXtender (APEX) model. Predicted future climate data were used in APEX to evaluate the effect of climate change on future crop water requirements and Kc. The field data analysis indicated that, on average, farmer traditional practice (FTP) treatments used more water than wetting front detector (WFD) treatments. Using the soil water balance method, the average of the two treatments’ Kc values at the initial, mid, and late stages was 0.71, 1.21, and 0.8 for cabbage and 0.69, 1.27, and 0.86 for carrot, respectively. The APEXsimulated Kc has captured the FAO Kc pattern very well with the coefficient of determination (R-square) ranging between 0.5 and 0.74. The APEX simulation and the soil water balance estimated Kc also indicated a strong association with R-square ranging between 0.5 and 0.75 for cabbage and 0.66 and 0.96 for carrot. The projected climate change analysis indicated that the crop water demand is expected to increase in the future due to increasing temperatures. Under climate change scenarios, the growing season potential evapotranspiration will increase by 2.5, 5.1, and 6.0% in 2025, 2055, and 2085 compared to the baseline period, respectively. The simulated Kc indicated a higher coefficient of variation in 2085 with 19% for cabbage and 24% for carrot, while the 2025 period simulated Kc indicated the least coefficient of variation (16 and 21% for cabbage and carrot, respectively). The study shows that current irrigation planning with the available water resources should take into account higher crop water requirements in the region to reduce water scarcity risks.