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Eight water hypotheses (Courtesy of the International Water Management Institute (IWRM), Pretoria. Full study available in the African Water Journal, Pilot Edition, December 2003.) 1. Investments in agricultural water use can yield high economic returns and benefit large numbers of people given the relatively high multiplier effects, provided that the right prices and market conditions prevail. As the focus of public sector investment projects broadens from increasing agricultural production to generating wider economic benefits such as poverty reduction, employment creation and income generation, it is necessary to understand both the direct and indirect impacts, through forward and backward linkages, increased local demand for goods and services, and output markets, of agricultural water use projects; their impacts at different levels (household, community, economy); and how their benefits are distributed among different sectors of society. Improved production will translate into enhanced incomes and livelihoods if there are good markets for products. Identifying and implementing appropriate policies will require addressing issues such as striking a balance between liberalization, globalization, and international agreements on the one hand, and competitiveness, tariffs and protection on the other. 2. Poverty reduction and economic growth can be achieved by judicious investments in both irrigation expansion and irrigation improvement. Irrigation schemes, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, have been `indicted' on account of their relatively high costs and disappointing results. But irrigation schemes can be appropriate under specific conditions such as: arid or semi-arid climate; adequate and reliable water supply that can be accessed cost-effectively; large flat areas of good well-drained soils; sufficient population density to enable labor-intensive agriculture and create demand for produce; appropriate policies and supporting institutions. There needs to be clear demarcation of roles and responsibilities between the different participants (government, individual farmers, farmer organizations, private sector), and there should be no ambiguities about the ownership of assets. Irrigation is a good example of a technology that requires a holistic approach. The absence of such an approach is one reason for the disappointing results and failures encountered. There is evidence from Asia that projects which include an action research component often achieve far higher returns (Merrey, 1997). 3. Water access for irrigation using affordable small-scale individualized technologies can make a dramatic contribution to household food security and potentially enhance market production and access to inputs, thereby allowing farmers to jump over the poverty line. In locations with market opportunities, water access is of even higher initial importance than nutrient access. Crossing over the poverty line is significantly tied to market access. If there is water access but no demand or fair prices paid for produce, the returns will not allow a farmer to make further investments. But even in the absence of market opportunities, inexpensive small-scale individualized technologies can still enable households to use small amounts of water to grow vegetables, provide water to livestock, or for supplementary irrigation of food grains and thus contribute to household food security. Market links, support services, and supportive policies are key constraints but can be addressed through the combined efforts of government, the private sector and NGOs. Quite often, the problem is not a lack of technologies but is related to poor mechanisms for promoting awareness, uptake and adoption. We hypothesize that such small-scale technologies offer a tremendous opportunity to help women farmers feed their families, reducing poverty and malnutrition. 4. The problems of nutrient depletion and degradation in production areas for urban consumption and waste accumulation in urban areas could be reversed through the recycling of nutrients in waste and wastewater. Some of the key problems identified in SSA are low soil fertility, soil degradation and environmental pollution. Export of plant nutrients in food and farm products carries large amounts of nutrients to population centers. After consumption, however, the nutrients are still present in many forms of waste, and are often simply discarded. Urban and peri-urban agriculture can play a key role in reducing these problems simultaneously and, so, need to be encouraged. Research on how to reduce the health risks related to the use of urban wastewater for crop production at farm, market and household levels, will allow irrigated urban and peri-urban agriculture to contribute to improved livelihoods and urban diets. 5. The wise and sustainable use of the natural resources and functions provided by wetlands offer an important opportunity to ensure the food and environmental security of significant numbers of rural poor. Wetlands sustain people's livelihoods through the provision of food, fiber, employment, medicine and cultural values and also support biodiversity, contribute to recreational activities, filter biodegradable wastes, regulate hydrological flow regimes, and control atmospheric gases through carbon sequestration. A major challenge is how to increase the agricultural utilization of wetlands without adversely affecting other beneficial functions. A sound wetlands knowledge base, encompassing their technical, social, ecological and political dimensions, has to be established, based on which decision-support tools for effective and equitable management of SSA wetlands could be developed. Sustainable use of wetlands can make an important contribution to poverty reduction throughout SSA, but unwise uses may lead to irreversible damage to ecosystems. 6. Significant scaling up of water collection, lifting and application technologies for agriculture in the upper and middle catchments of river basins can have major implications for other uses and users downstream, especially wetlands. There are many opportunities to achieve high levels of water productivity per drop of water consumed using these technologies. However, there are limits beyond which such technologies have significant downstream impacts, and these must be ascertained through field research and appropriate modeling and simulation tools. 7. Accounting for the needs of victims of the HIV-AIDS pandemic when promoting technological and institutional innovations will result in better quality of life for them and their households, and society in general. Some of the HIV-AIDS-related problems that arise in the agriculture sector are reduced availability of labor, diminished labor productivity, decay of property rights and inheritance systems, and undermining of the role that women play in SSA agriculture. Improving the access of HIV-AIDS affected households to water for both domestic and productive uses, and the promotion of labor saving agricultural technologies and management practices among them will result in significant benefits in their nutrition status.
8. Women farmers are more motivated to invest their labor and cash in improved soil and water conservation if their intra-household rights to land and benefits, and their own access to credits, markets, and inputs are better secured. It is widely recognized that women in sub-Saharan Africa play a pivotal role in agriculture, by providing labor to family fields and also as managers of their own fields. However, lack of secure access to land and limited access to credits, inputs, and markets, especially among young women, discourage them more than male farmers from making the investments required for better soil fertility, water conservation, higher yields, and better incomes for themselves and their dependents. There is evidence that women are often the losers when such opportunities arise as men exploit their advantages (Wooten, 2003). Relatively simple, cost-effective training, outreach, and enforceable commercial, legal, and policy measures have to be devised to allow the private and public sectors to better tap women's agricultural investment potential. 9. Developing and implementing effective strategies, policies and mechanisms to help poor people cope with risk and uncertainty associated with climate variability will help improve their livelihoods. The focus here is to provide guidance on how to reduce poor people's vulnerability to climate variability, especially `water risk' associated with both floods and droughts (agricultural and meteorological). This would involve analysis and characterization of climate variability and understanding its linkages with land and water management and their impacts on livelihoods. Opportunities and options for resilience-building and coping mechanisms must be better understood (Rockström, 2003). Strategies already in place for the assessment, prediction, monitoring and mitigation of climatic shocks will have to be evaluated, gaps identified and improvements proposed. Coping mechanisms are scale-dependent and will vary from individual households to local communities to catchments, as well as from national to international scales. Variability in rainfall, a major handicap, can often be buffered by supplementary supplies from surface or ground water. Rockström & Falkenmark (2000) have shown that dry spell and drought mitigation using (sub-) surface water resources can lead to doubling of on-farm yields in drought-prone ecosystems. The potential for joint use of multiple water sources (rain, ponds, rivers, piped water, groundwater) and multiple water uses (domestic, livestock, vegetable gardens) must also be better exploited.
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