Research Themes

This research theme seeks to identify and test high-potential interventions to conserve resources and increase land and water productivity for improved livelihoods, health and equity across the continuum of water management options, within integrated socio-ecological landscapes.

Intensifying Low Productivity Systems:
To identify and promote research on promising technologies and management approaches with potential to increase productivity and address sustainable use of soil and water resources in rain-fed and irrigated systems.

Multiple Use Catchments and Systems:
To provide tools and understanding that facilitate improved management of catchment landscapes to maximize environmental goods and services including agriculture and livestock production, biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and supplies of clean water.

Rehabilitation of Degraded Lands:
To contribute to rehabilitation of degraded lands by assessing trends and opportunities in land and water degradation, facilitating the expansion of “Bright Spots,” and testing local adaptation of state-of-the-art management systems that restore resource quality and maximize sustainable use of low-quality soils and water.

Food security remains elusive for more than 1 billion people worldwide. Despite the benefits of the Green Revolution, declines in household food production are commonplace for about 60 percent of the rural population in tropical and sub-tropical countries. The reasons for these declines are manifold. However, poor land and water management practices and policies are partly responsible for accelerating degradation on agricultural lands. While the effects of improper land and water use practices directly impact smallholders, they also cause off-site damage to downstream producers and the environment. It is well recognized that intensified land use in upper catchments, largely by poor farmers increasingly forced onto marginal lands, results in increased sediment discharge and elevated nutrient loads reducing water quality and availability downstream.

Since IWMI’s merger with the International Board for Soil Research and Management (IBSRAM) in 2001, issues of soil and land management were firmly placed in IWMI’s research agenda. For the first four years, the research concentrated on the essential link between soil and water productivity in three focus areas: rain-fed and small scale irrigation systems, catchment management and rehabilitation of degraded lands through the former Smallholder Land and Water Management theme. Building on the results of this research, the new Land, Water and Livelihoods theme was developed in an effort to specifically address high-potential interventions that improve the productivity of land and water resources for the rural poor.

The Land, Water and Livelihoods theme examines opportunities across the hydrologic cycle (green and blue water; surface and groundwater; quantity and quality) and rain-fed irrigation continuum to improve water and land productivity. This research theme draws primarily from IWMI’s former Smallholder Land and Water Management theme but examines a broader range of land and water management solutions by incorporating elements of groundwater management, institutional and policy analysis, and health impact assessment.

Smallholder farmers in Africa and Asia, particularly women, and those living in mixed use catchments, or facing constraints due to land and water degradation, will benefit from the methods, approaches and technologies in land and water management that are developed or made available through this project.
NARES will benefit from new knowledge generated by IWMI and by strengthening of individual and institutional capacity.
Researchers will benefit from new knowledge created by IWMI and a more effective range of techniques and tools.
Policymakers will have better options for sustainable natural resource management.
NGOs and farmer organizations will benefit by acquiring access to more efficient technologies for exploration and implementation.