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The management of water resources is being transformed in South Africa. All water users, especially the small-scale ones, are now invited to participate in this movement. This report reviews the process of inclusion of small-scale users in the new large-scale Water User Associations (WUA).Considering the difficulties encountered in this process, this report also recommend external monitoring after the transformation of an Irrigation Board into a WUA. This method may also facilitate assessment of the inclusion of small-scale users into catchment management agencies, and water resource management organizations.
A practical, bipartisan call to action from the world’s leading thinkers on the environment and sustainability Sustainability has emerged as a global priority over the past several years. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and the adoption of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals through the United Nations have highlighted the need to address critical challenges such as the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, water shortages, and air pollution. But in the United States, partisan divides, regional disputes, and deep disagreements over core principles have made it nearly impossible to chart a course toward a sustainable future. This timely new book, edited by celebrated scholar Daniel C. Esty, offers fresh thinking and forward-looking solutions from environmental thought leaders across the political spectrum. The book’s forty essays cover such subjects as ecology, environmental justice, Big Data, public health, and climate change, all with an emphasis on sustainability. The book focuses on moving toward sustainability through actionable, bipartisan approaches based on rigorous analytical research.
The degradation of land and water resources as a result of agricultural activity has had an enormous impact on human societies and economies. It is predicted that, by 2025, most developing countries will face physical or economic water scarcity, compounded by land degradation. In order to alleviate this problem, an advanced understanding of the state of our water resources and the relationships between land use, water management and social systems is needed. Conserving Land, Protecting Water includes an overview of global patterns of land and water degradation and discusses new insights drawn from successful case studies on reversing soil and water degradation and their impact on food and environmental security.
Although the protection of the aquatic environment is high on the world water resources agenda, most developing countries still lack the technical and institutional capacity to establish environmental water allocation practices and policies. The existing methods of assessment of environmental water allocations are either complex and resource-intensive or not tailor-made for the specific conditions of a particular country or region. To promote emerging concepts of environmental flow assessment and management, it is important to change the dominant perception that environmental demand is the least important and create awareness among responsible authorities about existing methodologies and processes that should be followed. This report presents some of these approaches and illustrates their applicability in the specific context of the East Rapti River basin, which features one of the main tourist attractions of Nepal, the Chitwan National Park.
Due to inadequate rainfall, groundwater has acquired a vital role in the development of Pakistan's agricultural economy. However, a lack of awareness concerning the use of groundwater, either by itself or combined with canal water, has added large amounts of salt to the soil. As a result, large tracts of irrigated lands are already salinized, while many others are under threat. This report presents the results of a modeling study carried out to evaluate the long-term effects of a different quality of irrigation water on root zone salinity. The simulations were performed for the Rechna Doab (sub basin of the Indus Basin) in Pakistan, by using 15 years of actual rainfall and climatic data.
In this report, we test the hypothesis that the primary factors behind the farming system changes in Ban Lak Sip lay not in the village itself but rather in the broader Laotian social, economic and political setting. The study uses an integrated approach that examines both the physical and social dimensions of land use and soil erosion in Ban Lak Sip within this broader system environment.
The Uda Walawe Irrigation and Resettlement Project (UWIRP) located in the Southern dry zone of Sri Lanka was initiated in the early 1950s. The original plan for the UWIRP was a highly ambitious social, economic and physical engineering project aimed at creating a modern, profitable agriculture sector. This report examines the history of water resources development and investment decisions for the UWIRP over a period of 50 years and uncovers underlying processes that shaped the evolution of the project and highlights the limitation of viewing development as a mere set of technical and social engineering endeavors.
This report draws on a survey and case study evidence from 28 watershed management groups in Haryana to argue that participatory watershed management projects need not necessarily safeguard the interests of poorer rural households.