Water is being referred to as the new oil, even though there are a few crucial differences that need to be highlighted. First, water is a resource that every living being needs in order to survive. Hence it has much more than an economic value. Access to water is a basic human right. Yet we have to manage with a limited amount of water. Here is where the water challenges lie.

Agriculture is the biggest user of water, and modern technology has made agriculture thirstier. But even more water is needed if we are to increase production for a growing population. So how do we increase the efficiency of water use in agriculture? There are two major routes to more efficient use:

1. stop over-exploiting water from concentrated sources, and
2. improve the use of rainwater.

There is a big potential here, keeping in mind that 70% of agriculture in the world is rainfed, and that there is still much local water wisdom waiting to be uncovered and given a boost.

But as this issue of Farming Matters shows, efficient use of water is about much more than adapting agricultural methods. Being a finite resource means that struggles for water are bound to happen, within households, within and between communities, watersheds, countries and regions. Last month we visited some Maasai villages in southern Kenya together with our partner organisation, ALIN. We met community leaders who complained about the fact that entrepreneurs had started floriculture projects in their area, resulting in an increased shortage of drinking water for their cattle. This is just one out of a myriad of examples of competing claims for water.

Building new systems of water governance and learning from age-old systems are the key to a balanced and inclusive development of agriculture. This issue of Farming Matters shows practical experiences and background information on how negotiation for water happens in different parts of the world. It provides examples of local solutions to global challenges and aims to stimulate you to reflect on what happens in your area!

Text: Edith van Walsum, director ileia

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Farming Matters welcomes comments, ideas and suggestions from its readers. Please send us an e-mail to ileia@ileia.org or write to P.O. Box 2067, 3800 CB Amersfoort, the Netherlands.

Local resources

Greetings from Flores, Indonesia. Your most recent volume was particularly interesting, so I’d like to share what we do with many farmer groups in our area. We prefer to mobilise local resources. We have set up Saving Loan Units (or UBSPs, Usaha Bersama Simpan Pinjam), and they all run on their own funds. We merely provide trainings, follow up visits and advice. And gradually their savings become bigger! To give the UBSPs money from outside would be just like “pouring a lot of water into a small half-full glass”: it can damage the glass itself. Very often we see that problems arise not only when there is no money; but often when there is too much money, but no good plan for using it wisely.

Tarsis Hurmali, Ayo Indonesia Foundation, Flores Organization for Rural Development, Flores, NTT, Indonesia

From the Brazilian GMO campaign

Your latest issue of Farming Matters described the efforts that AS-PTA and other partners at the GM Free Brazil Campaign are engaged in in order to stop the dissemination of GM crops. Readers may be interested to know that a court ruling now prohibits Bayer from marketing Liberty Link maize – which is resistant to the herbicide glufosinate – anywhere in the country. The federal judge Pepita Durski Tramontini from the Curitiba Environment Court also specifically revoked authorisation for the crop’s release in the north and northeast of Brazil due to the absence of any studies to show the potential impacts of this technology on the regional biomes. The ruling sets a R$ 50,000 per day fine for Bayer should the company fail to suspend the marketing, sowing, transportation, import and even disposal of Liberty Link maize with immediate effect. The court has also ordered the National Biosafety Committee to make companies’ applications publicly available. You can read more here: http://www. aspta.org.br/por-um-brasil-livre-detransgenicos/ updates

Gabriel B. Fernandes, AS-PTA, Brazil, via e-mail

Payment for Environmental Services (1)

This proposal is really a good way to improve or conserve biodiversity in developed countries, or in countries where the government and people are not corrupt. But in most developing countries, where there are very few efforts to conserve biodiversity and the environment, the governments are usually corrupt. This can be a serious problem as the PES approach is hardly possible without government involvement.

Edison Purba, University of Sumatera Utara, Medan, Indonesia, on our Open Forum

Payment for Environmental Services (2)

I’m not sure I understand why farmers in developing countries should be compelled to enter into these arrangements, which basically just seem like a way to make them clean up the mistakes of the industrial world. My questions would be, who makes the rules for what they do with their land? What kinds of stipulations are there? Why are they being made to fit into some scheme developed by the west? Honestly, I just see the potential here for more imperialist development schemes, and more exploitation (eco-friendly exploitation…ecoploitation?), whereby farmers lose their sovereignty (or any sovereignty that they have left). Who decides what has value? I really just see these payments for services arrangements as another way to control people, and to perpetuate a Euro-centric notion of what both the problems and solutions are.

S. White, on our Open Forum

More to read

Thanks for a nice “Money for farming” issue. As your magazine points out, value chain finance is a good way of increasing access to finance and reducing risks and costs. For those interested, a new book is now available from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and Practical Action Publishers. “Agricultural value chain finance” reviews many different experiences, and presents lessons drawn from several countries.

Calvin Miller, Group Leader of the Agribusiness and Finance Group, FAO, on our blog

The post Our readers write appeared first on Ileia.

It is widely estimated that, during the last 30 years, the world has lost between 30 and 50 percent of its biodiversity – as a result of urbanisation, industrialisation, or our overall interest in improving living conditions. It is frequently argued that biodiversity cannot compete with the economic value of alternative land uses, such as agriculture or mining, which generate incomes.

However, it is also recognised that natural ecosystems produce a wide range of environmental goods and services with an economic value, such as food and non-timber forest products, and others whose value is not always economically recognised, such as carbon sequestration or the regulation of water quality and quantity. Payments for Environmental Services (PES) seek to address this problem.

PES schemes are finance mechanisms designed to transfer rewards from those who benefit from environmental services to those who ensure that these benefits continue to be provided. The beneficiaries can include the private sector, such as industries or farmers, or public sector institutions, such as drinking water utilities. For those communities that manage land and other resources, PES is increasingly seen as a potential source of income to improve their livelihoods.

The post Payments for watershed services. PES = profits equally shared appeared first on Ileia.

Alongside the large-scale floods that fill the news these days, millions of hectares and people around the world are being affected by drought, with large areas suffering from severe drought and fires. The current tenor of these tragedies can be summed up as the result of water wasted during surplus months and used wastefully in scarce months.

Once the water problem was much less severe: population pressure was low and needs were limited – societies not only had reservoirs to conserve water sources. It is not for nothing that every mountain peak from which a stream flows is considered sacred almost all over the world. Buddhist teachers preached the need to conserve even a drop of water more than 2,000 years ago. Nobody could have imagined that, in many places, water would cost more than milk in 2010. Water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource. And yet so many people waste so much of it every day. How has this come to be?

Let us go into the past and try to understand why institutions for common property resource conservation emerged in the first place thousands of years ago. People seemed to have converted problems of risk into ones of uncertainty and tried to reduce their control, by creating randomness in the way resources were accessed. My feeling is that the elders realised that by creating an artificial scarcity of resources through institutions, they could justify allocative rules that were fair and just. Also, if communities were to be created, then water points could become meeting points where social and cultural exchanges took place and communities created. Shared futures were thus designed.

The introduction of markets made the individualisation of resources inevitable. Immediate consumption replaced deferred consumption. Satisfying all our needs at our own place rather than at our communal place became a lifestyle, a power and status symbol. Wasteful and redundant usage became the next logical step.

We have now reached a point in which negotiations to find any common ground for our shared resource use have become so difficult that wars seem the only alternative. Yet, I submit that peace is possible – through shared use patterns, and the creation of frugal cultures that impose an artificial scarcity on those who are used to wasteful resource use. We have to create new rituals, new institutions, new fashions and new trends. Water is too precious to be wasted on the altar of consumerist urges gone haywire.

Text: Professor Anil Gupta

Professor Anil Gupta teaches innovation management at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. He is the founder of the Honey Bee Network (www.sristi.org), which collects and disseminates traditional knowledge and helps facilitate grassroots innovation. E-mail: anilgb@gmail.com

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Protecting special agricultural systems is not easy. It starts with proper recognition, which according to Boerma is a major challenge: “One of the biggest lessons from the pilot project was that in order to maintain these systems, you need to spend an enormous amount of time sensitising governments to put the farmer at the centre.” In places with top-down governments, a whole change in thinking needs to take place.

“In Africa you have to work hard to get rid of the deeply engrained prejudices about small-scale farmers and traditional systems being backward.” GIAHS is a concept that crosses many sectors, and this involves learning how to bring together different government agencies to work towards a common goal.

Boerma works in two countries with a mixture of ministries and agencies, with responsibilities for agriculture, livestock, the environment, wildlife services, heritage, tourism and natural resources. He insists that all the team members attend all the meetings, which has paid off: “nobody blocks the process because everyone is included.” The first step is getting people to recognise the importance of GIAHS: after that the protective policies can (eventually) be put in place.

Farming communities are often confused by conflicting advice, much of it telling them to abandon their old ways. Boerma works from the principle of “free prior and informed consent” in guiding communities to come to informed decisions about the consequences, good or bad, of different choices, as well as the risks involved.

Establishing exactly what to preserve is often a major discussion point. While the World Heritage Convention seeks to preserve sites exactly as they are, GIAHS is based on the concept of “dynamic conservation”. This means supporting the continued existence of a special landscape or agroecosystem, but allowing it to adapt so as to ensure food security and sustainable livelihoods for farmers.

Boerma explains: “These systems are innovative because they are able to adapt to specific ecological and cultural processes in the area.” For example, the Maasai’s rotational grazing system in Kenya and Tanzania is under pressure because of a decreasing land base for pasture and a lack of access to water. By building water points and starting sustainable tourism activities the project is trying to prevent this unique GIAHS from disappearing.

More information: David Boerma can be reached at AWF, P.O Box 2658, Arusha, Tanzania, or via e-mail: david.boerma@fao.org.
More information about GIAHS can be found here: http://www.fao.org/nr/giahs/en

Text: Mundie Salm

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Solidarity subscriptions

A few weeks ago we sent out our electronic newsletter and invited readers to take out a “solidarity subscription”. We have already received many positive reactions – and many readers have taken a paid subscription. They will receive a full year of Farming Matters and, at the same time, enable us to send the magazine for free to people or organisations lacking the means to subscribe. Interested in joining this campaign? Subscribe and help us keep this campaign going!

New East African magazine
Our partners in Kenya, ALIN, are merging the production of the regional edition of this magazine, Kilimo Endelevu Africa, with the other magazine they produce, BAOBAB. The new publication will be called BAOBAB, and will contain articles, news items, interviews, and lots of information on small-scale farming in the region. Readers of Farming Matters in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda will also receive BAOBAB during 2010, and will then be asked to opt for one of the two magazines. We will be very interested to hear your comments and opinions!

Our December issue: Partnerships for learning

When talking about small-scale family farming, many different people and organisations can be labeled as “stakeholders”. But what do they learn from each other? And how do they learn to work together to create more sustainable agriculture? These are some of the questions we want to address in our next issue. Be sure you get your own copy. Fill in the subscription form if you still haven’t done it.

Readers’ panels

During 2009, both ileia and our partner organisations carried out a series of impact studies. These studies looked at how the magazines are used and how the information in them helps increase yields or improves livelihoods. Continuing these studies, and as part of the regular evaluation of our magazine, we are planning to set up a readers’ panel. This will help us look at the articles, the overall themes, the layout and presentation, and – most important – the use given to every issue. Interested in joining and sharing your opinions? Please get in touch with the editors.

The post Readers’ service appeared first on Ileia.

What does good governance mean in terms of water management? Should the focus of governance efforts be on drafting new legislation? Or is good governance reflected in the enforcement of the law?

This August, the Niger river reached its highest level in a century. Homes have been swept away and horticultural crops – the lifeline of many households – destroyed. Some people blame climate change and the heavy rain, but I think there is another reason. If you check, the amount of water flowing through the river is not extremely high. But the water is muddy and carries silt into the river bed, causing the present flood. Rather than climate change, it is the degradation of the land upstream that is causing these floods.
The root cause of this is that people in this country are cutting down too many trees. The story is well-known: people are poor, they cut trees for sale or for home use, the land degrades, production goes down, and people get poorer. Interestingly, when you ask the farmers you will find that everybody knows this. So it is not just a question of education, because if one farmer stops cutting and another continues to do so to make some money, the problem doesn’t go away. Similarly, if one community preserves trees in the landscape, another may come and cut them down. Pastoralists are very mobile and if the situation is not regulated jointly with farmers, no tree will grow to maturity.
Thus restoring the landscape and preserving the soil is a real multistakeholder task. Local level joint action (such as Integrated Water Management) can provide the basis for such a response. People need alternative income sources, and trees may well be a good means if they are allowed to grow long enough. But local level action is not enough.
The task is so vast that even our organisation, with 60,000 members, can hardly start to address the problem. We all have a role to play, but it takes a strong, respected actor to ensure that everybody takes part and nobody takes a free ride.
Who has the power and the authority to address the problem at this vast scale? Who can coordinate farmer organisations and inspire local governments and traditional chiefs to actively support initiatives? I think that the state is the sole actor with such powers and means. Without the firm and active involvement of the state, nobody can solve the land degradation problem.
We, farmer organisations, are prepared to play our role in this enormous task. Yet we need the state to back us up, to make funds available, to pass legislation, enforce the rules and help and support local authorities to carry them out.

Text: Mamoudou Hassane
Mamoudou Hassane can be reached at mhassane64@yahoo.fr

Mamoudou Hassane is Executive Secretary of MOORIBEN, the Federation of Farmers´ Organisations in Niger.

The world’s problems relating to water are well known. Statistics reveal that thousands of children die before the age of 5 as a result of diseases caused by poor water quality. At the same time, water is becoming increasingly scarce, particularly for small-scale producers.
Ecosystems that provide water are degraded or drying completely. Climate change is already having an effect on the world’s hydrological cycles, and millions of people have seen their livelihoods affected by floods or droughts, with many forced to migrate to other areas.
Many countries, particularly in South America, have recently modified their legislation on water, announcing an innovative approach that is simultaneously multi-sectoral, decentralised, participatory, environmentally sustainable, equitable, and which also gives due recognition to the customary rights of peoples. The recently passed law in Peru includes all these principles. But, in spite of the lofty words, there are some serious gaps in the legislation and there are articles that specifically contradict these principles. Even more importantly, there does not seem to be a serious interest in enforcing these principles and benefiting those who most need support, such as smallscale farmers.
One of the major flaws is that this law, like others, does not require or impose a thorough land planning process, which makes watershed management virtually impossible. Large-scale operations, such as mining concessions, know no boundaries. Much land that is currently used for food production is vulnerable to being displaced by agribusiness, biofuel enterprises, or mining projects, all of which compete for the land and the water sources on which farmers depend. Unlike small-scale farmers, many of these large-scale projects are subsidised or receive financial benefits from the state.
Moreover, they benefit from preferential water rights, which the state is now granting under the same law. Disregarding traditional use, the new law is “assigning” water as if it had never been used before. This will place food security in Peru at serious risk for decades. It is hardly surprising that the accumulation of land and water rights in countries like Peru is the cause of more and more socio-environmental conflicts. The authorities need to move beyond the discourse they are currently engaged in and begin to practise what they preach.
While the new legislation is welcome, it needs to be enforced in a way that takes all stakeholders into account, and not just the strong and powerful. And legislation needs not only to take water management theory into account, but also the practices and needs of millions of farmers.

Text: Mourik Bueno de Mesquita
Mourik Bueno de Mesquita can be reached at
mourik@casadelcorregidor.pe

Mourik Bueno de Mesquita heads the Andean Water Management Programme at the Centro Bartolomé de las Casas (CBC) in Cusco, Peru..

The post Two views: What does good water governance mean? appeared first on Ileia.

Project WET is mostly aimed at educators and students in primary and middle schools. However its resources, which include curriculum guides, booklets of activities, games, posters and other materials, can be used much more widely. The topics cover all the basics about water – from hygiene and water quality, to learning about the water cycle, watersheds, groundwater and floods.

The concept of watersheds is close to DeYonge’s heart: “A saying that holds true for everyone is that ‘we all live downstream’. We all live within a watershed and I firmly believe that when people understand what this is and how we are all connected by water, then they will behave more responsibly in taking care of it.” This underlines the importance of taking a “watershed approach” when addressing environmental problems.

For more about Project WET and their publications, visit www.projectwet.org, where you can download the “Sum of the parts” exercise and the free booklet “Healthy water, healthy habits, healthy people.” Other publications are available by clicking on STORE, or by writing to: Project WET Foundation, 1001 West Oak Street, Suite 210, Bozeman, Montana 59715, U.S.A

Watersheds as “sum of the parts”

Watersheds are a difficult concept to explain. Project WET defines a watershed as “an area of land that drains into a specific body of water like a river, stream or lake” and includes everything within its borders. A large watershed, such as the Nile’s watershed in northeast Africa, can also contain many smaller watersheds around streams that drain into the Nile river.

But what about people who live in a less obvious watershed? A simple exercise can be used to explain the concept of watersheds anywhere: all you need is a mound of clay, a cup and some water (see illustration, and see box to download the full activity).. Project WET uses this simple tool to get people to simulate water falling down slopes, to understand how water drains down a slope in a particular direction, and how watersheds have boundaries and can also consist of smaller watersheds.

DeYonge hopes that such simple exercises can help people better understand basic concepts about water and apply this understanding to water resource issues in their community. This is central to Project WET’s ”ActionEducation” programme, which encourages schools and communities around the world to organise educational workshops and events, and to then apply their knowledge to help solve a local water resource issue. She explains about a recent festival at a middle school in the United States which stimulated students to set up a recycling programme at their school. Getting serious and difficult concepts across does not have to be boring. To DeYonge, simple games and investigative exercises help show that “learning can be fun” while also going a long way to get people to use shared resources in a responsible way.

Text: Mundie Salm

Illustration: Fred Geven

The post Learning about … Watersheds and other water issues appeared first on Ileia.

An upside down view of governance

Institute of Development Studies, 2010. IDS, Brighton, U.K. 85 pages.
OECD governments spend over €7 billion a year to improve governance – yet for many, governance is a vague concept. This book explains what practitioners know from experience: local power structures matter, and can help or hamper development. It provides practical tips on how to relate between formal and informal governance structures, and shows the importance of being clear and precise in the use of language. Understanding these concepts is particularly important in the agricultural sector, where many traditional arrangements over issues such as water use, can clash with formal forms of governance.

Diet for a hot planet: The climate crisis at the end of your fork and what you can do about it

Anna Lappé, 2010. Bloomsbury USA, New York. 312 pages.
This inspiring and easy-to-read book explores the links between our food systems – from seed to plate to landfill – and climate change. Lappé addresses three questions: Why does our food system play such a significant role in climate change, accounting for over 30 percent of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions? How can food and farming be part of the solution? And, how can people change their diets to become more climate-friendly? She confronts several “myths”, devoting two chapters to the “hunger” and “technology” myths that see industrial agriculture and biotech crops as the only solution for feeding ourselves and saving the planet. Lappé argues against these myths, bringing together evidence that leads her to conclude that agroecological methods are our best option.

Ecological farming: Drought-resistant agriculture

Reyes Tirado and Janet Cotter, 2010. Greenpeace International, Amsterdam. 15 pages.
Downloadable at: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/reports
We increasingly hear in the news about extreme weather events, be they floods in Pakistan, forest fires in Russia or droughts in Niger. This short report looks at how farmers can adapt to changing rainfall patterns. It focuses on strategies based on biodiversity and creating a healthy soil. It also reviews the potential of conventional breeding methods, including marker-assisted selection (MAS) to produce drought-resistant crop varieties. The authors conclude that MAS is a better option than genetic engineering, as it is better at selecting complex traits such as drought-resistance, and avoids the risks entailed in artificially transferring genes between organisms. It shows examples of successful conventionally bred drought-resistant maize, wheat and rice.

Dead planet, living planet: Biodiversity and ecosystem restoration for sustainable development

C. Nellemann and E. Corcoran (eds.), 2010. UNEP, GRID-Arendal, Norway. 109 pages.
Downloadable at: http://www.grida.no
This beautifully illustrated report, a contribution to the UN’s International Year of Biodiversity, highlights the many benefits that flow from restoring the world’s ecosystems, such as forests and wetlands. It draws attention to the services provided by healthy ecosystems. These extend beyond direct resources, such as food or water, and include services such as climate or water regulation, soil formation and photosynthesis, as well as cultural services. The authors translate these services into monetary figures to show the strong economic benefits of ecosystem services. They also provide thirty case studies of widely-ranging ecosystems that have been successfully restored following disruptions such as agriculture or mining. The report concludes with eleven policy ecommendations.

Negotiate: Reaching agreements over water

John Dore, Julia Robinson and Mark Smith (eds.), 2010. IUCN. 120 pages.
Downloadable at: http://data.iucn.org/dbtw-wpd/edocs/2010-006.pdf
If negotiation is the key to fair, effective and sustainable water management, then the world certainly needs a lot of it. The importance of talking, bargaining, sharing perspectives, searching for solutions and coming to collective decisions, are clearly presented in this book. Examples from around the world show the benefits of a “negotiation approach”, which the authors argue is an indispensable aspect of water governance. Ideas on how to negotiate include taking the four Rs (rewards, risks, rights and responsibilities) into account, as well as “constructive engagements” to help reach a necessary agreement, whether this becomes a contract, law or code of conduct. Policy-makers and practitioners alike will find this an easy-to-read and very interesting book.

Out of the mainstream: Water rights, politics and identity

Rutgerd Boelens, David Getches and Armando Guevara-Gil (eds.), 2010. Earthscan. 366 pages.
This book explores the world of water rights and policy regimes, examining national water policy-making in the light of local “water cultures”. The contributing authors in this academic collection focus mainly on countries in the Andes (especially Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia), with some experiences from elsewhere in Latin America and the southwest United States. While many new water policies are based on universal, “mainstream” principles and the concept of individual rights, the authors show that legislation does not reflect successful local systems, based on collective rights and practices. This book calls for policy-makers to look more carefully at the valuable context-specific aspects of local water users’ management systems and to move away from setting one-size-fits-all regulations.

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Ethiopia: More efficient laws

In spite of being a country with abundant water (including, for example, the source of the Blue Nile river), many parts of Ethiopia have regularly suffered from drought and severe famines. Nowadays, demand for water is growing at an alarming rate, responding to the needs of millions of people. As a result, water management is one of the country’s top priorities.

In recent years, the government has developed a legal framework which it hopes will improve efficiency and serve the needs of its population. This approach adopts the hydrologic boundary or “basin” as the fundamental planning unit. As a federal country, co-ordination efforts are needed between the different states, regions and central government, as well as with the local authorities.

The Ethiopian Water Resources Management Policy has been established to try to achieve this, and to involve different specialists (economists, soil scientists, hydrologists). Given that no one knows more about their own environment, this is also to include representatives of farmer organisations and villagers. More water is expected everywhere!

To find out more, contact Gebremikael Gebrehiwot, chief co-ordinator of Natural Resource Management, City Government, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. E-mail: gmikael14@yahoo.com

Tanzania: Making irrigation more effective

When it first started working, the Traditional Irrigation and Environmental Development Organization (TIP) focused on improving the traditional irrigation systems by constructing new intakes and improving the lining of canals. But it gradually changed towards advising farmers to conserve their land. Farmers are encouraged to put into practice soil and water conservation measures such as terraces (popularly known as fanya juu), tree planting, grass tips and contour planning, and then fields are prepared to receive an increased volume of water.

TIP’s approach involves different specialists: an agronomist to train farmers in selecting seed varieties and in crop husbandry; a land use planner to recommend specific measures for particular locations, an irrigation engineer to design and supervise the construction of irrigation facilities, and a Community Development Officer to conduct awareness meetings to present and discuss the advantages of this more complete approach.

As a result, there is less erosion, and yields are higher. Small-scale farmers living on the slopes of the Pare and the Usambara mountains, in northern Tanzania, have seen their livelihoods improve.

To find out more, contact I.H. Kawa, Executive Director ,TIP, Moshi, Tanzania.
E-mail: ihkawa@yahoo.com or tip@tiptz.org

India: A simple, yet very efficient practice

When a mountain area suffers from deforestation, rainwater flows off the mountain rapidly, carrying valuable top-soil with it, causing land erosion and also devastation downstream. This is the situation in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, where the much-needed water is becoming increasingly scarce.

But there is a traditional practice which can still be found in the Tehri and Uttarkashi districts. It is known as kulwal, a term that describes a shallow, narrow drain that carries water from an available source (spring, fall, lake, stream, etc.) to the fields. These channels are collectively owned by the villages, which are collectively responsible for their repair and maintenance. Each village appoints a team of 2 to 12 members for one year, who are known as kulwala. It is their responsibility to ensure that water reaches all the fields equitably. This practice relieves individual families from worrying about irrigation, which can be problematic and also engender conflicts.

The villages which practise this traditional management system hardly ever report conflicts, which is remarkable given the scarcity of water. As water is becoming even more scarce, traditional practices are proving their value.

To find out more, contact Biju Negi, at the Beej Bachao Andolan (Save Seeds Movement) in Uttarakhand, India. E-mail: negi.biju@gmail.com

China: Recovering ancient waterways

The rapid industrialisation and urbanisation of China is having a serious impact on the quantity and quality of the country’s water resources. Since 2008, the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) has been running the Natural Ecosystem Rehabilitation Pilot Project, with the specific aim of “recovering” the Youzi River. This is an important source of water for the whole Chengdu region and the main waterway for Yuantian, a village in Western Sichuan.

The project works with local governments, villagers, wetland, gardening and river specialists, and local NGOs (such as the Kangmei Community Development and Marketing Service Center). To strengthen the public’s conservation awareness, the project involved many villagers, volunteers and students in dredging and widening the ancient Youzi river channels. This work helps to prevent the river being blocked by mud and garbage and prevents harmful substances from floating to the surface of the river during the rainy season.
Other activities have included establishing courtyard wetlands and building rural biogas digesters with the aim of building a regime of communal environmental management. The villagers of Yuantian are not only one of the groups of stakeholders involved, nor just beneficiaries. Having participated throughout the process, villagers are now the custodians of their river.

To find out more, contact Chen Can, Chengdu Programme, WWF Beijing Office, China. E-mail: cchen@wwfchina.org

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