Water and Food

This project aims to shed light on the social and ecological impacts of water-based agricultural growth models in Morocco, Algeria, and India by looking at how contemporary processes of agricultural intensification in the two countries re-pattern (gendered) relations of agricultural production, focusing both on relations between different people and on those between people and water. It aims to do so through an examination of different possible farming and water use configurations in the two countries. Led by TARGA-AIDE/CRESC in partnership with Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines Ain Chock Université Hassan II amongst others. This project has published many academic and non-academic  (e.g. news articles or interviews) outputs. The Moroccan partners have engaged in several educational activities and supervised students during fieldwork and training.

Two stories of change video's were created. Click to view the video's here and here. 

Learn more by visiting the (French) project website, or reaching out to Lisa Bossenbroek: [email protected].

Water, energy, and food are the core of the programmes and strategies of developing countries where the interest in the WEF nexus approach is rapidly growing. However, a lack of empirical evidence, approaches, and tools for WEF nexus assessment has been highlighted. WEF-Tools aims at supporting the sustainable socio-economic development in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions by applying, in five case studies, an participatory approach that starts from conceptual mapping of the Water-Energy-Food nexus system to the development of quantitative tools such as the System Dynamics Models (SDMs), and the identification and computation of indicators for the assessment of different scenarios and management strategies, subsequently providing decision-makers with feasible development pathway options. WEF-Tools aims at supporting policymakers to make decisions which support environment, economy, and WEF developments at different levels. It also provides a means to assess progress towards Sustainable Development Goals, in particular, SDGs 2, 6, and 7.

Learn more by visiting the project website

The proposed TRACE Rehab project aims to combat the ongoing degradation and desertification of Jordan’s dry rangelands (the Badia) and to re-vitalize these depleted agro-pastures essential to the rural population depending on a livestock-based agricultural system. In the long term, the project will contribute to securing community livelihoods and the Bedouin tribal heritage of the country.  

TRACE Rehab strived towards two outcomes:

1. Nutrient-enriched agro-pastures (pilot to small watershed scale) have increased soil fertility, land productivity and better withstand degradation for the benefit of the local livestock farmers. 
2. Collaborating wastewater treatment centers operate with reduced storage burden and resource loss through recycling of fertile processed sludge.

The project was implemented through a consortium led by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) and included Jordan’s National Agricultural Research Center (NARC) and the Al Balqa Applied University (BAU). The south-south consortium cross-fertilized skills and capacities among its partners and actively engaged university students and young representatives of the target rural community. This project ran under the Programme from 2019 until 2021. 

For more information, visit the project website.

The overall aim of the ESSA (Earth observation and environmental sensing for climate-smart sustainable agropastoral ecosystem transformation in East-Africa) project was to support livelihood transitions for agro-pastoral communities in the face of changing land use and climate change. Thereby, it aims to contribute to the pastoralist households’ transition towards climate-smart agropastoral systems in sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia and Kenya) by understanding the dynamics of and interlinkages between tropical upland forest cover and semi-arid lowland landscapes, and the multifunctionality of agropastoral landscapes, through a system-wide view of food and nutrition security, diversified livelihoods and ecosystem sustainability leading to improvements.

As an input to sustainable livelihood transitions for agro-pastoral communities, IHE’s role is to conduct the field work and develop the model. Alongside the model development, the hydrology work package also delivers information on the effects of land use and climate on water quality and greenhouse gas emissions in all the major aquatic ecosystems in the study areas: rivers, agricultural wetlands, and water-pans. This aspect is critical water resource management in the region and to understanding the impacts of LULC and agriculture on climate feedbacks.

This project ran under phase 2 of the Programme from 2022 until 2023.