Scaling up experiential learning for water management

Unsustainable water management is associated with reduced agricultural production and poverty, reduced ecosystem services and resilience, and insufficient and unreliable domestic water access. As a common pool resource with high subtractability and low excludability, water is easily depleted if no e...

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Autores principales: Meinzen-Dick, Ruth S., Falk, Thomas, Sanil, Richu, ElDidi, Hagar, Zhang, Wei, Kosec, Katrina, Melesse, Mequanint B., Duche, Vishwambhar
Formato: Brief
Lenguaje:Inglés
Publicado: International Food Policy Research Institute 2024
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10568/162988
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author Meinzen-Dick, Ruth S.
Falk, Thomas
Sanil, Richu
ElDidi, Hagar
Zhang, Wei
Kosec, Katrina
Melesse, Mequanint B.
Duche, Vishwambhar
author_browse Duche, Vishwambhar
ElDidi, Hagar
Falk, Thomas
Kosec, Katrina
Meinzen-Dick, Ruth S.
Melesse, Mequanint B.
Sanil, Richu
Zhang, Wei
author_facet Meinzen-Dick, Ruth S.
Falk, Thomas
Sanil, Richu
ElDidi, Hagar
Zhang, Wei
Kosec, Katrina
Melesse, Mequanint B.
Duche, Vishwambhar
author_sort Meinzen-Dick, Ruth S.
collection Repository of Agricultural Research Outputs (CGSpace)
description Unsustainable water management is associated with reduced agricultural production and poverty, reduced ecosystem services and resilience, and insufficient and unreliable domestic water access. As a common pool resource with high subtractability and low excludability, water is easily depleted if no effective coordination exists among users to ensure provision and regulate withdrawals. This creates one of the greatest challenges for people living in semi-arid and arid environments. The majority of India’s population is estimated to face physical water scarcity for at least part of the year, with 600 million people living in areas of high to extreme water stress. As water management is highly complex, with many users sharing the same resource but often unknown to each other, stopping overuse is difficult, especially when it is more profitable to irrigate water-consumptive crops than water-conserving crops. Farmers, policymakers, donors, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in India have all articulated the need for more effective tools to improve water management and governance. Coordination and effective management of water resources are crucial to sustain agricultural productivity, but so far progress has been disappointing. Technical tools such as crop water budgeting can play an important role in enabling communities to manage their water resources, but unless communities have the knowledge and motivation to use these tools, their application and impacts are limited. To date, attention to the question of how knowledge about collectively available water is translated into effective management through collective action, norms and rules has been insufficient. Blueprint rules introduced in a top-down manner have not changed water users’ behavior. However, there is strong evidence that effective community rules and their enforcement can motivate such behavior. The better these rules fit the social-ecological context and internalized norms, the more effective they will be. Participatory development approaches have addressed these challenges. The key question is how to promote such coordination, rules, and behavior in a participatory way without external imposition and in a low-cost manner that allows largescale implementation.
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spelling CGSpace1629882025-11-06T05:28:40Z Scaling up experiential learning for water management Meinzen-Dick, Ruth S. Falk, Thomas Sanil, Richu ElDidi, Hagar Zhang, Wei Kosec, Katrina Melesse, Mequanint B. Duche, Vishwambhar agricultural production sustainability water governance water management Unsustainable water management is associated with reduced agricultural production and poverty, reduced ecosystem services and resilience, and insufficient and unreliable domestic water access. As a common pool resource with high subtractability and low excludability, water is easily depleted if no effective coordination exists among users to ensure provision and regulate withdrawals. This creates one of the greatest challenges for people living in semi-arid and arid environments. The majority of India’s population is estimated to face physical water scarcity for at least part of the year, with 600 million people living in areas of high to extreme water stress. As water management is highly complex, with many users sharing the same resource but often unknown to each other, stopping overuse is difficult, especially when it is more profitable to irrigate water-consumptive crops than water-conserving crops. Farmers, policymakers, donors, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in India have all articulated the need for more effective tools to improve water management and governance. Coordination and effective management of water resources are crucial to sustain agricultural productivity, but so far progress has been disappointing. Technical tools such as crop water budgeting can play an important role in enabling communities to manage their water resources, but unless communities have the knowledge and motivation to use these tools, their application and impacts are limited. To date, attention to the question of how knowledge about collectively available water is translated into effective management through collective action, norms and rules has been insufficient. Blueprint rules introduced in a top-down manner have not changed water users’ behavior. However, there is strong evidence that effective community rules and their enforcement can motivate such behavior. The better these rules fit the social-ecological context and internalized norms, the more effective they will be. Participatory development approaches have addressed these challenges. The key question is how to promote such coordination, rules, and behavior in a participatory way without external imposition and in a low-cost manner that allows largescale implementation. 2024-12-03 2024-12-03T16:04:22Z 2024-12-03T16:04:22Z Brief https://hdl.handle.net/10568/162988 en https://hdl.handle.net/10568/162772 https://doi.org/10.5334/ijc.1317 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2023.101289 https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-13862-280130 Open Access application/pdf International Food Policy Research Institute Meinzen-Dick, Ruth S.; Falk, Thomas; Sanil, Richu; ElDidi, Hagar; Zhang, Wei; Kosec, Katrina; et al. 2024. Scaling up experiential learning for water management. Scaling Up Experiential Learning Tools Project Note 2. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/162988
spellingShingle agricultural production
sustainability
water governance
water management
Meinzen-Dick, Ruth S.
Falk, Thomas
Sanil, Richu
ElDidi, Hagar
Zhang, Wei
Kosec, Katrina
Melesse, Mequanint B.
Duche, Vishwambhar
Scaling up experiential learning for water management
title Scaling up experiential learning for water management
title_full Scaling up experiential learning for water management
title_fullStr Scaling up experiential learning for water management
title_full_unstemmed Scaling up experiential learning for water management
title_short Scaling up experiential learning for water management
title_sort scaling up experiential learning for water management
topic agricultural production
sustainability
water governance
water management
url https://hdl.handle.net/10568/162988
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