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Project Submission Information

The CPWF has closed its submissions for the OPEN COMPETITION projects for three of its six Phase 2 river basins: the Andes, Mekong and Nile river basins. Information on projects can be found below.

Currently the team is in negotiations with the successful proposals' contributors. This is the final phase of the submissions process which will lead to BDC implementation at the Inception Workshops.

Inception workshops will be held in the Nile Basin from 26-28 January, 2010, and in the Mekong Basin from 3-5 February, during which time contract negotiations will be finalised and details of the research will become available. The Andes inception workshop is being rescheduled for March/April, 2010.

Basin Projects:

Andes System of River Basins

Basin Development Challenge:
To improve rural livelihoods, increase water access, and reduce water-related conflict through benefit-sharing in selected basins

River Basin introduction
Andes communities today face many challenging realities. These encompass the globalization of trade, dramatic shifts in food consumption patterns, climate change and the relentless forces of urbanization. Andean communities share these challenges with other peoples in river basins around the world.

Within this context, the CPWF acknowledges a development challenge idiosyncratic of the Andes system of river basins: how to share the costs and benefits of water resource development and water conservation between downstream urban water consumers and upstream rural communities.

Urbanization and income growth have resulted in a growing willingness and ability of some downstream water consumers to pay for adequate and reliable supplies of high quality water. Other downstream water users (fisheries, ecosystem services broadly defined) also need adequate supplies of clean water. Yet supplies depend on how key upstream catchment areas are managed. Catchment management decisions typically are in the hands of rural communities and, not infrequently, these communities also seek improved access to water to improve the profitability and diversity of local agroecosystems, in order to raise incomes.

How can benefit-sharing mechanisms (BSM) be used to encourage investments to improve agricultural productivity and livelihoods in rural areas?

Andes Project 1:
On designing and implementing benefit-sharing mechanisms

Contracting mechanism: OPEN COMPETITION

DOWNLOAD Submission Document for Andes Project 1

Project Focus: Institutional change. This project will match the best benefit-sharing and coordination mechanisms to biophysical and socioeconomic circumstances, and identify the reasons underpinning failure or success in specific instances. Additionally it will develop strategies to widen the range of available benefit-sharing mechanisms and accelerate the pace of innovation in the planning and use of such mechanisms. 

Andes Project 2:
On assessing and anticipating the consequences of introducing benefit-sharing mechanisms

Contracting mechanism: For negotiation of a direct contract. CPWF will approach the preferred suppliers

Project Focus: BSM effectiveness. This project seeks to quantify the consequences of BSM-driven changes in land and water management for livelihoods in upstream rural communities, and for water supplies of downstream water consumers. It will develop methods to anticipate ex ante the likely consequences of introducing BSM as well as monitoring and measuring these consequences ex post. Finally, it will introduce methods for adaptive management in BSM design and planning, so that new instances of BSM can benefit from lessons already learned, i.e. to ensure that BSM design is more likely to result in benefits to the upstream rural poor, the environment, and to downstream water consumers.  To do so, Andes Project 1 will utilize outputs from Andes Project 2. 

Andes Project 3:
On learning from the past

Contracting mechanism: OPEN COMPETITION

DOWNLOAD Submission Document for Andes Project 3

Project Focus: Synthesize information and insights from current land and water management practices and their consequences. It will focus upon understanding resource management trends and their effects over time, and about relating land and water management practices to different biophysical, socioeconomic and institutional environments. 

Andes coordination project

Contracting mechanism:  For negotiation of a direct contract. CPWF will approach the preferred suppliers

Project Focus: Impact delivery, network development and scientific leadership. Applying coordination to links among Projects 1-3, this project aims to accelerate the production of research outputs and to facilitate their use in effectively addressing the Andes BDC. It is led and managed by the Basin Leader or equivalent.  

Mekong River Basin


Basin Development Challenge:
To reduce poverty and foster development through management of water for multiple uses in large and small reservoirs

River Basin introduction
The CPWF believes the need to maximize positive and minimize negative aspects of water storage infrastructure (WSI), including large infrastructure primarily developed for hydropower generation, is a critically important development challenge for the Mekong River Basin. The CPWF’s Phase 1 work in the Mekong identified several policy and development needs where research can help improve the livelihoods of populations affected by the installation of new WSI.

Some of these needs can be met by developing innovative land and water management strategies that apply new technologies, institutional arrangements and policies. Other needs can only be met by developing negotiation capacities among vulnerable stakeholders; multiple dialogues will most likely be required for reservoirs to yield multiple benefits across different communities. Research to address the Mekong BDC will be concentrated in two or three research locations, each featuring a system or cascade of multiple dams and reservoirs.

Mekong Project 1:
On optimizing reservoir management for livelihoods

Contracting mechanism: OPEN COMPETITION

DOWNLOAD Submission Document for Mekong Project 1

Project Focus: Livelihoods, and how they can be improved through reservoir management for multiple uses and users. This project is about developing strategies for optimizing the benefits of WSI and increasing the ways in which water can be utilized for the benefit of the poor. Strategies can be developed for individual reservoirs or for cascades or systems of reservoirs. 

Mekong Project 2:
On water valuation

Contracting mechanism: OPEN COMPETITION

DOWNLOAD Submission Document for Mekong Project 2

Project Focus: Assessing the value of water in its various uses. This project estimates the costs and benefits of different uses of WSI water at reservoir and catchment levels. It includes an assessment of water needs for major water uses (agriculture, fisheries, ecosystem, and⁄ or hydropower) and features the application of quantitative and qualitative valuation techniques to estimate costs and benefits associated with different water management strategies and scenarios.  

Mekong Project 3:
On optimizing the management of cascades or systems of reservoirs at catchment level

Contracting mechanism: OPEN COMPETITION

DOWNLOAD Submission Document for Mekong Project 3

Project Focus: Scaling up results obtained from optimizing the management of individual reservoirs to the catchment level. As such, this project draws upon results from Mekong Projects 1 and 2 as it seeks to understand, at the catchment scale, the cumulative upstream and downstream consequences of management decisions taken for multiple reservoirs. It includes the study of land degradation and reservoir siltation processes.  

Mekong Project 4:
On water governance

Contracting mechanism: For negotiation of a direct contract. CPWF will approach the preferred suppliers

Project Focus: Governance structures and mechanisms that enable support and maintain successful WSI optimization strategies. This project analyzes the ways WSIs are presently managed, and identifies what needs to change for benefits to be optimized and multiple uses implemented. It touches on systems or cascades of reservoirs as well as individual reservoirs. It draws upon results from Mekong Projects 1 and 2, an institutional analysis of current water governance for different uses, and innovation histories of ‘positive deviance’ in water governance for benefit optimization. 

Mekong coordination project

Contracting mechanism: For negotiation of a direct contract. CPWF will approach the preferred suppliers

Project Focus: CPWF impact delivery, network development, scientific leadership. This project will coordinate the links between Projects 1-4 in order to accelerate the production of research outputs and to facilitate their use in effectively addressing the Mekong BDC. It is led and managed by the Basin Leader or equivalent. 


Nile River Basin

Basin Development Challenge:

To improve rural livelihoods and their resilience through a landscape approach to rainwater management

River Basin introduction
Within the infinite variety of conditions in the Nile basin, there are many challenges relating to water and food – and conceivably as many opportunities. Among others, there are challenges relating to water quality and aquaculture in Egypt; irrigated crops, residue management and livestock in Sudan; constraints and opportunities for fisheries in Uganda, and; rainwater management and land degradation in the highlands of Ethiopia. CPWF Phase 2 work in the Nile basin will emphasize the last of these.

The CPWF believes that understanding the causes and its consequences of low rainwater productivity is a critically important development challenge for the communities of the Nile River basin. In addressing this challenge, CPWF Phase 2 research will focus on the Ethiopian highlands and will examine the interrelated issues of rainwater management; agricultural and livestock water productivity; rainfall variability, poverty and livelihoods resilience; land degradation and downstream siltation of water storage infrastructure; opportunities for improvement through well-targeted combinations of new technologies, policies and institutions, and; a sound understanding of the downstream, cross-scale consequences of widespread change in rainwater management practices in the highlands.

Nile Project 1:
On learning from the past

Contracting mechanism: For negotiation of a direct contract. CPWF will approach the preferred suppliers

Project Focus: Summarizing lessons from experience in rainwater management in Ethiopia and applying it to research design. Past and on-going rainwater management activities and programs in the highlands of Ethiopia will be analyzed, with the reasons for success and failure of different approaches collated. Some major programs are known to have gone awry; this project asks ‘Why?’ A synthesis of strategies on spatial targeting of rainwater management will be made available to other projects.

Nile Project 2:
On integrated rainwater management strategies – technologies, institutions and policies

Contracting mechanism: For negotiation of a direct contract. CPWF will approach the preferred suppliers

Project Focus: Integrated rainwater management strategies that combine technologies, policies and institutions. To raise productivity and incomes, and to enhance resilience, while simultaneously slowing land degradation and reducing downstream siltation, this project will work to integrate land and water management, crop component technology, crop management, crop livestock systems, pastoral systems and even agroforestry systems.

It is clear that the shape of policies and institutions can foster or discourage farmer adoption of productivity-increasing, resource-conserving strategies. Accordingly this project will examine the extent to which policy change and institutional strengthening and reform can combine with new technologies to spur widespread innovation. It will look into micro-credit, cooperative societies, land tenure, collective action in communities, and the various roles of formal and informal institutions, as part of integrated strategies to improve rainwater management.  

Nile Project 3:
On targeting and scaling out

Contracting mechanism: OPEN COMPETITION

DOWNLOAD Submission Document for Nile Project 3

Project Focus: Matching technologies (or whole rainwater management strategies) with environments. As ‘blanket’ strategies are often inappropriate, this project will aim to identify the conditions – biophysical, socioeconomic and institutional – that favor the use of particular strategies, then scan the landscape to find out where else these conditions prevail.

 

Nile Project 4:
On assessing and anticipating consequences of innovation

Contracting mechanism: For negotiation of a direct contract. CPWF will approach the preferred suppliers

Project Focus: Effective rainwater management strategies. To what extent are Sudan and Egypt affected by improved RMS in Ethiopia? This project will quantify the consequences of improved strategies for community livelihoods, resource productivity, land quality, and downstream water quality and siltation. It will specifically measure the downstream, cross-scale consequences of successful innovation in the Ethiopian highlands.

Nile coordination project

Contracting mechanism: OPEN COMPETITION 
Note that the responsibilities of Nile Basin Leader or equivalent will be included in this call.

DOWNLOAD Submission for Nile Coordination Project

Project Focus: CPWF impact delivery, network development, scientific leadership. This project is to coordinate the links between Projects 1-4 in order to accelerate the production of research outputs and to facilitate their use in effectively addressing the Nile BDC. It is led and managed by the Basin Leader or equivalent.