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68. Water productivity in Crop-Livestock Systems

Full Title:

Improving water productivity, reducing poverty and enhancing equity, in mixed crop-livestock systems in the Indo-Gangetic Basin

Project Summary:

Poverty is high in smallholder mixed crop-livestock systems in the semi-arid areas of the IG Basin, and throughout the developing world. In these areas, water scarcity is a principle constraint, and available water is used ineffectively, partly because livestock are poorly managed and continue to be ignored in water policy decisions and development programs. The project will focus on biophysical optimization, resource governance, and gender equity. It will apply a water productivity framework to diagnosis entry points for intervention. It will develop technically feasible, institutionally sustainable options, that take into account demands on women’s time and labor, and promote these among policymakers, managers, and farmers via workshops, targeted publications, and manuals. International public goods outputs will be disseminated in peer-reviewed publications, and via on-line and other media.

This project builds upon the on-going CPWF research project ‘Nile Basin Livestock Water Productivity,’ which is the first of its kind, assessing basin level impact of livestock on water resources. It provides a practical framework for understanding the total water needs of livestock. We will adapt and modify this framework for mixed crop-livestock systems within the Indian context; apply this framework at action research sites to identify the most promising entry points to improve water productivity; assess the impact of potential interventions on gender and poverty; and develop actionable policy recommendations. We will integrate knowledge gained from the project in Africa to inform interventions designed for India, thus enabling the final outputs to have increased value as global public goods.

To select representative systems and contextualize the results in the basin, the project builds upon a ILRI-CIMMYT scoping study ‘Crop-livestock interactions in the Trans-Gangetic Plains’ that assessed crop-livestock interactions from a livelihoods perspective, and mapped spatial and seasonal diversity of crop-livestock interactions. Study sites will focus on four zones in the IGB as defined in basin priority setting (upper catchments, mid Gangetic plains, lower Gangetic plains, and the western IGB.) Through NGO partners, study sites will be chosen to include on-going development projects that can benefit directly from project insights and recommendations. Thus the project is designed to have potential for immediate impact through improvement of these existing programs, as well as wider potential impact through intervention at the policy level.

The chain of impact is envisioned to follow three pathways. First development programs can be designed to better address intermediate problems such as scarcity of feeds and fodder, and inadequate management of livestock through improved understanding of livestock water needs within mixed systems, and policy support for integration of crop-livestock water needs. This can in turn result in increased land and water productivity and reduced poverty. Second, identification of specific entry points for optimized water use and improved governance structures for water within mixed systems can address intermediate problems such as competition for land and water resources. In addition we directly address a problem related to linking interventions to poverty alleviation, that is the need to understand linkages between women’s access to resources and poverty alleviation at the household level.

Project Proposal:

Technical Submission (XLS 142Kb)
Annex A: CVs (PDF 276Kb)
Annex B: Bibliography (PDF 546Kb)
Annex C: Objective Tree (PPT 49Kb)
Annex D: Gantt Chart (XLS 17.5Kb)
Annex E: Project Team (PDF 59Kb)
Annex F: Stakeholders and Beneficiaries (PDF 66Kb)
Annex G: Environmental Impact (PDF 68Kb)