Water Harvesting innovations in rural agriculture-The Policy Outlook

The reduction of hunger and poverty depends on improved access to water for poor
rural people. Progress in community water supplies and agricultural water management (AWM), particularly irrigation, is one of the success stories of the twentieth century. However, it is disappointing to learn that AWM, by far the largest consumer of water in developing countries, has had little impact on world hunger and poverty. The experience of agency- and government-led interventions has not
been good. They often impose ‘blueprint’ methods that ignore important local
issues. A critical gap exists between planning and successful implementation.
Approaches focus on what needs to be done, rather than on how to do it, and they
ignore the complex interactions among individuals, the state and service providers –
as well as their limited capacity to translate plans into practice.

If poor rural people are not to be the losers again in the struggle for declining water resources, a new, pro-poor water management strategy is needed. It must focus more on how to do it, while still addressing what to do, where and with whom. If interventions are to succeed, the new strategy must recognize the changing nature of rural livelihoods and its impact on poverty – a ‘new rurality’ – and the complexity of socio-economic systems, particularly where governance and local and national institutions are weak.
This, in essence, was the objective of the project for Learning and Knowledge on Innovations in Water and Rural Poverty (InnoWat). The InnoWat team has created the kit InnoWat: Water, innovations, learning and rural livelihoods with the expectation that it will be useful to many country programme managers (CPMs) and will enhance organizational/institutional comparative advantage in rural poverty alleviation and water issues. The present text synthesizes two approach papers that together provide the rationale for a new, pro-poor approach to water issues. A series of topic, fact and tool sheets and case studies supports the papers.
I will continuously participate on this forum on many of these issue-based discussion that affect farming rural communities in Uganda and Africa. I also have videos show casing some of these approaches with broad social impact but I am finding it hard to upload them online for public access.