Engage and collaborate : what it takes to achieve impact

The 7th World Water Forum has just ended, and I wonder how many poor communities and households will be impacted positively by such a mega-gathering of water professionals. This piece drafted last August was never published as such, but only in parts to summarize key learnings from the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food, and to announce its landmark publication. With insights on what it takes to ensure that innovations have a positive impact on the poor – insights to keep in mind a few months before SDGs are adopted by world leaders. 

Clinching the deal: Cash changes hands at the end of a goats sale. Photo by Swathi Sridharan.

I knew we were onto something when I saw the goats. A Zimbabwean village with plenty of healthy goats is a prosperous community, one where farmers have enough financial assets to pay bride prices and school fees, buy meat and milk.

I visited the Limpopo River basin in the summer of 2012 to learn from a project that had significantly improved the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. By bringing together farmers, traders, and suppliers, researchers were able to improve farmers’ production and connect them with markets. As a result, the price farmers were able to fetch for one goat rose from around US$10 to US$60.

Figuring out how to conduct research based on development needs was the central mandate of the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF). The program ran more than 120 research projects in ten river basins around the world between 2002 and 2013. It found that technological solutions alone cannot solve the world’s pressing development challenges. Instead, researchers and research organizations must engage with the people who can implement and benefit from the solutions they offer.

Take for example the story of the goats, where exchanges between researchers, farmers, traders and other actors allowed farmers to earn to earn greater incomes. Brought together, the group discussed the challenges they were facing—in this case, a volatile market with unpredictable pricing that kept farmers from investing in new practices that could allow them to feed a greater number of animals. Why support more animals without a guarantee of return on investment?

Our researchers had identified that growing velvet bean—a climbing vine that produces black or brown seed—in combination with maize would enable farmers to harvest both more maize for food and bean plants to use as fodder for animals. This rotation cropping allowed families to support more animals without compromising their food production. Yet, many such proven practices are not adopted by the communities that stand to benefit.

What made the difference in Zimbabwe were the continued exchanges between everyone involved, which led to the establishment of a monthly goat auction. It was the creation of a stronger and more transparent market that gave farmers both the incentive and the resources to change their practices. With the promise of reliable buyers and higher prices, farmers felt confident in their decision to grow velvet bean in combination with maize. They are now growing more food, keeping more animals, and earning greater incomes.

Competition over water and other natural resources is another pressing challenge facing the world today. Research can help to solve the puzzle of how to feed nine billion people by the year 2050 only if it aligns, engages, and collaborates with everyone involved—from the farmer to all levels of government to the private sector.

Cañete basin, Peru. Photo by Neil Palmer.

In Peru, for example, researchers worked with the Ministry of Environment when it designated the Cañete River basin as an official pilot site for a national benefit-sharing program in 2013. Our staff and partners collaborated with the ministry throughout the process of designing the program, identifying where investments in ecosystem conservation could be made and what value should be assigned to the different services that the upstream environment provided. Urban dwellers downstream now reward communities in the mountainous area upstream for keeping their landscape intact and ensuring a continued flow of clean drinking water for all water users.

Aiming to replicate this successful effort, in June 2014 the Peruvian Congress passed a national law that authorized similar schemes across the country.

A woman holds Mola in the Bangladesh flood plains. Photo by Holly Holmes.

Another successful collaboration took place in Bangladesh, where researchers wanted to maximize the Ganges River floodplains’ potential for providing food, income, and other benefits to local communities.

Building on a decade-long relationship with local fishing cooperatives, our researchers facilitated new agreements on how to manage the floodplains. Cooperatives began stocking larger fish and using fences with smaller grids that kept the larger, stocked fish enclosed, while allowing smaller, naturally occurring fish to roam around the plain. Certain plants found to be beneficial to fish populations were widely planted. The new practices resulted in greater fish yields and improved biodiversity. Landless community members are now allowed to harvest the excess small fish, thereby improving the lives and incomes of some of the region’s poorest.

If we are to accomplish our goal of feeding the world as natural resources are put under even greater pressure, we must recognize that no magic bullet solution exists. Instead, researchers and their organizations must adopt new roles and engage with communities and other stakeholders to ensure that water and food research contributes to real outcomes with real impact.

Collaboration lies at the heart of this new research paradigm, and it yields not only bigger harvests and more animals, but also food secure and prosperous communities and farmers.

Learn more about Water Scarcity, Livelihoods and Food Security: Research and Innovation for Development, which synthesizes twelve years of work by the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF), draws on the Program’s experience, conducting over 120 projects in partnership with more than 400 organizations, in ten river basins around the world.