ISSN 1391-9407 ISBN 92-9090-543-3

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Integrated Land and Water Management for Food and Environmental Security

F. W. T. Penning de Vries, H. Acquay, D. Molden, S. J. Scherr, C. Valentin and O. Cofie

Research Report 1

I n t e r n a t i o n a lWater ManagementI n s t i t u t e

The Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture takes stockof the costs, benefits and impacts of the past 50 years of water development foragriculture, the water management challenges communities are facing today, andsolutions people have developed. The results of the Assessment will enable farmingcommunities, governments and donors to make better-quality investment andmanagement decisions to meet food and environmental security objectives in the nearfuture and over the next 25 years.

The Research Report Series captures results of collaborative research conducted underthe Assessment. It also includes reports contributed by individual scientists andorganizations that significantly advance knowledge on key Assessment questions. Eachreport undergoes a rigorous peer-review process. The research presented in the seriesfeeds into the Assessment’s primary output—a “State of the World” report and set ofoptions backed by hundreds of leading water and development professionals and waterusers.

Reports in this series may be copied freely and cited with due acknowledgement.Electronic copies of reports can be downloaded from the Assessment website(www.iwmi.org/assessment).

If you are interested in submitting a report for inclusion in the series, please seethe submission guidelines available on the Assessment website or through writtenrequest to: Sepali Goonaratne, P.O. Box 2075, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Comprehensive Assessment outputs contribute to the Dialogueon Water, Food and Environment Knowledge Base.

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Comprehensive Assessment Research Report 1

Integrated Land and Water Managementfor Food and Environmental Security

F. W. T. Penning de VriesH. AcquayD. MoldenS. J. ScherrC. Valentin andO. Cofie

Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture

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The authors: Frits W.T. Penning de Vries, International Water Management Institute(IWMI), Southeast Asia Regional Office, Bangkok, Thailand; Herbert Acquay, GlobalEnvironmental Facility, Washington, D.C., USA; David Molden, IWMI HeadquartersOffice, Colombo, Sri Lanka; Sara J. Scherr, University of Maryland, and Forest Trends,Washington, D.C., USA; Christian Valentin, Institute de Recherche pour leDeveloppement (IRD) and IWMI, Vientiane, Laos; Olufunke Cofie, IWMI Africa Office,Kumasi, Ghana.

This report draws heavily on expert knowledge inputs from IWMI, other CGIAR-supportedFuture Harvest Centers and their partners in Integrated Natural Resources Managementresearch, Global Environmental Facility, and individual experts. Particularly helpful in thisprocess were Peter Hazell (IFPRI), Eugene Terry (World Bank), Steve Thomlow(ICRISAT), Manuel Lantin (CGIAR Secretariat), Richard Thomas (ICARDA), Eric Baran(ICLARM), Shirley Tarawali (ILRI), Henk Breman (IFDC and ICRAF), Herman van Keulen(WAU), and Vladimir Smakthin, Noel Aloysius, Zhongping Zhu, Ronald Loeve, IanHannam, and Mohammed Mainuddin (IWMI), whose contributions are acknowledged. Thisis a slightly revised version of Comprehensive Assessment Research Paper 1.

Penning de Vries, F. W. T.; H. Acquay; D. Molden; S. J. Scherr; C. Valentin; O. Cofie.2003. Integrated land and water management for food and environmental security.Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture Research Report 1.Colombo, Sri Lanka: Comprehensive Assessment Secretariat.

/ water resources management / land management / food security / environmentalsecurity / environmental effects / soil degradation / water pollution / watersheds /urbanization / public policy / water quality / ecosystems / land resources / water scarcity/ developing countries / poverty / households / food supply / economic aspects / socialaspects / groundwater depletion / salinity / saltwater intrusion / wetlands / investment/ land use / water use / training needs assessment / research priorities /

ISSN 1391-9407ISBN 92-9090-543-3

Copyright © 2003, by Comprehensive Assessment Secretariat. All rights reserved.

Please send inquiries and comments to: comp.assessment@cgiar.org

The Comprehensive Assessment is organized through the CGIAR’s System-Wide Initiative on WaterManagement (SWIM), which is convened by the International Water Management Institute. TheAssessment is carried out with inputs from over 90 national and international development andresearch organizations—including CGIAR Centers and FAO. Financial support for the Assessmentcomes from a range of donors, including the Governments of the Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan,

Taiwan and Austria; the OPEC Fund; FAO; and the Rockefeller Foundation.

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Contents

Summary ........................................................................................................... v

Foreword ........................................................................................................... vii

The Status of Land and Water Resources forFood and Environmental Security ..................................................................... 1

Land and Water Degradation and Food Insecurity:Processes and Management ............................................................................ 18

Improving Land and Water Resources: Lessons Learned............................... 31

Priority Actions ................................................................................................... 36

Development of Policies to Stimulate Food andEnvironmental Security: Priorities and Approaches ......................................... 40

Issues and Approaches in Research ................................................................ 47

Glossary ............................................................................................................. 53

Literature Cited .................................................................................................. 59

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Summary

One of humankind’s achievements has been thedevelopment of the ability to produce enough foodfor the largest global population ever. But a markedfailure has been to ensure food security foreveryone. An estimated 800 million people do nothave access to sufficient food supplies, mostly inSouth Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Areas with thegreatest water loss and land degradationcorrespond closely with areas of the highest ruralpoverty and malnutrition, and food andenvironmental insecurity. Degradation of land andwater resources increasingly threatens national andhousehold food security in many parts of thedeveloping world. Loss and degradation of waterand land for agriculture are not universal, but arewidespread and accelerating, particularly indeveloping countries. In these countries,degradation reduces options for our future and thatof the next generation. Agro-ecological systemsand societies have a threshold to degradationresilience, and collapse when natural resources aredegraded too far, as had happened in the past.

Major concerns related to degradation are:

1. Loss of water for agriculture andreallocation to cities and industries.

2. Reduction in land quality in manydifferent ways, leading to reduced foodsupplies, lower agricultural income,increased costs to farmers andconsumers, and deterioration of water-catchment functions.

3. Reduction in water quality due to pollution,waterborne diseases and disease vectors.

4. Loss of farmland through conversion tononagricultural purposes. The analysespresented focus on four major geographiczones: headwaters, plains, urban areas andcoastal areas.

Fortunately, there are also “bright spots” wheredegradation has been reversed and food andenvironmental security have been restored.Lessons from such successful experiencessuggest the following actions:

� Learn from bright spots—places wherepeople have checked or reverseddegradation.

� Set well-informed priorities throughintegrated analysis of problems andsolutions.

� Develop a policy and institutionalenvironment that enables appropriatemanagement of land and water, providesstrong and equitable public governancethat secures the resource rights of food-insecure people, and creates incentives forinvestment in natural resources and forrisk reduction.

� Target technology development anddissemination for food-insecure people.

New or updated national policies are alsosuggested to:

� Assess, update and monitor priorities forfood security.

� Improve national capacity to promoteeffective and equitable use of naturalresources, and support local initiatives.

� Strengthen or create institutions to planand manage natural resources at basin andlandscape scales, with all stakeholders.

� Develop mechanisms to value land andwater quality, and provide more incentivesfor resource management.

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With respect to research, this report identifiesthe following key areas:

� Evaluate the resilience of agro-ecologicalsystems and their inhabitants to resourcedegradation, and quantify the associatedcritical thresholds.

� Assess the current status of land andwater degradation, resource improvement,and food security, at subregional, regionaland global scales.

� Develop management technologies toimprove land and water productivity in

marginal agricultural lands, at farm andlandscape levels.

� Develop and promote more sustainableaquaculture at farm and landscape levels.

� Develop systems for the large-scale recyclingof nutrients in food and in waste transportedfrom rural areas to cities and rivers.

� Develop mechanisms to internalize the off-siteeffects of degradation, and transfer financialresources from city dwellers and industrialusers to upland farmers and water managerswho provide water-catchment services.

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Foreword

At the 1992 United Nations Conference onEnvironment and Sustainable Development in Riode Janeiro, Brazil, world leaders committedthemselves to an international agenda onenvironment and sustainable development, knownas Agenda 21. Priority program areas outlined inAgenda 21 included support for the promotion of anintegrated approach to natural resourcesmanagement and for sustainable agriculture toimprove food security. A decade later, worldleaders are meeting again, this time inJohannesburg for the World Summit on SustainableDevelopment. However, food security continues tobe one of the major challenges facing the world:approximately one person in six in the developingworld does not have access to sufficient food tolead a healthy and productive life.

The aim of this document is to provide a basisfor priority policy and research actions that willcounteract the progression of degradation and willreduce its impact on household food security andthe loss of other ecosystem services. Most of itwas developed as a contribution to a backgrounddocument for the Global Environmental Facility(GEF). As a Research Report, the document isnow intended to raise the profile of land and waterresources degradation, to present compellingarguments for further action, and to bring theseconcerns to public and government arenas. Weintend to revisit this document with the feedbackthat we receive and with results of further analysesand case studies.

This document focuses on “land, water andfood,” and in particular on the impacts of thedegradation of land and water on food andenvironmental security. Within the sphere of“livelihoods” and “ecosystem services,” “food andenvironmental security” have been chosen as thetarget issue, not “poverty” per se. Yet, we need tounderstand their linkages and recognize the trade-offs between food security, ecosystem services,

the generation of global environmental benefits,and trade globalization.

There are many studies on water degradation,land degradation, and food and environmentalinsecurity. This report seeks to provide an analysisand to suggest recommendations that differ fromthose in the abovementioned studies in threeways:

1. Integrated water and land analysis. Mostanalyses have treated water and landissues separately. Yet the quality and flowof water resources is determined mostly bythe management of land resources. By thesame token, the productivity andsustainability of land resources arecritically associated with water resources.Thus, the best results are to be obtainedby managing both resourcessimultaneously within a landscapeframework.

2. Holistic, people-centered analysis.Degradation-related food insecuritypersists, despite considerable attempts toreduce it, because many interventionshave been conceived in a too technicalfashion. Holistic and people-centeredapproaches are required that treat land,water and food as components of thesame system. The holistic approachfocuses on the people who manage landand water and who suffer from foodinsecurity, thus highlighting the realconstraints they experience, and providingmore realistic targets for action.

3. Focus on policy relevance. Interventionstrategies need to focus on thoseproblems that have policy relevance: thosethat affect national, local, and farm-levelfood and environmental security and

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agricultural development. This reportsuggests priority policy actions that maybe relevant in many countries and

circumstances, and research issues thatmay help improve food and environmentalsecurity efficiently.

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Integrated Land and Water Management for Food andEnvironmental Security

F. W. T. Penning de Vries, H. Acquay, D. Molden, S. J. Scherr, C. Valentin and O. Cofie

The Status of Land and Water Resources for Food and EnvironmentalSecurity

A Brief History

The publication The Limits to Growth by the“Club of Rome” (Meadows and Co-workers 1972)brought the broad realization that the quantityand quality of global natural resources areeffectively limited, and that unbridled expansionof demands was simply unrealistic. Yet, faminesin several countries underlined the rapidlygrowing need for food. Some researcherspointed out that much growth in demand can stillbe realized through much more efficient use ofnatural resources (e.g., Buringh et al. 1975).

Several major efforts addressed the issue offood insecurity in developing countries. In the1960s, the world launched a major effort toimprove food security in developing countriesthrough large-scale agricultural-developmentprograms under the banner of the greenrevolution. The main goal of these programs wasto address food security at three levels. On theglobal level, the objective was to produceenough food to meet the full requirements of theworld’s population. On the national level, theobjective was to make enough food available tomeet the demands of a nation. At the householdlevel the objective was to ensure thathouseholds in urban and rural areas would be

able to produce or purchase the food that theirmembers needed for a healthy and activelifestyle.

The large-scale agricultural programs hadtwo main strategies. One strategy wasintensification of agriculture to increase land andwater productivity significantly through theintroduction of high-yielding crop varieties,increased use of agrochemicals such asfertilizers and pesticides, and mechanization (useof tractors and other agricultural machinery). Theother strategy was expansion of agricultural landarea under irrigation. As a result of these efforts,the area of irrigated land in the world increasedby 77 percent from about 153 million hectares in1966 to 271 million hectares by 1998 (WorldResources Institute 2000). The expansion ofirrigated agriculture is not distributed evenlythroughout the world: India and China accountfor about 41 percent of the world’s irrigatedagricultural land, whereas Africa accounts forless than 14 percent (World Resources Institute2000).

However, despite a tremendous contributionto food security, major intensive agriculturalprograms have also had unintended adverseimpacts on the integrity and function ofecological systems, notably of agricultural

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landscapes, forests, grasslands, freshwaterbodies, and coastal and marine areas, that arecritical for long-term global food security and forthe livelihoods of people in the affected areas.Such impacts underscore the need forsustainable management of land and waterresources to ensure long-term food andenvironmental security* (whenever there is anasterisk in the text please refer to the Glossaryfor a detailed description).

During the next two decades, the globalpopulation is projected to reach 7.5 billion. Mostof this growth will occur in low-income countries.Cereal production in the developing world isprojected to increase by 45 percent between1997 and 2020; nonetheless, it will not keeppace with the increase in demand (Pinstrup-Andersen et al. 1999). Meat, root, oilseed andtuber products are all expected to increase by 40to 80 percent over the same period, and withrising incomes, vegetable and fruit production willincrease sharply. Meanwhile, nonfood agriculturalproduction will also rise. All of these factors willincrease pressure on a largely fixed land base.Future yield growth potentials are limited onhigh-quality croplands that are already beingmanaged intensively, and will become even morelimited if land degradation continues on irrigatedlands. But in many areas, there is scope forimproving the productivity of presently irrigatedlands (Sakthivadivel et al. 1999), even if the costof irrigation water increases. Moreover, much ofthe future growth is expected to come fromlower-quality lands that will require substantialinvestment in land improvements and waterutilization in order to sustain higher yields.Therefore, it is appropriate to introduce optionsfor improved and sustainable productivity now,before every inch of land is used up.

Despite accelerating urbanization, ruralpopulations in developing countries are projectedto continue to grow until they reach a peak ofabout 3.09 billion in 2015; they may decline by2025 to 3.03 billion. Thus increasing the

diversion of land and water to nonagriculturaluses will also be essential to improve livelihoodsecurity for growing rural populations.

Most developing countries established publicinstitutions to govern land and water resourcesmany years ago, and have at least sometargeted land- and water-conservation programsand policies. Some countries, such as China,have undertaken huge projects to combat landand water degradation. Donors and internationaldevelopment organizations have also supportedland- and water-conservation programs to reducedownstream problems, increase agriculturalproductivity, reduce poverty or protectenvironmental resources in the degradingregions. While several billion dollars have beenspent by organizations such as the World Bank,the Asian Development Bank and theInternational Fund for Agricultural Development(IFAD), these investments (except for theconstruction of irrigation projects) have generallyrepresented less than 5 percent of agriculturalspending, and less than 1 percent of totalspending. Spending on these activities(watershed management, soil and waterconservation, soil enrichment, etc.) is higher fororganizations with a special focus on the ruralpoor such as IFAD (Sidahmed 2001), and forsome bilateral donors such as the Swiss, whohave concentrated on aid to mountainous orsemiarid regions. Nongovernment organizationshave implemented numerous community- andlandscape-scale projects for land and waterimprovements as components of programs toreduce poverty and improve environmentalconditions.

Intensification and social developmentprocesses have also led to considerableinvestment by local farmers and resource usersin land and water improvement, using bothindigenous and adapted technologies. Forexample, a review of 70 empirical studies ontropical hillsides found that in many placespopulation growth, especially at higher population

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densities, had led to extensive land-improvinginvestment and conservation management(Templeton and Scherr 1999). Yet in many areas,the scale of land and water improvement isdwarfed by continued degradation. Pastinvestments have been too modest, and manywere not designed to meet socioeconomicconditions. Biot et al. (1995) recognized this as“institutional failure” and a lack of appropriateincentives to induce land users to adoptappropriate conservation technologies.

Consumption patterns across the world arevery unequal. About 15 percent of the world’spopulation, in high-income countries, accountsfor 56 percent of total consumption while thepoorest 40 percent, in low-income countries,accounts for only 11 percent (World Bank 2001).Lack of access to sufficient food has had directimpacts on the nutritional status of millions ofpeople in developing countries. From 1995 to1997, 864 million people (18% of the totalpopulation of developing countries) wereundernourished (International Commission onPeace and Food 2000). The situation isparticularly urgent in sub-Saharan Africa, wherethe number of food-insecure people has doubledsince the 1969–1971 period (Pinstrup-Andersenet al. 1999). Children have been the mostvulnerable in countries facing food insecurity. In2000, 182 million preschool children—33 percentof all children under the age of five in thedeveloping world—were stunted or chronicallyundernourished, and 27 percent wereunderweight. Approximately 14 million children,most of them in developing countries, die eachyear from hunger-related diseases (InternationalCommission on Peace and Food 2000).

Status of the World’s Ecosystems in2000

The world’s land and water resources are criticalfor human survival. They provide goods such as

food crops, fish, livestock, and timber andnontimber products. They also provide ecologicalservices such as purification of air and water,maintenance of biological diversity, anddecomposition and recycling of nutrients (WorldResources Institute 2000). Despite the emergingrecognition of their central role in humansurvival, land and water ecosystems are beingdegraded at an alarming rate. This sectionprovides a brief global overview of the status ofthree terrestrial ecosystems—agriculture, forestsand grasslands—and two aquatic ecosystems—freshwater systems and coastal and marinesystems; we will focus on land and waterresources later in this report.

Agricultural ecosystem. The agriculturalecosystem or agro-ecosystem* refers to naturallandscapes that have been modified by humansfor agriculture. Agro-ecosystems cover about 25percent of the world’s total land area, excludingGreenland and Antarctica. Together withmangrove forest and riparian lands, they accountfor 90 percent of all animal and plant protein andalmost 99 percent of the calories that peopleconsume (FAO 2000; World Resources Institute2000). Around 40 percent of the world’spopulation of 6 billion people live in agro-ecosystems with irrigated and mixed irrigated/rain-fed agriculture, even though they occupy only15 percent of the agricultural extent. Arid andsemiarid agro-ecosystems, on the other hand,comprise around 30 percent of the agriculturalextent, but they contain only 13 percent of thepopulation (FAO 2001a; Wood et al. 2000, table5). Globally, about 800 million people are food-insecure, of whom 300 million dwell in thesemiarid tropics (Ryan and Spencer 2001).

About two-thirds of agro-ecosystems havebeen degraded over the last 50 years (WorldResources Institute 2000). In these areas,unsustainable methods of land use arediminishing the agro-ecosystem’s ultimatecapacity for agricultural production.

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The main causes of ecosystem degradationare:

� Increased demand for food for a rapidlygrowing population resulting inintensification of agriculture andshortened fallow periods.

� Inappropriate agricultural policies suchas ill-designed subsidies for water,fertilizers, and other agrochemicals,leading to wasteful use.

� Use of agricultural machinery andagronomic practices that are unsuitablefor local soil and water conditions as wellas the social and economic situation.

� Concentrations of livestock that lead toovergrazing in arid and semiarid areas,and to water pollution in wetter areas.

� Loss of natural vegetation that serves asbuffers, waterway filters, dry-seasonfodder reserves and habitat.

� Poorly constructed infrastructure thatleads to land fragmentation and erosionand disrupts hydrological systems.

� The inadequacy of legal frameworks formanagement of land and water in manycountries, and shortage of implementingarrangements provide insufficientguidance for sustainable stewardship toallow for food and environmentalsecurity.

The adverse impacts of poor landmanagement include soil, land and waterdegradation, and the loss of biodiversity throughdamage to habitat of wild species, includingspecies such as pollinators beneficial to farming.The loss of crop-genetic biodiversity isevidenced in China, where the 10,000 wheatvarieties grown in 1949 have been reduced to

300 varieties. Of these 300 varieties, only 14are planted in 40 percent of the wheat fieldsunder intensive farming systems (Halweil 2002).

Forest ecosystem. Forests cover approximately33 percent of the world’s land area, excludingGreenland and Antarctica (FAO 2001b). Recentestimates of forest coverage indicate that up to50 percent of the world’s original forest coverhas been cleared already, and that deforestationcontinues. Deforestation of tropical forests aloneis estimated at more than 130,000 ha/annum(World Resources Institute 2000). The twoprincipal land uses that contribute to thedegradation of forestlands are commerciallogging and land conversion to agriculture.

The main causes of ecosystem degradationare:

a. Growing demand for forest products.

b. Policy failures such as undervaluation oftimber stocks, which provide economicincentives for inefficient and wastefullogging practices.

c. Agricultural subsidies that favor theconversion of forestlands for large-scaleagriculture.

d. Fragmented and weak institutionalframeworks to support the conservationand sustainable use of forests.

The impacts of deforestation include landand water degradation, displacement of people,especially indigenous people who dependdirectly on the forest for their survival, and lossof biodiversity. Deforestation has also causedsignificant adverse hydrological changes tosome of the world’s major watersheds.Degradation of forests, including the setting offires, accounts for about 20 percent of theworld’s annual carbon emissions (WorldResources Institute 2000).

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Grassland ecosystem. Grasslands coverapproximately 52.5 million km2 or 41 percent ofthe world’s land area, excluding Antarctica andGreenland. Humans have modified grasslandssignificantly, in part by converting them forfarming activities and urban development. Only 9percent of grasslands in North America and 21percent in South America are still intact, andmore than 50 percent of the original grasslandsof Asia, Africa and Australia have been lost(World Resources Institute 2000).

The main threats to the world’s remaininggrasslands are urbanization and conversion toagriculture, inappropriate use of fire to managegrasslands, and excessive grazing pressure fromlivestock.

The impacts of grassland degradationinclude the loss of biodiversity due to theconversion or fragmentation of habitats; soildegradation, particularly erosion due to the lossof vegetation cover; and soil compaction fromhigh livestock-stocking densities. Finally, theburning of grasslands is a major contributor tocarbon emissions. The burning of grasslands inAfrica, for example, accounts for some 40percent of carbon emissions from biomassburning each year (World Resources Institute2000).

Freshwater ecosystem. Surface freshwatersystems—rivers, lakes, and wetlands—occupyonly 1 percent of the earth’s surface area.Surface freshwater ecosystems face three majorthreats.

The first threat is fragmentation of rivers bystructures such as dams, diversions and canals.Some 60 percent of the world’s 227 largestrivers have been fragmented by these structures,resulting in the loss of biodiversity because ofalteration of natural habitats. The Aral Sea haslost 20 of the 24 fish species that supported acommercial fishery because of water diversionand pollution from agrochemicals. As a result,the fishery, which had produced 40,000 tons offish annually and employed 60,000 people, has

collapsed (World Resources Institute 2000).Dams have modified significantly sedimentmovement downstream to deltas, estuaries andfloodplains. One result is significant decreases infloodplain agriculture (World Resources Institute2000).

The second threat to freshwater ecosystemsis excessive withdrawal of water. Approximately70 percent of water withdrawals from nature arefor irrigated agriculture, with the remainder beingfor domestic, industrial and hydropower uses.Withdrawal can lead to river desiccation orreduced flow during the dry season. Such asituation is already occurring in major riverbasins such as those of the Colorado, Nile,Yellow, and the Syr and Amu Darya rivers.Groundwater extraction is another form offreshwater withdrawal. This process contributesapproximately 20 percent to global freshwateruse, or as much as 600–700 km3 per year. Muchof the groundwater comes from shallow aquifersthat are fed by runoff. Another type ofgroundwater—fossil water—comes from deepsources that are not linked to the normal runoffcycle (World Resources Institute 2000).Groundwater is an important source of water forabout 1.5 to 2 billion people. Some of the largestcities in the world, including Dhaka, Jakarta,Lima and Mexico City, depend almost entirely ongroundwater as a source of drinking water(Sampat 2001).

Groundwater depletion occurs when waterwithdrawals are higher than natural recharge,resulting in a drop in the water table. In many ofthe most pump-intensive areas of India andChina, water tables are falling at a rate of 1–3m/year.

The third threat to freshwater ecosystems ispollution of surface water by agriculturalchemicals, including fertilizers, pesticides andherbicides, animal wastes (especially fromintensive livestock systems), and industrialchemicals. Groundwater can be polluted bynitrates and pesticides, mainly stemming fromagriculture and industrial chemicals, sometimes

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with heavy metals, from mining. In the UnitedStates, some 60 percent of wells sampled inagricultural areas in the mid-1990s containedpesticides (Sampat 2001; Revenga et al. 2000).

Coastal and marine ecosystem. Some 2.2 billionpeople, nearly 40 percent of the world’spopulation, live within 100 km of a coastline.These people exert significant pressures oncoastal and marine ecosystems that can affectthe ecosystems’ integrity and function adversely.These pressures include harvesting of naturalresources, such as fish and mangrove forests;infrastructural development; and industrial,agricultural and household pollution. Coastalhabitats or resources that are under severethreat from human activities include mangroveforests, coral reefs and fisheries.

Mangrove forests cover a total area ofapproximately 181,000 km2 along the coastlinesof 112 countries and territories, andapproximately 50 percent of these forests havebeen destroyed in the past decades (Kelleher etal. 1995). The main threats to mangrove forestsare excessive harvesting for fuelwood andtimber, conversion to shrimp aquaculture, anddevelopment of urban and other types ofinfrastructures.

Most coral reefs occur in shallow tropicalwaters, and they cover about 255,000 km2 of theearth’s surface area. About 90 percent of thereefs are found in the Indo-Pacific Region(Spalding and Grenfell 1997). The main threatsto coral reefs are land reclamation, coastaldevelopment and coral mining. Other humanactivities that can have indirect adverse effectson coral reefs are siltation and pollution.

Approximately 27 percent of coral reefs inthe world have been degraded, and a further 32percent may be under serious threat (Wilkinson2001). Evidence is also emerging that the rise inboth sea-level and temperature, associated withclimate change, may threaten coral reefs. Sea-level rise will also have major effects on

extensive areas of coastal zones, some withmajor cities, with a very low elevation.

Fish are an important source of animalprotein for people. They provide about one-sixthof the human intake of animal protein worldwide,and are the primary source of protein for about abillion people in developing countries. Fisheriesare under pressure from overfishing. Overfishingoccurs because of the excessive harvestingcapacity in the world’s fishing industry. Accordingto one estimate, the level of fish harvestingexceeds a sustainable level by 30–40 percent.As a result, about 28 percent of the world’s mostimportant marine fish species have been fishednear to or beyond the maximum sustainableyield (World Resources Institute 2000).

Global Patterns of Land and WaterDegradation

Until recently, policymakers and policy analystshave not considered land and water degradationto be important threats to food security. It hasbeen assumed widely that land is globallyabundant and less important than other factors indetermining agricultural productivity. Water haslong been perceived to be important in relation toirrigation, but management of water onnonirrigated lands has been neglected. Moreover,there are common perceptions of the degradationof agro-ecological systems* as being a slowprocess that can be always reversed withadequate inputs. Yet such ecosystems areresilient* only up to a threshold, and will collapsewhen stressed beyond this level. One reasonthis goes unnoticed is that degradation invisiblylowers the capacity for production, whileinvestments still allow actual production to go up,until the actual production level reaches aceiling, after which both drop (figure 1).

Agricultural land resources in the developingworld. One striking finding of a global

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FIGURE 1.Hypothetical example of how maximum yield level of crops (obtained in optimal biophysical conditions and used here asthe reference yield level, per unit land or per unit water) gets reduced due to degradation.

Note: Two scenarios are shown: continuation of the current rate of degradation (labeled 2040-H), and a rate half as much (labeled 2040-M).The actual level of agricultural production (dotted line) rises in time due to intensification, until it approaches the potential level afterwhich it must also decrease (after Penning de Vries 1999).

assessment of soil quality in agricultural areas isthat only 16 percent of agricultural soils are freeof significant physical and chemical constraints,such as poor drainage, poor nutrient status, poortractability, salinity or alkalinity, or shallowness.Of these favorable soils, 60 percent are found intemperate areas, and only 15 percent in thetropics (Wood et al. 2000). The same sourceindicates that globally, 54 percent of theagricultural extent is “flat,” 20 percent is onmoderate slopes, 17 percent on steep slopes,and 8 percent on very steep slopes. All of thesesloping lands are prone to high soil erosion andrainfall runoff, without adequate management.The agricultural land base in Africa is especiallypoor; most soils require careful management tomaintain crop production, in addition to land-improving investments to raise productivitysustainably and to raise low input efficiency.

Agricultural land degradation. Land use, evenintensive use, does not necessarily lead todegradation. Appropriate short-term investments

in inputs (water, fertilizer, seeds) and long-terminvestments in structures and equipment (pumps,tractors, dams, terraces) can conserve soil andwater, while allowing productive and sustainableagricultural land use. The same applies to water:its use for growing crops does not have to leadto shortages and pollution. However, if conditionsare such that farmers and livestock holderscannot invest in these inputs and structures,human activity will continue to degrade naturalresources and livelihoods, unless off-farmemployment can assist in providing an incomewithout destroying the natural resources base.Societies and their institutions must invest for thelong term in water- and land-managementstructures and in education to halt degradation.

Degradation has been taking placeextensively for as long as agriculture has beenpracticed (Ponting 1991). It is difficult to quantifydegradation because of the slow and veryheterogeneous nature of the process. One guessis that as much land was degraded as was inproduction in 1960 (Rozanov et al. 1990).

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Results of a broad attempt to extrapolate data ondegraded areas with more recent data andcompare them with the total land area suitablefor cultivation are presented in box 1 for threeregions: East Asia and the Pacific (EAP), theMiddle East and North Africa (MENA), and SouthAsia (SA) (regions as defined by the WorldBank). This indicates that land is clearly a finiteresource, and that in some regions all landsuitable for sustainable agriculture is, in fact,already being used fully.

The degree of degradation is highly variable,and ranges from “complete loss” to “insignificantloss,” and in some cases “rehabilitation.” Woodet al. (2000) indicated that 40 percent ofagricultural land in the world is moderatelydegraded and a further 9 percent stronglydegraded, reducing global crop yield by 13

percent. An example of the degree ofdegradation for South and Southeast Asia ispresented in figure 2. It is evident thatdegradation is widespread, and that its spatialvariability is pronounced. At smaller scales offarms and catchments, heterogeneity is also verysignificant. The cost associated with remediationof environmental damage due to degradation canbe very high (Rosegrant and Hazell 2000). Forexample, in Asia, its annual value has beenestimated roughly at US$35 billion (Jalal andRogers 1997). This order of magnitude indicatesa marked need to address erosion and otherdegradation problems through diverse means.

Degradation of water and land often occurs inparallel and it leads to a lower level of ecosystemservices, in particular a reduced capacity for foodproduction and income generation. Degradation is

FIGURE 2.Global land degradation assessment for South and East Asia.

Source: Van Lynden and Oldman 1997.

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Box 1. Declining Land Resources.

For every region, the full length of the bars represents the land surface that 5,000 years ago could havebeen turned into land that could be farmed productively and sustainably. In the process of cultivating andgrazing the land, human beings have degraded land irreversibly. This and population growth havenecessitated the opening up of new land. Opening new land and leaving degraded land behind is notunlike the process of “strip mining” that reduces the total amount of land resources. EAP stands for East

Asia and the Pacific, MENA for Middle East and North Africa, and SA for South Asia.Each bar shows the fraction of land suitable for sustainable agriculture that is still available (brown),

the land surfaces currently in use for agricultural production (green), and the area fully degraded whererecovery is uneconomical (red). For each region, three dates are shown: the lower bar depicts thesituation in 1960, the middle bar the current situation, and the upper bar the scenario for the near future.The bar is split green/red when more land is “used” than is “available” for sustainable agriculture. Redreflects areas where “land” particularly influences “water” and green reflects areas where “water”particularly affects “land.”

Source: Penning de Vries 2001.

the result of inappropriate management.Degradation of these resources needs to beaddressed as a single issue, and this will be donein the remainder of this report.

In an analysis of the Pakistan Punjab, Ali andByerlee (2001) found that “Continuous andwidespread resource degradation, as measured bysoil and water quality variables, had a significant

negative effect on productivity. Degradation of agro-ecosystem health was related in part to moderntechnologies, such as fertilizer and tube well water,offsetting a substantial part of their contribution toproductivity.”

Problems more or less specific to Africashould be recognized explicitly. These are causedby:

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1. The extreme poverty of its resource basefor agriculture, leading to low efficienciesof agricultural inputs and tooverpopulation at low absolute populationdensities.

2. The need to intensify agriculture insituations where key infrastructure, suchas roads, transport and distributionsystems are not yet adequate anddomestic markets are not a driver forchange as yet.

3. Inadequate policies and bad governance.

Structural adjustments have obligedgovernments to retreat from direct participation inthe agricultural inputs sector, but private-sectorresults have been discouraging. There are atleast four reasons:

1. Retreat has yet to be completed innumerous countries.

2. Many countries lack transparent andcompetitive markets (government officialsare still heavily involved in the business).

3. The impact of degradation processesresults in reduced agronomic andeconomic productivity.

4. Farmers producing on low-quality ordepleted soils lack complementaryorganic inputs and managementpractices to make use of chemicalfertilizer effective and profitable. One ofthe consequences of recent policy shiftsis that agricultural input use has notincreased. Paradoxically, since theinitiation of these structural adjustmentprograms, the average annual use offertilizers in Africa has declined from 10to 8 kg per hectare.

Freshwater resources in the developing world.From 1900 to 1995, global withdrawals fromriver systems for human use have increasedfrom 600 km3 to 3,800 km3 per year. Annualagricultural withdrawals are now in the orderof 2,500 km3, or 70 percent of totalwithdrawals. In many developing countriesirrigation withdrawals are over 90 percent ofall water withdrawn for human use. Fromanother perspective, of the 100,000 km3 peryear reaching the earth’s surface, only 40percent reaches a river or groundwaterstorage and is considered to be a renewablewater resource. Of this amount, some 3,800km3 are now diverted from its natural courses,most of which (2,500 km3) is withdrawn forirrigation purposes (based on Shiklomanov1999). The other 94 percent of the renewableresource is consumed in terrestrial, aquatic,and coastal ecosystems, and in rain-fedagriculture. Of the total evaporation from landsurfaces, 15–20 percent results from rain-fedagriculture, and 5 percent from irrigated lands(estimated by overlaying World Water andClimate Atlas grids on the USGS land coverdata set). Expansion of cropping in the pastdecades means that over 50 percent of themajor river basins in South Asia, as inEurope, are now under agricultural cover; over30 percent of the basin area is underagricultural cover in South America, NorthAfrica, and Southeast Asia, as in the UnitedStates and Australia.

The interdependency of land and watermanagement is even tighter for irrigation. The17 percent of global cropland that is irrigatedproduces 30–40 percent of the world’s crops.The share of cropland that is irrigated increasedby 72 percent between 1966 and 1996. Thisdoes not include the widespread and growinguse of small-scale irrigation systems providingsupplementary water to mainly rain-fed croppingsystems.

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FIGURE 3.Net irrigated area.

Water depletion and pollution. The expansion ofirrigated and rain-fed agricultural areas, shown infigure 3, removes more and more water fromnatural uses, fueling depletion, pollution andcompetition for the resource. In many basins ofthe world, such as those of the Murray-Darling,the Colorado, the Indus, and the Yellow rivers,there is simply no more water for additionalirrigation uses. In search for additionalresources, farmers tap groundwater andwastewater for irrigation. In many breadbasketareas groundwater use has reachedunsustainable levels. Competition for waterbetween agriculture and urban interests is sharp.But on the whole, the conflict, or the need to findharmony or balance, is between uses of water inagriculture and uses of water for environmentalflows that are important in sustaining ecosystemservices. From this perspective, “how muchirrigation do we really need?” is one of theburning questions of our times. How we resolvethe world water crisis very much depends onhow well water is managed in agriculture.

A global and first approximation of areas ofprojected water scarcity for biophysical or foreconomic reasons for 2025 is shown in figure 4.

Note that at any level of supply, there will belarge fluctuations in time and space, so that thismap is less significant for household watersecurity than for national water and food security.Physically water-scarce areas are those that donot have sufficient water resources to meetagricultural, domestic and environmental needsby 2025. Areas with economic scarcity are areaswhere there are enough utilizable waterresources to meet projected 2025 demands, butwhere much more water will need to bedeveloped by a variety of means to meetadditional demands. Most sub-Saharan Africancountries face an “economic” scarcity of water—where financial and human resources willconstrain the ability to tap additional resourcesrequired. These are also areas of significantmalnutrition.

Increasing the productivity of water inagriculture holds a key to solving water depletionand pollution problems. A common perception isthat increasing efficiency in irrigation is thesolution to the water crisis. Technically defined,efficiency tells us how much diverted waterreaches the crops, and how much is wasted“down the drain.” But recent water accounting

Source: FAOSTAT 2000 database.

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FIGURE 4.Water scarcity in 2025 if current trends continue.

Source: IWMI 2000.

studies demonstrate that especially in water-stressed basins, farmers are very effective inconverting water for crop production (Molden etal. 2001; IWMI and GDRS 2000). Farmers as agroup are often “too” efficient, in that little wateris left for other human uses and environmentalflows. But productivity per unit of water in manyregions remains far below potential. Increasingthe productivity of water will mean less waterrequired in agriculture, easing pressures onstrained water resources.

Poorly sited or mismanaged irrigation has ledto salinization on about 20 percent of irrigatedland. On an annual basis, about 1.5 millionhectares are lost due to salinization alone, andabout US$11 billion in reduced productivity.

Intensification in high external input agro-ecosystems has often resulted in leaching ofmineral fertilizers (especially nitrogen),pesticides, and animal-manure residues into

watercourses, due to inappropriate managementor inadequate technologies (Barbier 1998). Onmore sloping lands with lower-quality soils,intensification has tended to increase soil erosionas well as the effects of sediment on aquaticsystems, hydraulic structures and water usage(Wood et al. 2000).

Rain-fed agriculture. Rain-fed agriculture indeveloping countries in Africa, Asia, LatinAmerica and the Pacific covers more than 90percent of the total area of 36 million km2. Of allcountries, 70 percent depend on more than 60percent of rain-fed agriculture (Rockstrom 2001).Thus, the management of rain-fed agriculturallands has a powerful effect on rainfall absorption,storage, runoff and water quality. Rainfall onthese lands varies from place to place and yearto year, but ranges from 600 to more than 2,000mm/annum. In particular, the drier areas are

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often used as rangelands. Crop yields on theselands also vary considerably. Even though thepotential production on rain-fed land can be high(Penning de Vries and Djiteye 1982), actualyields are often less than 2 or 3 tonnes of driedfood or feed per hectare, which value is lessthan half the average in irrigated lands. Thisimplies that typical rainfall could supportsignificantly higher production if good practicescan be made attractive to farmers, e.g., bystabilizing yields and increasing input-useefficiency through micro-irrigation, diversification,insurance and regional cooperation.

Global Patterns of Food Insecurity

The geography of rural poverty. Food insecurityis associated closely with poverty. Approximately1.2 billion people in the developing world areabsolutely poor, with only a dollar a day or lessper person to meet food, shelter and other basicneeds. The World Development Indicator“Poverty” (World Bank 2001) provides a list offractions of total national population below thenational and international poverty line. Most of

the poor inhabit rural areas, but their numbers inurban areas are expanding rapidly.

The total rural population in the developingworld in the mid-1990s was about 2.7 billion, ofwhich about one-third lived on “favored” lands,defined as rain-fed or irrigated cropland in areaswhich are fertile, well-drained with eventopography and with adequate rainfall. Theyhave relatively low risk of degradation. The othertwo-thirds of the rural population either lived on“marginal” agricultural lands, defined as landcurrently used for agriculture, agroforestry andgrazing, which have serious productionconstraints, or dwelt in forests, woodlands or aridlands. All these areas are especially prone todegradation without careful management. This isshown in table 1. The authors approximated ruralpoverty in the two areas by applying nationalpercentages to the respective areas. Theresulting estimates show that nearly 630 millionof the rural poor live in marginal agricultural,forested and arid lands, and 320 million live onfavored lands.

The geography of food insecurity. Mapping foodinsecurity is an important way of targeting areas

TABLE 1.Geographic distribution of the rural poor (in millions).

Region Total Total Rural Rural Rural Rural Average(# countries) population rural population population poor poor ruralrural population on favored on marginal on favored on marginal poverty

lands lands lands lands %

Sub-Saharan 530 375 101 274 65 175 64

Africa (40)

Asia (20) 2,840 2,044 755 1,289 219 374 29

Central and 430 117 40 77 24 47 61

South America (26)

West Asia and 345 156 37 119 11 35 29

North Africa (40)

Total (106) 4,145 2,692 933 1,759 319 631 36

Source: Scherr 1999b, based on Nelson et al. 1997, table 2.4.

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for action. An example for India is shown infigure 5. The index calculated by state iscomposed of five indicators for food availabilityand production, eight indicators for access tofood and six indicators for food utilization.

The geography of malnutrition. An estimated 800million people—one-sixth of the developingworld’s population—do not have access tosufficient food to lead healthy, productive lives.Around 280 million of these food-insecure peoplelive in South Asia, 240 million in East Asia, 180million in sub-Saharan Africa, and the rest inLatin America, the Middle East and North Africa.In the period from 1995 to 1997, 18 percent ofthe total population of the developing world wasundernourished. Although progress is beingmade in tackling food insecurity, it is slow. Insub-Saharan Africa the number of food-insecurepeople has doubled since 1969–1971. Accordingto recent FAO projections, the World Food

Summit goal of halving the number of food-insecure people from 800 million in 1995 to 400million by 2015 will not be achieved until 2030(Pinstrup-Andersen et al. 1999).

In 2000, 182 million preschool children—33percent of all children under five in thedeveloping world—were stunted or chronicallyundernourished; 27 percent were underweight.While the percentages appear to be dropping inAsia, they are escalating in Africa. Fourteenmillion children, most of them in developingcountries, die every year from hunger-relateddisease—a number equivalent to three jumbojets crashing every hour, every day of the year.Nearly half of all children living in the warm,semiarid tropics and subtropics aremalnourished, as are more than one-third inthe warm subhumid and humid tropics. Aquarter of the children in the cool tropics andsubtropics with summer rainfall suffer frommalnutrition, while less than one-fifth do

FIGURE 5.Food insecurity in India.

Source: Food insecurity Atlas for Rural India, MSSRF-WFP 2001.

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likewise in the warm/cool humid subtropics andthe cool subtropics with winter rainfall.Globally, 59 percent of all malnourishedchildren in the developing world reside in thewarm tropics, 27 percent in the warmsubtropics, and 15 percent in the cool tropicsand subtropics.

Relation between Food Security andLand and Water Degradation

Even though land and water degradation is oftenvisible and is reported daily in the press,translation of this phenomenon intoconsequences for food security is difficultconceptually and in practice. The relationbetween degradation and food security is ofenormous complexity due to the interactionsbetween land, water, population, wealth andhealth and the rapid changes therein.

As many as 1.8 billion people live in areaswith some noticeable land and waterdegradation, which reduces the quality oflivelihoods and household food security. There isa pressing need for better information at local,national and global scales on these relationships.Nonetheless, it appears that areas with thegreatest potential for land and waterdegradation—those with highly weathered soils,inadequate or excess rainfall and hightemperatures—do correspond closely with areasof highest rural poverty and malnutrition.

It is logical to assume that land and waterresources that are poor, or rapidly degrading,contribute to poverty and food insecurity. Thereare strong indications that the consequences ofdegradation for food security at the householdlevel already affect many people significantly(e.g., Bridges et al. 2001; Scherr 2001).

Land and water degradation may impact foodsecurity by reducing household consumption,national food supplies, economic growth andnatural capital.

Reduced Consumption of RuralHouseholds

Land and water degradation affects ruralhousehold consumption by:

� Reducing subsistence food supplies.

� Reducing food purchases due to higherfood prices.

� Reducing household incomes, byincreased need for purchased farminputs, increased share of foodpurchased and increased food prices.

� Reducing agricultural employment.

� Negative health effects due to reducedwater quality or food consumption.

� Reducing the supply of water fordomestic use as well as irrigation.

� Increasing difficulty of access to water.

In most developing countries, the ruralpoor depend on agriculture more than the ruralaffluent. Because poor farmers have limitedaccess to external or industrial agriculturalinputs, “natural capital”—the inherentproductivity of their natural resources baseincluding land and water is of particularimportance to their livelihood security. Theterm “ecological poverty” has recently comeinto use to describe the type of widespreadpoverty that arises from degradation or loss ofsuch natural capital. But ecological poverty notonly leads to poverty but also results from it.When poor people have trouble securing foodbecause of insufficient agricultural productionor income, they may become even moredependent on “mining” land and waterresources.

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In areas of strong water competition,water tends to be reallocated to those whocan pay or secure control over more. In suchsituations, it is the poor who are likely to loseaccess. In situations where water resourcesare being developed, it is the wealthiersegments of society that are able to capturethe benefits of the resource. Clearly, a povertyfocus—with special attention on access rightsto water—is required to assist the poor gainand maintain the use of water for foodsecurity.

Econometric evidence from China indicatesthat land and water degradation has a muchgreater effect on poor and densely populateddistricts than on other areas (Rozelle et al.1997).

Reducing Global and National FoodSupplies

While land and water degradation is clearlyextensive, accurate global estimates of theproductivity impacts do not exist. Very roughestimates, based on GLASOD biophysicaldata, suggest that globally the cumulativeproductivity losses from 1945 to 1990 were11–13 percent for cropland and 4–9 percent forpasture. These cumulative croplandproductivity losses are 45–365 percent higherin Africa, Asia and Latin America than inEurope and North America (although they aresimilar for pastureland). Degradation was lightin most of Asia, but was serious in South Asiaand montane Southeast Asia. For Africa,existing data suggest widespread loss ofproductive potential, due to intensive use ofsoil types that are highly sensitive to erosionand nutrient depletion, or are inherently low innutrients and organic matter. Studies in CentralAmerica show high production losses due toerosion (Scherr 1999b).

Reducing Economic Growth

Degradation may reduce economic growth by:

� Economic multiplier effects of reducedfarm household expenditures andagriculture-related industries.

� Higher food prices.

� Increased out-migration from degraded orwater-scarce areas, thereby depressingurban wages.

Regional and national studies have produceda wide range of estimates of the magnitude ofeconomic losses from soil degradation in thedeveloping world, reported as a proportion of theagricultural gross domestic product (AGDP).Most are calculated in terms of the financialvalue of lost crop yields or the cost ofpurchasing fertilizer to replace nutrients lostthrough erosion or depletion. These estimatesare quite high: 1–5 percent per annum in amajority of studies of soil erosion, and over 5percent per annum in half of the studies ofnutrient depletion. Calculating the discountedfuture stream of losses from soil degradationraises the cost to a figure equivalent to 35–44percent of the AGDP in several studies inEthiopia and Java. Several more sophisticatedeconomic studies at the subnational scale inRwanda and Mexico and at the national scales inGhana and Nicaragua show the major economicimpacts of soil degradation on farm incomes and—due to large multiplier effects—on overall economicgrowth (Scherr 1999a). In Latin America, high soil-nutrient depletion rates have been estimated inmost cropping systems (Wood et al. 2000, table20). The effects on yield have been masked byhigher input use that increased farm productioncosts significantly and reduced farm income.

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Reducing Natural Capital

Degradation directly reduces natural capital,causing:

� Damage to natural environmentsimportant for local ecosystem stabilityand agricultural production (e.g.,wetlands).

� Increased risks of natural disasters(flooding and droughts).

� Reduced long-term capacity to supplyfood needs through domestic productiondue to reduced land area for productionand reduced productivity.

� Damage to wild aquatic resources (fish,and aquatic animals such as frogs, snailsand crabs, and aquatic plants such aslotus or reeds). These resources can be

highly significant to the nutrition andincome of rural communities,particularly for landless people.

Public Awareness

The ultimate driving factors of water and landdegradation are (1) population growth, (2)growth in incomes and globalization, resultingin increased consumer demand for food, fiber,water and other resource-based productsdelinked from resource-carrying capacity, (3)urbanization, and (4) climatic change. Thesehave a great momentum and are influencedby many factors themselves. More proximatevariables of degradation are discussed in thenext section, and suggestions are given inthe subsequent section on how to modifythem. Yet, the degree of public awareness onnatural resources is also of crucialimportance.

FIGURE 6.The range of levels of environmental damage in relation to income, and the direction of development this report promotes(labeled “our challenge”) to minimize environmental degradation (after ADB 1997a, 214 and IBSRAM 1999).

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Lomborg (2001) expresses optimism thatsocieties will become aware and concernedabout degradation of the natural environment,and that with rising incomes they will find waysto halt and reverse degradation. Someinteresting examples from Europe and NorthAmerica are provided. We consider this viewoverly optimistic for many developing countries.If a lack of “green” concerns is prevalent in asociety, people are less willing to invest inenvironmental concerns. And if equity withinsociety is not achieved, many people remain at alow income level even though the nationalaverage rises. If land and water resources areexploited beyond their threshold of resilience,*due to high population density or ecologicalfragility, the system fails rather suddenly. Whenthis happens, in a short period land is lost foragriculture, water is no longer productive,national food security is reduced, and the optionfor income generation through agriculturedisappears. These two contrasting possibleoutcomes are depicted in figure 6.

To reverse the trend from increasingenvironmental damage and degradation towardsrehabilitation and improved livelihoods, asdepicted in figure 6, governments and otherstakeholders have to generate more publicawareness and create options forenvironmentally friendly actions. Researchorganizations and enterprises encouraged bydonors can facilitate the change by makinginvestments technically more effective (“morecrop per drop”), cheaper and more accessible.Public, civic and private investment to improve landand water management should be targeted closelyon interventions that will reduce food insecurity.Governments can create an enabling environmentto encompass policies and institutions that allowlocal people to participate in landscape- andwatershed-scale planning processes; providingstrong and equitable governance; securing theresource rights of food-insecure people; andproviding mechanisms to value land and waterquality in ways that inspire users and investors toconserve and improve them.

Land and Water Degradation and Food Insecurity: Processes andManagement

Integrating Basin, Landscape andFarm-Level Assessment

Understanding land and water degradationprocesses begins with an assessment at thebasin scale. Rather than discussing the problemsby continent or by biophysical process, weanalyze situations in four broad geographicalzones that constitute the basin, following the flowof water, in: “headwaters (upper watersheds),*”“plains,*” “cities*” and “coastal areas.*” Areas

within these zones but in different countries havesimilar degradation processes and underlyingcauses. Figure 7 is a graphical representation ofthe zones. These zones are interconnected and,therefore, should not be considered in isolation:

� Flow of freshwater through the zones,generally to the sea. Water flow andquality in the headwaters, influenced byvegetative cover and soil conditions,affect supply and quality downstream.

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� Movement of plant nutrients,* generallyfrom the headwaters and plains to thecities (as food) and the sea (aspollutants and sediment). Since there areno mechanisms to ensure recycling tothe place of origin, this processcontributes strongly to “nutrient depletion”in marginal areas in headwaters andplains, and to pollution in cities and peri-urban areas.

� Movement of food from rural areas tocities, from exporting regions to importingones, and between basin and outside orinternational regions. The driving force isgenerally the difference in cost ofproduction (plus transport) between thelocations and produce quality. Food trademay also affect water consumption, if thewater use efficiency is higher at theexport site (current major food exporters,USA, Brazil and France have wetterclimates than the major importers, Chinaand African countries).

� Interconnections through infrastructure:roads, channels, housing, dams, airports,recreational facilities. These connectionscan have positive effects by making keyinputs available and at lower prices (e.g.,fertilizer), by giving farmers more optionsfor increasing income and hencerelieving the pressure on land (e.g., high-value vegetables and livestock products,even forest and tree products), and byfacilitating more commuting and nonfarmactivities). Yet, infrastructure is oftenlaid out on good agricultural land,reducing the area of land available forfood production, and its constructionoften accelerates land degradation.Roads, and even footpaths, areimportant contributors to erosion/sedimentation.

� Movement of people, through permanentor temporary migration from degraded toless degraded but fragile agriculturalregions or to cities.

FIGURE 7.An illustration of the zones: “headwaters” on the left, descending to “plains,” “cities” and “coastal areas.”

Source: Molden et al. 2002.

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Historically, these linkages have often servedprimarily the wealthier individuals of acommunity, particularly in urban conglomerates.By using resources from a large, noncontiguousarea to produce food and the many other itemsthey consume, they produce a large “ecologicalfootprint.*” Increasingly, however, it has beenrealized that new patterns of inter- and intra-basin connections are needed, which alsoensure that food security needs and ecosystemservices provided throughout the basin areprotected.

Diverse configurations. While the basic basinstructure is universal, patterns of land use varygreatly. In many parts of tropical Asia,historically, headwaters were left in forest orforest-abundant mosaics, and most agriculturalproduction came from vast, intensively cultivatedplains. In tropical Latin America, most cropproduction was in coastal areas (bananas) or inthe headwaters (coffee, maize), while the plainswere utilized mainly for extensive livestockproduction. Some highland plateaus, such asMexico, have features of both plains andheadwaters. Moreover, land-use systems reflectland quality, population density and marketaccess, such that very different developmentpathways may be found, with associated patternsof degradation. Overall, irrigated lands accountfor about 7.5 percent of arable lands indeveloping countries, mostly in the plains. About23 percent of arable lands is of the high-qualityrain-fed type, and 35 percent of the ruralpopulation live here. These lands include bothecologically favored lands in the plains and someheadwater areas, such as in parts of the EastAfrican Highlands. The other 69 percent of landis “marginal” land, where 65 percent of thepopulation live. Most of the lands are settled,densely populated areas. Lands with lightlypopulated areas are either frontier zones or quitemarginal (high altitude or dry semiarid climate)(Scherr 1999b).

Agricultural intensification per unit area ofland use has the positive effect on global foodsecurity of increasing food supplies, and loweringthe unit price of production, enabling even lowerfood prices than would arise from areaexpansion, an effect that improves householdfood security widely. However, if management isnot adequate and inputs are unbalanced, thenintensification contributes significantly to furtherdegradation.

Headwaters (Upper Watersheds)

Driving factors of degradation. It is important todistinguish headwater areas that are sparselypopulated (often largely forested) from thosewhere human settlements over severalgenerations, even millennia, have resulted infairly intensive permanent cultivation.

In sparsely populated areas, degradationoften starts with shifting cultivation (slash-and-burn), and in a few cases as logging operations.Over the last 50 years, the number of peoplehas increased due to migration and relocation,and to the absence of effective laws or controlmeasures. There is often insufficientintensification due to lack of appropriate andprofitable technologies, and suitable markets.Farmers have to expand their crop area to meettheir financial commitments and to satisfy thegrowing demand for food. Moreover, the legalstatus of many producers is irregular, as the landthey cultivate and the water they seek have beenclaimed by the state for forest or conservationuse, thus creating insecurity (discouraging land-improving investment); and there are no extensionor credit services.

In the more populated headwaters, a majordriver of degradation is that yields are notgrowing at a rate commensurate with populationgrowth and increasing food needs. Riparian andother land-protecting natural vegetation may beremoved to provide land; intensive crops with

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several stages of crop and livestock integrationreplace extensive grazing systems. Manysettled upland areas have large areas with treecrops, which are potentially less degrading, butonly if they are managed well. Water rights areoften restricted to protect supplies for morepowerful downstream users. Governmentownership of forests and tree resources, andrestrictions on commercial use, discouragefarmers from planting trees or protectingremnant forests.

Interestingly, there are also situations (theMediterranean, the Philippines) where areduction of the number of farmers leads todegradation, namely when young farmers moveto urban areas and the reduced labor poolmakes maintenance of structures (terraces,irrigation channels) uneconomical.

Analyses of the relationship betweendegradation and population in the Machakosdistrict of Kenya suggested that a minimumpopulation density is required for development totake off and that, if the number is too low,investments do not pay off and resourcedegradation continues. But access to roads andmarkets is also important, as well as suitabletechnology and investment options (Templetonand Scherr 1999). Simply having more people isnot enough, and this leads all too easily to moreerosion and declining per capita incomes, asseen in many other parts of the East AfricanHighlands.

Farmers in headwater areas are oftenerroneously accused of causing land and waterdegradation. In many parts of the world, miningoperations, infrastructure construction and naturalgeological processes are together the mostimportant sources of sedimentation and pollution.

Land and water degradation processes. Themost important processes contributing todegradation in this zone are erosion,* nutrientdepletion,* water pollution,* devegetation* and aless regular stream flow.*

Erosion* leads to the displacement of bothsoil and the plant nutrients contained in it.Displaced soil is deposited downstream in fields,in water channels, reservoirs, or is transportedalong the river all the way to the sea.Unchecked, erosion continues until only barerock and wasteland remain. While erosion is anatural process, human activities, particularlyfarming and the building of roads, paths andsettlements, accelerate the process ten tohundredfold. High densities of animals on uppercatchment grazing lands can also contributesignificantly to erosion, particularly when thedensity exceeds the carrying capacity of thecatchments. Appropriate conservation measuresand management practices and careful locationof roads and bridges can reduce erosion almostcompletely.

Water pollution* in headwaters is mainly dueto erosion, and in some cases, to heavy metalsfrom mineral mining and cities near streams andrivers. Pesticide levels in the water may be highnear intensively cultivated crops. The watering ofruminant livestock at streams may alsocontribute to pollution, especially when theaccess of livestock to water resources isseverely limited.

Problems with less regular stream flowinclude increased frequency of flooding in situand downstream, and longer periods withminimal flow (base flow) due to the reducedwater-retention capacity of the catchment. Alsothe total quantity of water may change due toland-use changes and degradation, as theseprocesses affect the balance betweenevapotranspiration, infiltration and runoff.

Depletion of soil nutrients and reduction insoil organic matter* are common degradationprocesses in the lower parts of headwaters. Thisoccurs because the required inputs are toocostly (due to poor infrastructure and weakmarketing institutions), proposed technologiesare inappropriate, many farmers do not haveresources to invest, or because incentives are

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lacking. These result in lower yields, reducedyield stability and reduced input-use efficiency. InWest Africa, application of manure with inorganicfertilizers is used as a strategy to combat soilnutrient and depletion of organic matter.

The type and location of vegetative coverconstitute an important factor in determining theerosive impact of rainfall on soils, the path andrate of flow of water through the watershed, thesediment load in waterways, and the mix offreshwater species. Natural or planted vegetationaround crop fields and pastures can limit thedownstream movement of eroded soil andagricultural pollutants. Clearing of trees, bushesand perennial grasses around waterways, insteep areas and in and around crop fields, isthus a prominent cause of degradation, as isovergrazing of pastures, rangelands or forestfloor vegetation.

Degradation hotspots.* Much land and waterdegradation occurs in the foothills of theHimalayas, sloping areas in southern China andSoutheast Asia, the East African Highlands,subhumid Central American hillsides andsemiarid Andean valleys (Scherr and Yadav1996). This is caused by the nature of the soils,the sloping landscapes, the rainfall regime, andland use. In vast geographic areas, all of thetopsoil has been washed away. In others, theproductive potential of the lands has beendegraded significantly.

Effects on food security. Land and waterdegradation in headwaters can reduce householdfood security seriously, through reduced incomeand food production. This is a two-way process: aless-secure food production system often leads tomore degrading farming practices, or the so-called“downward spiral.” Due to generally lower yieldsand higher transport costs, headwaters do notcontribute much to global food security; however,they may play a very important role in nationalurban food supplies, and rural nonfarm populations.

Plains (Lowland Plains)

Driving factors of degradation. It is important todistinguish between different types of productionsystems in the lowland plains: intensive systemsin irrigated and high-quality lands; low-productivity cropping systems in very dry or verywet areas; and extensive livestock systems. Theprincipal driving factor of degradation in irrigatedand intensive rain-fed agriculture isintensification, through increased and ofteninappropriate application of fertilizers, water andpesticides. Overuse or underuse of water,fertilizers and pesticides cause these problems.Intensification requires extra water, either fromsurface irrigation or from groundwater, andoveruse or misappropriation leads to problems.Intensive livestock production produces highlevels of potentially polluting wastes. Insufficientknowledge of the consequences of farm-, district-, and national-level decisions, and lack ofincentives to use natural resources morejudiciously, are behind these managementpractices. However, in some other cases,intensification is forcing a closer integration ofcrops and livestock, causing the farmers tobecome more aware of the need to manage theirnatural resources. Hence, in areas where thepopulation density is high and there is muchpressure on land, farmers are more likely tokeep livestock as well as growing crops(Tarawali et al. 2001).

One of the difficulties in attempts to arrestagricultural pollution is that farmers see littlebenefit from changing their practices. This isoften because of inappropriate policies, includingunderpriced water and fertilizer, and pesticidesubsidies. A second difficulty is the dispersednature of nonpoint source pollution—substantialagricultural pollution is the result of the actionsby several farmers, and the entry point into thehydrologic systems is dispersed widely. Thisposes severe technical monitoring problems.Governments often control irrigation systems,

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FIGURE 8.Groundwater development in China and Pakistan: Number and density of tube wells.

which suffer from poor design or management,constraining farmers to adopt different practices.

In low-intensity dryland and humid croppingsystems, annual crop yields tend to be low.Degradation stems from attempts to intensify theuse of these systems without sufficientinvestments taking place, inter alia land andwater management (irrigation, water harvesting,supplementary irrigation, drainage and nutrientenrichment).

Land and water degradation processes.From the perspective of food security, the mostimportant forms of land and water degradationare groundwater depletion,* salinization,* nutrientdepletion,* water pollution,* devegetation,* andmanagement circumstances.

While groundwater use in addition to surfacewater or rain is very effective for smallholders,there is only a limited amount of groundwater,and generally it is replenished slowly. Thenumber of farmers using groundwater hasincreased significantly (figure 8) but pumping is

regulated rarely, so that the natural resourcebecomes exhausted and degraded, andpumping becomes more and more difficult (box2).

Groundwater is heavily exploited byagriculture for several reasons (Shah et al.2001). It is accessible to many; it can providecheap, convenient, individual supplies; it isgenerally less capital-intensive to develop, anddoes not depend upon mega-water projects.And compared to large surface systems, whosedesign is driven by topography and hydraulics,groundwater development is often much moreamenable to poverty-targeting. Yet, whenmuscle-driven traditional water lifts went out ofbusiness in South Asia with the advent of tubewells, it was the poor who were hit the hardest:new siting and licensing policies reinforced therights of the early tube-well owners andexcluded the latecomers, who typically are thepoorest. Where groundwater levels drop touneconomical levels, it will again be the poorwho go out of business first.

Source: Molden and Rijsberman 2001.

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Box 2. River and Groundwater Depletion in the North China Plains.

The Fuyang river basin (FRB), a subbasin of Haihe Southern basin in Hebei Province of North China,

drains an area of 22,814 km2, receiving a mean annual precipitation of 569 mm. It is heavily equippedwith water infrastructure, consisting of 3 large, 11 medium and 212 small reservoirs; 75% of water isallocated to agricultural use, 15% for industry and 10% for domestic use.

Up to the 1960s, the Fuyang river was an important shipping channel for Hebei Province. Incontrast, from the 1990s onwards, the river had over 300 dry days annually. The outflows from thebasin dramatically decreased from the late 1970s to less than 100 million cubic meters with no

outflow in 1997. The graph on the left shows the declining discharge of the Fuyan measured at theAixinzhuang Hydrology Station. The graph on the right shows the groundwater level of a typical well.

Water managers of Fuyang have allowed cities and industries first priority on reservoir water, andhave supported farmers in their efforts to tap groundwater. In Fuyang, groundwater accounts for 80%of supply. Groundwater overdraft led to a dramatic drop of groundwater levels, especially in the last

two decades. The groundwater table dropped at a rate of 0.68 m per year for the county locatedupstream and at a rate exceeding 1 m per year for middle and downstream counties. There is noinstitutional mechanism for dealing with this groundwater overdraft problem.

In the Fuyang basin, people are alarmed at the levels of pollution in the water system. Dilutionno longer works, as flows are too small to carry out excess pollutants. Industries continue todischarge polluted effluents. Salinity levels are also rising from agricultural practices. People are

concerned, but it is clear that they do not have the necessary setup to adequately deal with theproblem. In FRB, agricultural productivity levels are quite high. But within the Fuyang basin, theamount of water limits the amount of production in the basin. They have met a stage of absolute

physical water scarcity.At present, agriculture supports a dense population that is, in general, able to meet basic

livelihood requirements. But there will be a day when pumping rates will render water and agriculture

unaffordable. The food and livelihood security of millions is at risk.

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Groundwater depletion. Tube wells havearguably been the most significant innovation inirrigation in the last 50 years. The number oftube wells has risen dramatically in many of themajor grain-producing areas (figure 8), allowingmany farmers to intensify and stabilizeagriculture on their land. But when groundwaterwithdrawals are higher than recharge, watertables drop. In many of the most pump-intensiveareas of India and China, water tables are fallingat rates of 1–3 m per year, or more.Groundwater is heavily exploited for agriculturebecause it is often accessible to many peopleand it represents a relatively cheap, convenientand individual water supply. Moreover,groundwater is generally less capital-intensive todevelop than surface water. Tapping anddistribution of groundwater do not necessarilyinvolve development of a mega-waterinfrastructure.

We only have rough estimates of thecontribution of groundwater irrigation toagriculture, and of the amount of unsustainablegroundwater use. Postel (1999) estimated thatthe annual overdraft is around 200 km3, theequivalent of 3.5 years of water released fromEgypt’s High Aswan Dam. Even if this is a grossoverestimate, there is clearly a problem. Thenational food security of India, Pakistan andChina will be affected significantly by the waythis groundwater problem is dealt with.Groundwater recharge is one solution, but it isnot easy, and in some areas there is no waterremaining to recharge. An alternative is toincrease water productivity to achieve the sameproduction but with less water.

River depletion and dessication. With intensiveland and water use, primarily for irrigationwithdrawal and consumption of water, especiallyby industry and for domestic use in growingurban centers, rivers are being depleted.Upstream development in the Yellow river, forexample, leaves little river water for the users inthe downstream plains. Increasing use upstream

of the Aral Sea basins has led to the drying upof the Aral Sea itself. River depletion leads tointensified competition, salinization and pollution.Food security is at risk for those people situatedin downstream areas of the basin. And foodsecurity is also at risk for those living inupstream regions who do not have access tosufficient water for agriculture because water inrivers is being depleted further upstream. This isa predictable problem and it is advisable to solveit now than after the problem has intensified(Falkenmark 2001).

Salinization. Salinization is the accumulation ofsalt in the upper soil layers to the extent thatcrops can no longer produce good yields.Perhaps the most famous case of salinizationwas in ancient Mesopotamia where soil salinitydue to irrigation was responsible for the fall ofancient civilizations (Postel 1999). Salinization ofland is particularly prevalent in areas of highwater tables with poor lateral drainage, with highevaporation rates and no opportunity for leachingexcess salts, and sometimes with pumping ofsalty groundwater. Increased withdrawals forirrigation, combined with limited drainage, leadsto salt buildup in river basins. Salts areaccumulating in the Amu and Syr Darya, theIndus and the Nile rivers (Smedema 2000).Salinization can also occur in rain-fed land.Sodicity is a particular form of salinization.

Nutrient depletion. Most soils contain a stock ofnutrients equal to 5–50 times the annual uptake.In sustainable agriculture, nutrients areresupplied in chemical or organic fertilizer at arate commensurate with their removal orotherwise rendered unavailable for crop uptake.If this is not the case, nutrient depletion rendersthe soil infertile with time, and agriculturebecomes marginal. Nutrient depletion isaccompanied by a reduction in soil organicmatter,* 40 percent of which is carbon. This formof degradation contributes to CO2 emission andclimate change.

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Water pollution. Water pollution* is predominantin areas where agriculture has been intensified.Pollution from nonpoint agricultural sourcesresults mostly from the leaching of agriculturalchemicals or naturally occurring but harmfulconstituents from the soil. Pesticides in surfacewater are generally a more urgent problem.Pollution is particularly damaging whendownstream water or aquifer water is a drinkingwater source. Pollution is harmful to manyimportant ecosystems, and damages fisheries.

Devegetation.* Pressure to intensify agriculture inthe lowland plains has often led farmers to clearnatural vegetation throughout the farm, includingremnant forests, traditionally planted fieldhedgerows and farm boundary trees, and riparianvegetation, in order to expand planted area andmore easily maneuver machinery. Suchdevegetation contributes to sediment andpollutant flow downstream, acceleration of runoffand loss of habitat.

Wind erosion. Wind erosion refers todisplacement of soil particles by strong winds,particularly in dry climates. It has on-siteconsequences similar to water erosion, but thesedimentation process is more erratic. Onrangelands, removal of vegetative cover makesthe soils more vulnerable to wind erosion.

Hotspots. Hotspots of groundwater depletion arecommon in significant areas of the Indiansubcontinent and Northeast China. Hotspots ofnutrient depletion include much of Africa(Drechsel et al. 2001), rain-fed areas of West,South and Southeast Asia, and rain-fed areas inCentral America. Wind erosion is severe insome countries, particularly in China and Africa,and Huang (2000) estimates that globally itaffects an area half as large as that for watererosion.

With increases in irrigated areas, there havebeen increases in salinization in many areas ofthe world including the Indus basin in India and

Pakistan, the Central Asian republics, and China.Arid areas are particularly sensitive tosalinization problems, such as the Near East,where 29 percent of the irrigated areas in theeight countries is reported as having salinizationproblems, varying from 3.5 percent in Jordan toover 85 percent in Kuwait.

Consequences for food security. The Plains arethe geographic zone where most food and feedproduction takes place in large parts of theworld, particularly in Asia, North and SouthAmerica and Australia. Irrigated systems arevery important from the point of view of foodproduction (“food baskets”), even though 60–70percent of all food is produced in rain-fedsystems. Degradation of land and reducedavailability of water in the plains lower theultimate potential of global food production.

National food security for countries such asIndia, Pakistan and China will be affectedsignificantly if the current rates of groundwaterconsumption are not reduced. Salinization is athreat to national food security in countries where itis prevalent, and a threat to the livelihoods andhouseholds of the farmers affected.

The groups of landless people in manycountries are growing. This class does notbenefit much from many types of agriculturalintensification and, hence, becomes poorer andmore food insecure. Deforestation anddevegetation may deprive the poor of importantfood, fuel, medicines, fodder and other resourcescritical to their livelihoods.

New irrigation schemes may introducemalaria and other diseases, reducing foodutilization. However, positive income effects canstimulate health promotion and keep them atbay. Water pollution reduces food security bylimiting the amount of water that can be used bycrops, and polluting aquatic food sources. Wherepolluted water is used for domestic uses,people’s health is at risk. Water pollution ishighly significant in reducing household foodsecurity in rural areas, and downstream, in cities.

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Urban and Peri-Urban Areas

Driving factors of degradation. A major drivingforce of degradation is the intensive use ofresources. As cities grow and inhabitantsbecome more affluent, this driving force willbecome much stronger. This is because theconsumption of food and water in these areas ismuch higher than in the other zones, and thecapacity for natural restoration is muchexceeded, or sometimes even destroyed (e.g.,“dead” city canals).

Another form of degradation of the land froman agricultural perspective is the expansion ofinfrastructure (houses, roads, industrial areas,golf courses) to accommodate the growingnumber of people and their needs for transportand recreation. This process consumes annuallyabout 0.5 percent per year of prime land. Higherrates are observed in some locations.

Soil and water pollution in these urban areasis a consequence not only of human andindustrial wastes but also of the importation oflarge quantities of food and animal feed (Faergeet al. 2001), whose waste is often disposed ofimproperly. The recycling of water and waste isstill uncommon and needs encouragement fromthe point of view of plant nutrition, and this lackof treatment also presents health hazards.Avoiding such health issues requires theestablishment of clear standards, and propermonitoring of produce quality. Monitoringtechniques and indicators to assess land andwater quality are fairly well developed.

Degradation processes. Land and waterdegradation in urban and peri-urban areas takesmany forms: changes in hydrology, subsidence,water and soil pollution and nonagricultural useof land and water.

Runoff from rainfall in cities is much morerapid, so that the hydrological characteristics ofurban areas are different. This can lead totemporary flooding of infrastructure and

buildings; and mass movement of soil from steepslopes can destroy much property. It also leadsto reduced recharging of groundwater. Asgroundwater under cities is depleted bywithdrawal for industrial and domestic use,subsidence may occur, causing extensivedamage to roads and buildings, and crackedsewers that add to health problems. Changes insea levels due to climatic change may result inlower areas of cities becoming uninhabitable.

Moreover, many cities actively modifyhydrological systems in order to develop morereliable water supplies (e.g., bringing in waterfrom long distances away, and storing it in man-made reservoirs) or to protect urban areas fromnatural flooding, through dikes, etc. Engineeringdesigns often disrupt natural patterns of waterflow, with attendant threats to biodiversitydependent on freshwater.

As the recycling of plant nutrients in wastefood material back to soils is limited, manynutrients end up in the urban environment and inrivers leading through them. Intensive poultry,pig, and seafood production enterprises close tomega-cities can result in large nutrient effluxesand pollution through organic wastes to bothdownstream cities and coastal areas. In addition,there are also significant direct and indirectnegative health impacts (and hence reducedhousehold food security) and environmentalimpacts.

Approximately 800 million people globally areengaged in urban agriculture, of whom 200million are farmers producing for sale in themarket. In eight African and three Asiancountries, 33–80 percent of urban families areengaged in food, horticultural or livestockproduction. Contrary to popular belief, a highproportion of urban land is available foragriculture, although tenure in many of thesespaces is highly uncertain. Overuse of nutrients,the opposite of depletion, occurs in peri-urbanagriculture and often for high-value crops, as inhorticulture and floriculture (Scherr 1999a).

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The excess nutrients, often mixed withpesticides, pollute water and soil. Downstreamareas of rivers near rapidly developing mega-cities are often heavily polluted (Drechsel andKunze 2001).

Nonagricultural use of land and water is acomplex issue in itself. Cities “consume” muchland and water that otherwise form part of anagro-ecosystem and are withdrawn fromagriculture. In general, these lands and water areused in other economic enterprises and providean income larger than that from agriculture. Theimpact on global food security is small, althougha significant fraction of highly productive landand water is consumed for this purpose. Whetherthe impact on household food security is positivedepends on how income is distributed.

Degradation hotspots. Hotspots are the large andvery large cities with little water in the form ofrain or rivers, and with little facilities to handlewaste and wastewater. These include mostmega-cities in developing countries: Mumbai,Lagos, Dhaka, Sao Paulo, Karachi, Mexico City,Jakarta, Calcutta, Delhi, Manila, Buenos Aires,Cairo, Istanbul, Beijing, Rio de Janeiro,Hyderabad and Bangkok. Hotspots includeprobably all major urban conglomerations. In theperi-urban areas, concentrated livestockproduction poses particular problems of wastedisposal, and water and land degradation. Thestrongest effects are in the water immediatelydownstream of and under the city, and in the landon which it is built and that which surrounds it.

Consequences for food security. At a nationalscale, the expansion of mega-cities will result inless land for agricultural enterprises and henceless food production. At the household scale,urban and peri-urban agriculture often providesgood income, and increases household foodsecurity. Use of wastewater and compost oncrops assists in the recycling of nutrients andstimulates income generation. However, the riskof contaminating edible food sources increases.

Dirty waterways in the city reduce the quality oflivelihoods, particularly of those living in closeproximity, namely the urban poor. As healthrisks increase, it is the poorer sectors of theeconomy that are most vulnerable and as aconsequence food security is reduced.Wastewater generated by cities is oftendischarged without primary treatment into riversand therefore becomes a health hazard forthose reliant on this water downstream. Naturalfish production in rivers is reduced in riversaffected by pollution, particularly whenchemicals from mining industries or factoriesare discharged into them. Due to the use ofwastewater and the reliance on pesticides,production and consumption of vegetables inurban and peri-urban areas often become ahealth hazard, and hence reduce food security.

Coastal Areas

Driving factors of degradation. Some 39 percentof the world’s population live within 100 km ofthe coast. In Southeast Asia alone, 380 millionpersons live within 60 km of the coastline. Thishigh density, supplemented in some areas by asignificant tourist population, puts pressure oncoastal and marine environments. Naturalzones are being converted into zones that arenot necessarily more productive in terms offood supply. Shoreline modification has alteredsea currents and sediment deliverymechanisms. Artificial mechanisms for shorelinestabilization replace the natural buffering capacityof natural systems, such as mangroves andmudflats, to protect against storms. Climaticchange can potentially have dramatic impacts oncoastal areas through increased frequency andstrengths of storms and by loss of fertile area byrising waters.

Coastal areas are at the receiving end ofupstream land- and water-degradationprocesses—these zones receive the sedimentloads and pollution transported by water from

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upstream agriculture and cities. These areasmust also absorb changes brought about byreduced river discharges and a modifieddischarge hydrograph brought about by upstreamdevelopment. Large populations put pressure oncoastal and marine environments.

Encroachment* occurs in fragile wetlands and incoastal areas.

Degradation processes. The main processes areseawater intrusion, dessication of rivers andpollution and sedimentation in coastal water.Unsustainable reclamation of wetlands is anotherform of degradation.

Seawater intrusion.* Saline seawater movesinland into river systems or aquifer systems. Thephysical causes include lowering of aquiferlevels, reducing the discharge of rivers, the risingsea level (1–2 mm per year) and prolongeddroughts. Pumping of aquifers in excess offreshwater recharge lowers their levels anddraws seawater further inland. The phenomenonis particularly dangerous in that it is extremelydifficult to detect. Over a relatively short period oftime, well water can turn from fresh, to brackish, tosaline and destroy freshwater sources foragriculture or cities. The process can only bereversed by recharging additional freshwater.

On-site effects are salinization of freshwatersources resulting in degraded drinking andagricultural water quality (Shah et al. 2001). Onthe Saurashtra coast of the West Indian state ofGujarat, sustained overpumping by privatefarming communities during the 1960s and1970s generated previously unseen prosperity,earning the coastal strip the sobriquet “GreenCreeper.” But rapid seawater intrusion in coastalaquifers—which extended to an alarming 7 kminland in a decade—caused a rapid collapse infarm productivity, and hence in household foodsecurity.

Reduced agricultural activity because ofseawater intrusion reduces agricultural activities

and thereby reduces a source of income forfarmers within coastal areas. The problem ofintrusion is widespread and is likely to increasebecause of growing water needs, increasingdependence on groundwater and the possibleadverse impacts of climatic change.

River desiccation. Growth in the consumption ofwater, in particular by the agriculture sector,leads to drastically reduced or dried-up rivers incoastal areas. In dry regions, the irrigationprocess increases evapotranspiration* from landsurfaces in order to produce crops. As a result,river discharges diminish. In many basins, suchas the Colorado river, Egypt’s Nile, the Yellowriver, and the Amu and Syr Darya, thisphenomenon is well documented. Riverdessication is the result of upstream activitiesthat are often based on decisions taken withoutconsidering environmental flows and downstreameffects.

There are many effects of reduced river flowthat lead to reduction of household food securityand damage or destruction to ecosystems andthe services they provide. Tropical coastalestuaries and lagoon systems are the secondmost productive aquatic system, after coral reefs(three times more productive than cultivatedland, and their fishery production is correlated toriver discharge (Yanez-Arancibia et al. 1985;Loneragan and Bunn 1999). Besides the naturalsystems, agricultural areas in coastal regionsmay suffer because of lack of water. In a chainreaction farmers once relying on surface water,may turn to pumping groundwater that, in turn,induces seawater intrusion. Reduced flows resultin higher concentrations of pollution, whichimpact on human and ecosystem health.Livelihoods dependent on crop agriculture orfisheries are particularly at risk due to thisphenomenon if yields are reduced or agriculturalareas are retired. These different interactions callfor an integrated approach of coastal systems(Day et al. 1997). In 1999, UNEP launched theconcept of Integrated Coastal Area and River

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Basin Management (ICARM) and provided aconceptual framework and planning guidelines. Itis necessary to include coastal and marinefunctions in environmental flows, and one shouldconsider not only river flows that maintain annualcycles but also flows that reset or maintain thecoastal system on a geomorphological basis(exceptional floods).

Pollution and sedimentation from upstreamareas. Deterioration of water quality includesinputs of excessive nutrients and organic matterto coastal waters (eutrophication) and toxicmaterials (heavy metals, oil, pesticides).Mangroves can be used as natural sinks toremove excess nutrients from wastewater beforerelease to the sea (Twilley 1998). In addition topollution, excessive sedimentation carried byrivers from upstream is a major source ofdamage to coral reefs, killing the living corals bycovering them, thereby reducing the habitat andthe associated fisheries. Sixty percent of coralreefs are at threat globally—80 percent is undersevere threat in Asia (Bryant et al. 1998). Thisimpacts severely on the generation of income, inparticular for coastal communities dependentupon these natural resources.

Unsustainable conversion of coastal wetlands.Coastal wetlands (including mangroves, swamps,salt marshes and peatlands) are among the mostspecies-rich natural habitats, and play animportant role in coastal ecosystem functions.Half of the coastal wetlands are estimated tohave been lost in the twentieth century, with landdevelopment for agriculture as the leading factor.Most attempts to utilize mangroves foraquaculture or agriculture have beenunsuccessful. Such soils suffer from severeacidification problems that are difficult tomanage, and the rapid oxidation of the ironpyrites on the acid sulfate soils leads to theformation of free sulfuric acid in the soil and

consequent soil sterility (Greenland et al. 1994).When converted to aquacultural farms, theselands are used for 5–10 years until they becomesterile and cease to contribute to food security atany level.

Wetlands conversion. Wetlands (includingswamps, marshes, lakes, rivers, estuaries andpeatlands) are among the most species-richnatural habitats and play an important role inecosystem functions.

Hotspots. Coastal area and delta degradationdue to sedimentation and water pollution isprevalent particularly in Southeast and East Asia.The extent of seawater intrusion is not wellknown, but there are examples of its prevalencein coastal areas of Egypt, China, India andTurkey. More than 70,000 synthetic chemicalshave been identified as being discharged into theocean (Burke et al. 2001).

Impacts on food security. Fisheries in naturalwaters and aquaculture contribute significantly tothe provision of food. In Asia for instance, thevolume of fish products far outweighs any one ofthe four main terrestrial animal commoditygroups—beef, sheep, pig and poultry meat. Infact, fish production in the developing world,totaling about 60 million tonnes, is close to thetotal of all the four animal commodities combined(about 70 million tonnes, ADB 1997b). More thanone billion people around the world depend uponfish as their primary source of animal protein.Degradation has a negative effect on those whorely on fishing for their livelihood (catchesdecline, and fish become smaller and cheaper).Quick-profit aquaculture (e.g., widespreadsystems of shrimp farming) contributes todegradation by destroying mangrove forests andpolluting the soil, leaving the owner of the soil(after this productive phase) without fertile landfor further agricultural income.

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Improving Land and Water Resources: Lessons Learned

Learn from Bright Spots

While the aggregate picture of land and waterdegradation is quite worrying, there are alsomany bright spots where either local adaptationor external intervention has stopped or evenreversed degradation. We can learn importantlessons from these experiences. Someexamples from headwaters (upper watersheds)include conservation farming in the Philippinesand Thailand, hillside conservation investment inEast Africa (Rwanda, Kenya and Burundi),projects in Morocco, West Cameroon, and FoutaDjalon in Guinea. There is widespread adoptionof specific technologies, including conservationtillage (Mexico, Central America, Brazil,Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay), use ofperennial crops (in the mountains of HimachalPradesh, India and on hillsides of southernMexico and Central America), multistoriedgardens (in densely populated areas withvolcanic soils in Indonesia and southern China),and perennial plantations in areas of lowpopulation density with fragile soils (Malaysia,India, southern Thailand and the Philippines)(Scherr and Yadav 1996).

Rehabilitation has occurred in parts of SouthAmerica and China, where rain-fed agriculturewith legumes, organic and chemical fertilizer,and no-tillage practices are well developed.Bright spots for salinization include the modernirrigation technology in Jordan, effectiveirrigation systems in Mexico and the expandingsmall-scale irrigation in semiarid areas of Africaand the Andes (Scherr and Yadav 1996). Brightspots for household food security includeincreased use of small-scale irrigationequipment for supplementary irrigation; thisleads to higher and more stable income, andraises production and access to, and utilizationof, food in several countries (e.g., Bangladesh,India).

Examples of successful projects can also befound in the report of Pretty and Hine (2001).Although the project did not focus on landdegradation per se, it has examples of benefitsto soils and water. In addition to therequirements for enabling environments, theauthors emphasize the need for “social learning”as a key component for success and scalingout.

The Benefit of Integrated Analysis ofDegradation Problems and Solutions

Integrated land and water managementapproaches provide a comprehensive frameworkfor countries to manage land and waterresources in a way that recognizes political andsocial factors as well as the need to protect theintegrity and function of ecological systems.These approaches emphasize cross-sectoraland broad stakeholder participation in land- andwater-management planning andimplementation.

The need for a paradigm shift from a single-sector approach to an integrated land- andwater-management approach is supported bythe experience from both developed countriesand developing countries. Although it oftenleads to short-term economic gains, the single-sector approach to land and water managementcan result in long-term environmentaldegradation because it fails to account for thecomplex linkages among various components ofthe ecosystem. The single-sector approachtypically seeks to maximize the benefits of onesector such as irrigated agriculture withoutconsidering the impacts on other sectors. Inaddition, this approach tends to rely heavily ontechnical and engineering solutions, making littleor no attempt to address related policy andinstitutional issues.

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Development activities in the Senegal rivervalley highlight many of the unintendedenvironmental and social impacts of the single-sector approach to land and water management.Two dams were constructed on the Senegal riverin the 1970s to support intensive rice production,electricity generation and year-round navigation.Environmental and social considerations were notfully addressed in the design of the projects. As aresult, the projects’ initial economic success, interms of rice production and electricity, has beenovertaken by rising environmental and social costs.About 50 percent of the irrigation fields have beenlost to soil salinization; dams and dykes havereduced traditional grazing lands from 80,000hectares to 4,000 hectares; water pollution frompesticides and other agrochemicals is prevalent;and fish production in the river and estuary hasdropped by 90 percent (Pirot et al. 2000).

Improved technologies and practices mustsatisfy, as far as possible, the requirements forthe five dimensions of sustainable agriculture:increased productivity, reduced risk, increasedresource protection, economic viability and socialacceptability (Smyth and Dumanski 1993, whotermed these dimensions “pillars ofsustainability”). Coughlan and Lefroy (2001)showed how the benefits of a new technology(use of chicken manure in West African peri-urban agriculture) can be measured along thesefive pillars. If such results are expressed in aradar diagram (figure 9), an integrated picture isobtained, allowing a holistic comparison of oldand new technologies. Such a multidimensionalrepresentation is also being used increasingly tocharacterize livelihoods at the village level (seehttp://www.aplivelihoods.org/whatlivelihoodapproach.html).

FIGURE 9.A hypothetical example of two technologies that are compared along the five dimensions of sustainability. The “standard”technology represents cultivation of a traditional rice variety and the “new practice” refers to growing a new variety withhigher and more stable yields, but also putting more strain on farmers’ working hours and increasing water pollution.

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Therefore, to set priorities for the introductionof new technologies, the following aspectsshould be considered in making decisions onwhether and how much to invest in land- andwater-resources protection or improvement:

� Relative importance of the problem froma food-security perspective (householdconsumption, food supplies, economicgrowth, long-term security).

� Resource damage and recoveryfunctions—how resilient is the resource?

� Whether the investment makes economicsense (cost-benefit relations; relativereturns to prevention versusrehabilitation; opportunity costs ofinvestment).

� Land quality that must be protected tomeet the food security needs of futuregenerations.

� Expectations of the likelihood thatfarmers and communities will be able orwilling to resolve the problemsthemselves within a reasonable timeperiod.

� Extent to which it makes sense, from asocial perspective, for users to convertnatural capital (through “degradation”) toother types of capital.

Monitoring of the status of land and waterand measuring the various ecosystem servicesprovided by these natural resources is essentialfor the implementation of policies. It is alsonecessary for meaningful discussions onvarious trade-offs in the various services amongthe stakeholders. However, this is still a verydifficult issue at the levels of concepts,sampling methods, actual measurement andinterpretation.

The Need for Lower-Cost Technologiesand Management Practices

With respect to land and water, past technologicaldevelopments have focused primarily on ways toincrease their use and output:

1. Higher crop yields and livestock headper unit of land and water (selection,breeding, biotechnology and resourcemanagement).

2. Replacement of human and animal laborby machines (e.g., tractors) allowingindividuals to cultivate larger areas.

3. Increases in the volume of accessibleirrigation and drinking water (e.g.,reservoirs, diversion structures, pumps).

4. Replacement of human observations bythe readings of instruments for moreconsistent management (e.g., soil probesthat trigger irrigation when the soil isdry).

5. Refinement of management practices toproduce the same output or more withless inputs and reduced risk (e.g.,precision agriculture, drip irrigation,weather forecasts).

Much has been learned about the technicalaspects of land and water conservation for low-income resource users, from a basin orlandscape perspective. Technologies with thefollowing characteristics are much moreadoptable and acceptable:

� Low cost, particularly in terms of cash.

� Familiar components.

� Can be adopted incrementally (to allowfor self-financing).

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� Contribute demonstrably to increasedyields or reduced costs within a 1–3 yearperiod.

Thus, vegetative barriers have proven moreadoptable and sustainable than structures, inmany cases. But much lower-cost systems arestill needed. A general plea can be made thatmore “best practices to manage land and waterfor food security” are to be identified, described,generalized and made widely available.

Farming systems based on ecologicalprinciples could do a better job in generating andrecycling organic matter and plant nutrients, andin protecting natural resources, than manymodern but unbalanced systems. This includesthe use of tree-based land use on hillsides.

Finally, we have learned that land- andwater-management systems must be plannedtogether with farmers and the communities thatshare the basin or subcatchment, to ensure thathigh priority sites are treated and there isagreement on expected resource flows. In manyenvironments, there is a need to encouragelandscape “mosaics,” with careful placement oflandscape “filters” and “corridors” for the flow ofnutrients, water, etc., through the system (VanNoordwijk et al. 1998).

The Importance of Incentives forInvestments in Land and WaterResources

With a few exceptions, people do not intenddeliberately to degrade the natural resourcesthey use, but their decisions to do so are guidedby economic realities or lack of knowledge.Consequently, we focus on these realities and onproviding knowledge. Policy interventions thatseek to overcome environmental problems inagriculture need to be based on a properunderstanding of why farmers’ practices lead todegradation of their environment. Why, forexample, do farmers often seem to overgraze

rangeland, deplete soil nutrients and organicmatter, and overuse irrigation water, pesticidesand nitrogen, when these actions cause healthproblems and reduce future incomes forthemselves, their children, and the communitiesin which they live? The answer lies with theincentives facing farmers. Farmers are notirrational. On the contrary, they maximize incomeand minimize risk in a dynamic context and oftenunder harsh conditions and serious constraints.They degrade resources when there are goodeconomic and social reasons for doing so, i.e.,when the benefits they obtain exceed theperceived costs that they, as individuals, mustbear.

The off-site economic impacts of degradationare likely to be quite significant, but in mostcases they are still hard to quantify due to lackof biophysical data (Enters 1998). Yet, suchexternalities need to be internalized. Manyexternalities must be negotiated directly, andothers can be influenced by changing prices, forexample, through taxes on pollutants, removal ofsubsidies for water, etc. As long as suchnegative externalities are not internalized, it isunrealistic to expect land and water users torespond to downstream degradation problems.

There is a growing recognition that self-financing by smallholders and microcredit forsmallholders can be very effective instrumentsfor improving land and water management andfor increasing household food security. Of crucialimportance to facilitate these mechanisms is thecreation of an enabling socioeconomicenvironment and legal framework. Improvementof these conditions, tailored to the specific needsof an area, can be very successful without majorpublic funds. There is a clear role for the privatesector in protecting resources that they areusing, and in providing professional services.

There is a need for large-scale publicinvestment, particularly in developing water andirrigation systems, and in other major landimprovements that are beyond the capacity oflocal groups to finance or implement. For large

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projects, maintenance should be carried out withlocal resources. Later we focus directly onissues of resource mobilization for combatingland and water degradation and enhancing foodsecurity.

The Value of Participatory Planningand Implementation

Many of the problems of land and waterdegradation can be traced to weak ornonexistent institutions. Various types ofinstitutions are required at the farm,community, regional and national levels.Learning lessons from successful institutionalframeworks and institution building effortsrelated to land and water degradation shouldbe given high priority. Basic approaches dealwith different stakeholders and with learning tocompromise. Tradeoff involves participatorydevelopment and research. Long-terminvolvement and commitment of the keystakeholder groups, including the privatesector, are required. Institutional issues aremost important but very complex. Althoughawareness is slowly emerging in this regard,the issues are overwhelming.

There may be a need for collectiveinvestments by user groups, such as establishingshelterbelts or drainage systems, when these arebeyond the capacity of individual farmers.Groups can also help encourage and supportone another to undertake investments onindividual farms. Landcare programs in Australiaand Southeast Asia have taken over much of theextension role through such groups, with onlyminimal public subsidies.

Organizations of local watershed users aredeveloping in many parts of the world. Some arefederating or organizing into cooperatives to takeaction in policy negotiations. Very successfulexamples are the Water Watch programs thathave spread in Southeast Asia, the Andes andelsewhere.

Because of the unique conditions at everysite and for every situation, technologies willalways require local adaptation. On-farmresearch and extension approaches that facilitateadaptation processes by greatly increasing therole of local users have been very effective.Technologies must be developed with a clearunderstanding of the socioeconomic conditions ofusers, market conditions, roads and transportinfrastructure, distribution systems, etc. Thusfarmers in remote areas cannot depend mainlyupon externally supplied inputs, but will need towork with local resources. Farmers operating inactive markets cannot adopt practices whosereturns on labor are lower than the local wagerate.

Awareness of the many technologicaloptions for land and water management, whoseeffectiveness has already been proven, is stillquite limited. Adoption is also limited due toincomplete or even incorrect perceptions aboutthe state and importance of natural resourcesamong land and water users, and the public atlarge. Newspapers and television,environmental education at school, and “greenactivists” play important roles in awarenessdevelopment.

The Critical Role of Enabling PublicPolicy

The creation of an enabling environment forsmallholder farmers and planning agencies toadopt management practices that reduce landand water degradation and improve food securityis crucial. It is important to create a legalframework to define what activities are allowed ina particular area, who is responsible for themand for the state of the resources, and who doesthe overseeing. Then the legal framework mustbe implemented effectively. Internationallyaccepted standards are needed on maximumcontamination of soil and water that is used fordifferent purposes (Hannam and Boer 2001).

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Priority Actions

Five priority actions are proposed for countries toenable them to simultaneously enhance foodsecurity and environmental security. Theseactions are:

1. Mainstreaming of integrated land- andwater-management approaches.

2. Strengthening of the enablingenvironment.

3. Wider adoption of good managementpractices and environmentally soundtechnologies.

4. Expansion and acceleration of capacity-development activities.

Within the arena of law and politics, animportant issue is to provide smallholders withsecure tenure or long-term arrangements for landuse, and water users with assured rights to thisresource. The absence of such rights is animportant constraint for farmers in mobilizingfunds and investing them in their farms,improving livelihoods and reducing degradation.Assuring long-term rights to land and water is anecessary, if not always sufficient, action that isneeded to halt degradation and assure poorpeople of a decent option to earn a livingthrough agriculture.

Globalization

Globalization has had many significant impactson the volume and destination of trade in food

and feed. While most food consumed isproduced domestically, large volumes are tradedinternationally, and trade will likely increasesignificantly in the near future. This will havemajor impacts on the crops produced in differentcountries, on food and feed purchased, and onthe water required for crop production and cropnutrients transported in the crops. The potentialeffects of globalization on land and waterdegradation and improvement constitute animportant and complex issue. Moreover, theimpacts arising from market distortions such assubsidies and trade barriers in a global marketare also significant. The importance of thepotential impacts from globalization cannot beoverstated and is acknowledged; however, thesheer complexity of the issue precludes itsinclusion in the present report and is deferreduntil future research efforts are conducted.

5. Strengthening of partnerships at thelocal, national and international levels toprovide a mechanism for a coordinatedresponse to the issue of food andenvironmental security.

Mainstream Integrated Approaches toLand and Water Management

Countries need to mainstream integratedapproaches to land and water management intheir sustainable development programs,particularly in national and local developmentplans, agricultural plans and budgetaryallocations.

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A shift from the single-sector approach tointegrated approaches offers several advantages.Integrated approaches provide a comprehensiveframework for the management of a broad rangeof sectors by many stakeholders (resourceowners, managers and users; and upstreamusers and downstream users). Thesestakeholders should participate in resourceallocation and management decisions, taking intoaccount ecological, economic and social factors.Such an approach minimizes conflicts overresource allocation and management. In addition,integrated approaches facilitate the application oftechnical and engineering solutions inassociation with needed policy and institutionalreforms.

Integrated approaches to land and watermanagement are not new. In fact, traditional orindigenous systems of natural resourcesmanagement are based on an integratedapproach to conservation and sustainable use ofnatural resources. In addition, several countrieshave established river-basin managementprograms as an attempt to utilize integratedapproaches. Countries need to intensify efforts toidentify and overcome barriers to the successfulevolution of these systems to meet emergingchallenges.

Strengthen the Enabling Environmentfor Integrated Land and WaterManagement

Integrated land- and water-managementapproaches can succeed in an environment withappropriate policies, regulations and institutionalarrangements. Countries should, therefore, givepriority to strengthening policies, regulations andinstitutions in ways that facilitate the wideradoption of integrated and cross-sectoralapproaches to land and water management.Countries need to reform institutionalarrangements for land and water management tofacilitate cross-sectoral and multi-stakeholder

involvement in integrated management planningand implementation.

One of the major policy issues in agriculturaldevelopment is security of both land tenure andwater rights. Experience around the worldindicates that resource users are less willing tomake investments to protect the environmentwhen they have no ownership or when access isrestricted. In the absence of such security, theyfocus on maximizing short-term benefits, often tothe detriment of the environment.

A second major policy issue in agriculturaldevelopment is subsidies and pricing of inputssuch as land, water, seeds and agrochemicals.There is ample evidence that underpricing ofnatural resources and subsidies for agriculturalinputs can lead to overexploitation of naturalresources and degradation of the environment.

Policies on tenure security, subsidies, pricingand other factors need to be developed in waysthat promote equitable and reliable resourceaccess, efficient resource use and environmentalprotection.

Adopt More Widespread GoodManagement Practices andEnvironmentally Sound Technologies

There are traditional and contemporary land- andwater-management practices and technologiesthat can help improve food and environmentalsecurity. Countries need to provide theappropriate enabling environment, incentives andfinancial resources to promote the adoption ofthese practices and technologies as well asfacilitating the development, dissemination andadoption of innovations to improve theproductivity of land and water in anenvironmentally sound way.

Priority may be given to facilitating thedevelopment and wider adoption of goodmanagement practices and technologies such aslow/zero tillage and farming systems that usedrought-resistant or low water-consuming crop

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varieties as well as more water-efficient irrigationsystems. The development and adoption ofmanagement practices and technologies couldbe facilitated by collaboration among public andprivate international agricultural research centers,national research centers, conservationorganizations, policymakers, local farmers andother resource users.

Expand and Accelerate CapacityDevelopment

Countries may have the best information on theenabling environment and on resource-management practices and technologies, yet failto achieve wider adoption of integrated land- andwater-management approaches due to lack ofskilled human resources to plan and implementprograms. Therefore, countries need to expandand accelerate capacity development activitiesthrough in-country formal and informaleducational programs, advanced overseastraining, and staff exchanges among developingcountries and between developed countries anddeveloping countries.

Capacity-development programs should betailored to the needs of specific stakeholdergroups involved in a particular resource-management issue, bringing together theexpertise and experience of local andinternational organizations. These programs canhelp, depending on the stakeholder groupstargeted, to raise environmental awareness,improve technical skills and provide facilities andequipment to support integrated naturalresources management activities.

Training priorities for four stakeholder groupsmay include the following:

a. National and local economic anddevelopment planners: Formal training(in-service training, in-country andoverseas courses, and staff exchange)on the sustainable management of

renewable natural resources, theeconomic valuation of naturalresources, and the use of market-basedinstruments in natural-resourcesmanagement.

b. Resource owners such as governmententities, local communities, individualsand private firms: Environmental-awareness programs on sustainableresources-management principles (bothworkshops and seminars, as well aspublic-service announcements on theradio and television, and the communitytheater).

c. Resource managers such asgovernment- and private-sectoremployees and local communities:Systematic formal training, based oncountry needs, through in-servicetraining, in-country and overseascourses, and staff exchange amongdeveloping countries and betweendeveloping countries and developedcountries. Training priorities may includenatural-resources assessment;development and implementation ofenvironmental policies, regulations andstandards; community-based natural-resources management; stakeholdercommunication; conflict prevention andmanagement; sectoral environmentalassessment; economic valuation ofnatural resources; and the use ofmarket-based instruments in natural-resources management.

d. Resource users such as governmentagencies, local communities and theprivate sector: Training onenvironmentally sound technologies andsustainable farming and fishingsystems, as well as providing

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information on alternative livelihoods thatcould reduce pressure on land and waterresources and on microcredit schemes tofacilitate the adoption of such livelihoods.

Strengthen Partnerships as a Means toImplement Priority Actions

The challenge of achieving food andenvironmental security is too great for onenation to tackle alone and, therefore,coordinated international efforts are needed.One of the positive lessons from the GreenRevolution in the 1960s and 1970s is thatpartnerships involving a broad range ofgovernment and nongovernment stakeholders,including government and private researchinstitutions, bilateral and multilateraldevelopment agencies, and foundations canplay a major role in addressing the issue offood insecurity.

The Global Environmental Facility (GEF) isa partnership involving 10 internationaldevelopment agencies1 that providescoordinated financial assistance to developingcountries and others with economies intransition to address global environmentalissues within the context of sustainabledevelopment. Its achievements during the lastdecade illustrate the importance andeffectiveness of coordinated internationalfinancial and technical assistance.

Since 1991, the GEF has provided a total ofUS$3.7 billion and leveraged, with the help of itspartner agencies, governments, NGOs andothers an additional US$11.8 billion for activitiesaddressing issues related to biodiversityconservation, climatic change, internationalwaters, ozone-layer depletion, land degradationand persistent organic pollutants.

To help developing countries address issuesrelated to integrated land and water managementfor food and environmental security, the GEF hasprovided more than US$842 million and hasleveraged an additional US$1.7 billion incofinancing for coordinated programs forintegrated ecosystem management, managementof national and international transboundary waterbodies, and conservation of biodiversity ofimportance to agriculture.

Countries need to strengthen existingpartnerships or create new ones, as needed, toprovide an effective mechanism to achieve foodand environmental security through integratedland and water management. The advantages ofpartnerships at the local, national andinternational levels include the following:

a. Improve coordination of funding: Increasedfunding from public and private sources,including foundations, would be necessaryto improve food and environmentalsecurity. Partnership arrangements canhelp mobilize adequate funds in acoordinated way from a variety of sourcesto address specific issues fully andeffectively. These sources may includelocal and national budgets, bilateraldevelopment cooperation agreements, andcountry-assistance programs of multilateralagencies and foundations. Improvedcoordination would help avoid duplicationof efforts as well as a piecemeal approachto addressing food- and environmental-security issues, which is less effective.

b. Improve leveraging opportunities:Partnerships can help strengthenopportunities to leverage in-country policyand institutional reforms in support ofintegrated land and water management

1UNDP, UNEP, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, theEuropean Bank for Reconstruction and Development, FAO, UNIDO and IFAD.

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because of the legitimacy, and financialand technical resources that a broad rangeof partners can bring to an issue.

c. Facilitate exchange of information andexperiences: Partnerships can helpstrengthen information exchangemechanisms, including clearing-housemechanisms that provide information onagricultural and environmental research.Through partnerships, countries can alsohave access to information and technicalassistance on how to modify viablepolicy, regulatory and institutional modelsand management practices from bothdeveloped and developing countries tosuit local conditions. Special emphasisshould be placed on making informationaccessible not just to scientists but alsoto policymakers, resource managers andresource users.

d. Accelerate action-oriented research:Research on analytical tools,management models, farming systems,and environmentally sound technologieson food and environmental security indifferent ecosystems can be acceleratedsignificantly and better tailored to localneeds through partnerships. Forexample, bringing together the expertiseand infrastructure of international andnational research centers, and theknowledge and experience of localpolicymakers and farmer associationscan have a major impact on the pace,quality and relevance of research.Priority should be given to improving theinfrastructure and capacity of nationalresearch centers in developing countriesto make them effective partners ininternational efforts to address food andenvironmental security.

Development of Policies to Stimulate Food and EnvironmentalSecurity: Priorities and Approaches

Assess, Update and Monitor PolicyPriorities for Food Security

� Give a higher priority to marginal regions,even though many of these may beresource-poor. If sufficient area lends itselfto sustainable agricultural intensification,then policy should promote yield increasesthat, at least, keep pace with populationgrowth in these areas, within a landscape

perspective that recognizesenvironmentally important or sensitiveresources. If not, agricultural supportshould be oriented more to protecthousehold food security and localecosystems and distinguish the differentproblems and interventions needed inlands with different quality and underdifferent pressures. Actors: departments ofdevelopment planning, developmentbanks,2 NGOs.

2Where a bank is mentioned, the involvement of an international development bank may also be effective.

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� Establish land and water rights,especially for the poor. Stronger rightscan provide security for poor people, andstimulate investments in appropriatemanagement practices. Actors: ministriesof agriculture, environment; forestrydepartments, ministries of interior,smallholder groups.

� Assess the extent of land and waterdegradation and food insecurity, withemphasis on hotspots at a subnationalscale. This analysis should help bothselect options for food security thatshould not be sacrificed and quantify theimpact on water supply, the environmentand other biophysical and socioeconomicdamage. Regional and global inventoriesare now inadequate and need to beupdated. Information should be collectedon resource degradation and onpossibilities for conservation or localimprovement. Actors: national researchsystems,3 NGOs, local support groups.

� Prepare regional policy and legalinstruments to outline basic rules,standards and guidelines, to helpachieve consistent approaches to thedevelopment of national natural-resources management policies and lawsto manage and enhance food security.These regional instruments can, inrelation to food security, include generalethical principles, sovereign rights,individual rights, state responsibilities,elements for national laws and policies,basic ecological standards, compliancemeasures, land planning and decisionmaking, rights of access, compensation,environmental-impact assessment,

capacity building and informationsources, how to handle transboundaryissues, types of institutions needed andmeasures/ methods for regionalcooperation. Actors: ministries of justice,agriculture, natural resources, nationalresearch systems, NGOs, famerorganizations.

� Implement systems for monitoring thelocal status of land and water, linkingparticipatory bottom-up assessmentsthat reflect users’ priorities with basin-wide and subnational indicators that canguide policy action and evaluate policyresponses. Actors: national resourcesmanagement institutions, universities,NGOs.

� At a national or regional level, use abasin perspective when designingchanges that will affect land and waterdegradation: benefits at one scale maybe neutral or disadvantageous atanother. In the upper part of riverbasins, “catchments” should be seen asbasic landscape units for land and watermanagement. Actors: national waterboards, departments of irrigation andland development, national researchsystems.

� Update national legal frameworks for thesustainable management of naturalresources by utilizing the guidelinespromoted by the Rio (Agenda 21)conference to guide resource usersalong sustainable pathways with minimalsocial conflict. For effectiveimplementation, identify goodpossibilities for monitoring the state of

3Where a national research institution is mentioned, the support of an international institute may also be effective.

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the natural resources. Actors: ministriesof natural resources, environment,agriculture, departments of justice,parliaments.

� In situations of scarcity and competition,comanage water and land for agricultureand water and land for nature. Eventhough we have a sufficientunderstanding of agricultural waterneeds, there is little knowledge of thewater requirements for naturalecosystems. Actors: research institutesof the ministries for agriculture, naturalresources and environment.

� Improve the management of state-ownedresources and facilities (including forests,rangelands, wetlands, irrigation systems)through institutional reforms and greaterdevolution to user groups. This appliesparticularly to the upland parts of riverbasins and to coastal areas, and tomarginal areas in plains, and forirrigation systems mainly in plains andcoastal areas. Actors: ministries ofenvironment, departments of forestry,irrigation, NGOs, rural people’sorganizations.

� Focus on productivity of water in areasof water scarcity, as this will relievescarcity, help the poor and may free upwater for the environment and cities.Actors: national research systems,departments of irrigation, water boards.

� Focus on productivity of land in areas ofland scarcity, as this will relieve scarcity,help the poor, and reduce pressure onmarginal areas. High productivity withoutdegradation is obtained by skillfulmanagement, and balanced use offertilizer, water and appropriate varieties.

Actors: national research systems,ministries of agriculture, private sector.

� Pursue economic development throughthe stimulus of nonagriculturalemployment, particularly in areas with amarginal potential for agriculture from thepoint of view of natural resources.Promote methods to distinguish suchmarginal and nonmarginal areas. Actors:ministries of planning and economicaffairs, development banks, NGOs, ruralentrepreneurs.

� Intensify agriculture in areas withadequate biophysical potential for rain-fed agriculture through supplementaryirrigation and fertilizers. This approachshows great potential for increasing theproductivity of water and all other inputs,and hence for reducing poverty andenhancing local food security, providedall aspects of sustainability are taken onboard. Actors: ministries of agriculture,research and extension services, privatesector, NGOs, farmer organizations.

� Encourage the improvement of aquaticresource management in and aroundfarmlands in a sustainable mannerthrough appropriate legislation andinformation. Actors: ministries of naturalresources, agriculture, and fisheries.

Improve National Capacity to PromoteEffective and Equitable Land and WaterUse, and Support Local Initiatives

� Enhance national capacity in extension,research and management of naturalresources, using a capacity-buildingnetwork approach with all relevantnational and international partners, and

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with emphasis on the creation of teamswith a problem-solving orientation.There is a problem that structuraladjustment by governments forextension services is declining, butthese services can still facilitate andmobilize private action in land- andwater-resource improvement. Actors:national research and extensionsystems, ministries of agriculture,natural resources.

� Promote education and training fordesigners and implementers of projectsthat influence land and waterdegradation. Part of the solution lieswith university education, where moreemphasis should be placed on holisticpoints of view, including integrated land-and water-resource management forfood security. Actors: training offices ofthe organizations concerned.

� Produce a comprehensive assessmentof the costs and benefits of irrigation inorder to clarify the future directions forirrigated agriculture. Address theconcerns associated with irrigationbrought about by several nonagriculturalstakeholders, especially thoserepresenting environmental interests. Ifwe combine our scientific andindigenous knowledge and address theissues outlined above, we can reinventthe way we manage water for food,livelihoods, and the environment.Actors: research institutes of theministries of agriculture, livestock,fisheries, environment, farmerorganizations, NGOs.

Strengthen or Create Institutions toPlan and Manage Land and WaterResources at Basin and LandscapeScales That Enable Stakeholders toParticipate More Fully

� Create innovative and more effectiveways to bring existing knowledge to landand water users to acceleratesignificantly the pace of development ofhundreds of millions of farmers, whilereducing pressure on marginal areas andthe environment. Further involvement ofinformation technology holds greatpromise. Actors: departments ofextension, national research systems,NGOs, farmer organizations.

� Integrate land and water managementwith agricultural productivity in extensionservices, emphasizing their contributionto increasing income, food security andlocal ecosystem services. Actors:departments of extension, ministries ofagriculture, natural resources.

� Create institutional and technologicalinnovations to allow groundwaterirrigation and rainwater harvesting in asustainable manner for the poor. Actors:ministries of agriculture, NGOs, nationalresearch systems, extension services,private sector.

� Develop effective sustainable institutionalsolutions to stop seawater intrusion incoastal areas. Actors: national researchsystems, ministries of environment ornatural resources.

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� Develop water-allocation procedureswithin river basins and within irrigationsystems that encourage sustainableland- and water-conservation practices,whether they be market-based or throughrationing of short supplies. Actors:departments of interior, water boards,departments of irrigation, NGOs, farmerorganizations.

� Include service provision to domesticusers of agricultural water, in addition toirrigation, in new institutionalframeworks—management structures andlegislation. This will have a positiveimpact on people’s health since waterdeveloped for agriculture is often animportant domestic source for poorpeople. Actors: irrigation agencies, publichealth, legislation branches.

� Create institutions that ensureaccountability of water-service providersto users. The five most importantinstitutional changes required are:replacement of administrativeorganizations with service-delivery ones;conversion of irrigation systems intomultiuse water-service systems;transcending the infrastructuredependency/deterioration trap;establishing legal and regulatoryframeworks for sustainable watermanagement; and implementingintegrated basin water management.Actors: departments of interior,agriculture, fisheries, irrigation, waterboards, NGOs, farmer organizations.

� Promote a service focus and reliabilitywithin irrigation system by buildingaccountability mechanisms, by clarifyingthe level of service to be provided withthe participation of service providers and

users and by supporting acceptable andfeasible designs. Improved irrigationservices can raise the productivity ofwater, ease scarcity and promoteenvironment-enhancing actions when theservices are provided within thelimitations and policies of a basinframework. Actors: departments ofirrigation, ministries of agriculture andnatural resources.

� Develop a comprehensive institutionalframework that provides for input andoutput water services in order to raisewater productivity in agriculture. Thisnational framework should addressimportant issues, such as protectingaccess to water by the poor, waterproductivity, reducing pollution andgroundwater overdraft and allocatingwater between competing sectors.Actors: national research systems,ministries of agriculture, naturalresources and environment, ministries ofjustice or interior.

� Build the capacity of local people’sorganizations to undertake local resourcegovernance, taking care to promotewomen in them. Consider land- andwater-quality impacts more explicitly inthe design of new infrastructure. Actors:ministries of justice or interior, NGOs.

Develop Mechanisms to Make Explicitthe Value of Land and Water and toProvide Incentives for Resource Usersand Investors

� Resolve externality problems that arisewhen all or part of the consequences ofenvironmental degradation are borne bypeople other than those who cause theproblem (e.g., pollution of waterways and

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siltation of reservoirs because of soilerosion in headwaters). Possiblesolutions include taxes on polluters anddegraders, regulation, empowerment oflocal organizations and appropriatechanges in property rights. Actors:departments of economic affairs,ministries of agriculture, fisheries,environment, water boards, private-sectorresource users and managers, watersheduser organizations.

� Correct price distortions that encourageexcessive use of modern inputs inagriculture, that is, remove subsidies onfertilizers, pesticides, electricity andcredit, and charge for water in proportionto water services provided, taking care toprotect subsistence users andenvironmental uses. Actors: ministries ofeconomic affairs, agriculture.

� Encourage the development of marketsand appropriate supporting policies, e.g.,water markets, where suitable, for moreefficient allocation of water across usesand users. Land markets shoulddiscriminate according to land quality.Encourage the development of marketsand transfer payments for watershed-protection services provided by users inthe headwaters. Actors: national andsubnational legislative bodies, localentrepreneurs, NGOs.

Develop and DisseminateTechnologies and Resource-Management Practices to ImproveLand and Water Management and FoodSecurity

� Encourage more holistic approaches bypaying more attention to thesustainability features of proposed

technologies, to broader aspects ofnatural resources management at thewatershed and landscape levels and tobetter address poverty issues, all usingmore participatory methods. Actors:national research systems; ruraldevelopment and conservation programs.

� Promote an adaptive managementapproach. Due to the endless diversity inland and water resources and the wayspeople use them in various countries,adaptation of recommendations isparticular to each country and localsituation. Unfortunately, good data tocharacterize the heterogeneity do notexist in most situations, so interventionsmay have to be carried out with firstapproximations from limited data setsand adapted by local users with researchsupport. Actors: agricultural research andextension services.

� Use and further develop landscapeplanning tools that are participatory andfacilitate negotiation among stakeholders.Actors: planning and implementationagencies.

� Undertake research to understand betterhow agro-ecosystems at landscape-scales produce their ecosystem services,and seek landscape-scale technologiesand management practices thatcoproduce food and other services.Actors: national research organizations,universities.

� Promote research on, andimplementation of, the large-scalerecycling of nutrients in food and inwaste, as continued transport fromsources (rural areas) to sinks (cities,rivers) is unsustainable. Solutions areto be found at all levels: regulations,

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technologies, markets and peri-urbanproduction of high-value crops. Thefirst step is to promote broaderawareness of the problem. Actors: cityplanners, universities, national researchsystems, private sector, ministries ofeducation.

� Promote small-scale recycling ofnutrients in crop residues and livestockwastes. Nutrient recycling enhances soilconservation and C-sequestration.*Animal and fish production and use ofmanure, compost and wastewater forcrops can be keys to recycling. Promotethe identification of plant nutrient cycles.Solutions are to be found at all levels:regulations, technologies and markets.Actors: national research systems,ministries of agriculture, livestock andfisheries, private sector, farmerorganizations.

� In intensive farming systems, promote abalanced nutrient supply to crops andsoils, safe and sustainable methods ofpest control, and halt genetic erosionwithin major food crops. Developimproved fallow systems for cropproduction on problem soils. Actors:national research systems, ministries ofagriculture.

� Promote safe and cost-effectivetechnologies and strategies for use ofwastewater, based on realistic legislationand attainable standards. Ensure that theuse of wastewater does not lead totransport of disease and buildup throughimproved hygiene, technologicalinterventions and regulations, so that thepositive effects on income and household

food security are not negated. Actors:research institutes of the ministries foragriculture and public health,development banks.

� Ensure that new sources of water foragriculture do not introduce waterbornediseases. Prevent the development ofmalaria and schistosomiasis in newlyirrigated areas, which have, via humanhealth, a strongly negative effect onhousehold food security. Actors:extension services, NGOs, private sector,national research systems.

� Encourage the adoption of smallholderwater-management systems. Rainwaterharvesting, treadle pumps, bucket anddrip sets, provide tremendousopportunities to help the poor and toincrease the productivity of water.Success has already come from privateand community-development efforts.Actors: extension services, privatesector, agricultural banks. NGOs,smallholders.

� Find ways to increase income for localpeople from natural and perennialplanted vegetation interspersed throughcrops and grazing lands, e.g., throughagroforestry and non-timber forestproducts. Restore natural vegetation inlandscape niches, such as riparianareas, where they can serve aslandscape filters. Actors: nationalresearch and extension organizations,farmer groups.

� Share information on successfultechnologies and management strategiesto reverse land and water4 degradation.

4The local action component of the Dialogue on Water, Food and Environment aims at providing this information exchange platform. DialogueSecretariat, IWMI, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

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There are many examples ofsuccessful solutions, often developedby local communities. Promote theexchange from farmer to farmer,resource manager to resourcemanager, through training, which canbe most effective. Promote the sharingof information by specialistorganizations, the lack of whichhampers the ability of institutions todeal with land and water degradationand food security. Actors: land andwater managers at all levels: farmers,scientists, decision makers, NGOs.

� Monitor for deficiencies of micronutrientsin food and feed, particularly in thenutrition of vulnerable groups, as thesedeficiencies could severely reduce foodsecurity for children. Actors: nationalhealth services.

� Promote research on the stimulation ofC-sequestration; desirable from the pointof view of reducing climatic change; it isalso a feature of land rehabilitation,particularly in humid and subhumidareas. Actors: national researchorganizations, universities.

Issues and Approaches in Research

Even though much knowledge has beencollected about food and environmental securityand particularly about land- and water-resourcesmanagement, there are still important gaps thathinder the ability and potential capacity ofscientists to assist policymakers and farmers. Toincrease this ability, key issues for research areidentified in five areas:

a. Improving food security.

b. Mechanisms to alleviate poverty.

c. Increasing ecosystem goods andservices.

d. Improved interactions between theseareas.

e. Legal frameworks to enable or facilitatechange.

The approaches to better understanding andmanagement of these issues can be characterized

by the terms “poor people focused,” referring toresource-poor persons and participatory research;“holistic,” referring to the integration of disciplines,scales and institutions; and “sustainability,” referringto long-term explorations. These terms are alsocaptured in the umbrella concept of IntegratedNatural Resource Management (INRM) (Sawyerand Campbell 2001).

Key Research Issues

Food Security

� How can land and water productivity beimproved in fallow systems with problemsoils when the fallow period is shortened(e.g., the introduction of legumes torestore soil fertility and limit weedinvasion or through integration of cropsand livestock to maximize benefits fromsuch resources)? What is the best wayto increase soil available phosphorus forleguminous species?

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� How can rain-fed agriculture beintensified without increasing the hazardsof off-site effects (pollution of thewaterways, siltation, and eutrophicationof the reservoirs,), e.g., a balancednutrient supply, safe and sustainablemethods of weed, disease and pestcontrol?

� How can land productivity be improved inareas of low-quality or depleted soils,without causing soil degradation (e.g.,agro-ecological practices based on soilcover and nutrient cycling, agroforestry)?

� How can water productivity be improvedin areas of surface-water scarcity withoutcausing land degradation (e.g.,salinization) or introducing waterbornediseases (such as malaria), e.g.,increased crop-water-use efficiency,water harvesting, and groundwaterirrigation using treadle pumps, bucketand drip sets?

� In what specific ways does ecosystemhealth in the surrounding rural landscape(including water, non-cropland land useand natural vegetation resources) affectagricultural productivity in different typesof agro-ecosystems, and what landscapefeatures are especially important toconserve or enhance from a farmingperspective?

� What is the current status of foodinsecurity at subregional, regional andglobal scales, and what are the trends?

� How can sustainable aquaculture bedeveloped and improved at the farmlevel to improve protein availability?

� How can deficiencies of micronutrientsbe reduced in food and feed,particularly in the nutrition of vulnerablegroups?

Poverty Reduction

� How do nonagricultural employment andincome stimulate agriculture in marginallands?

� What impacts do subsidies (on fertilizers,pesticides, electricity, water and credit)have on agricultural production and landand water degradation?

� What water rights and water markets/mechanisms can protect the rights ofthe poor and favor a more efficient andequal allocation of water across usesand users, and how can these bedeveloped?

� What are the costs and benefits ofirrigation for the rural and urban poor?

� What are the most appropriate water-allocation procedures within river basinsand within irrigation systems thatencourage sustainable land- and water-conservation practices?

� What are the conditions under whichpoor farmers invest for improved landand water management?

� How can the rate and efficiency oftechnology transfer to farmingcommunities and between farmers beincreased, using traditional and newmethods?

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� To what extent do the poor depend onnatural vegetation in agro-ecosystems,and how can these resources be betterprotected and managed for their use?

Environmental Security: Ecosystem Goods andServices

� What are the impacts of land and waterdegradation on the services produced byagro-ecosystems at landscape, regionaland global scales (e.g., deforestation inthe headwaters,* loss of banded andriparian vegetation and degradation ofthe mangroves in the coastal zones)?

� How do agro-ecosystems produce theirecosystem services? What are thefunctions of landscape mosaics,patchiness and connectivity for the flowsof water, sediments and nutrients?Where are the sources and the sinks,the corridors and the filters? Detailedmass balance studies are required toenable effective management.

� What are the critical threshold values forvarious characteristics beyond whichagro-ecosystems are no longer resilient*(e.g., the minimum rootable soil depthbelow which no crops can grow, orminimum river discharges)?

� What is the current status of land andwater degradation and resourceimprovement (e.g., updating of theregional and global inventories, with aclearer definition of indicators)?

� How will global change impact onecosystem services (e.g., increase inwind and water erosion, seawaterintrusion)?

� How can we design agriculturalproduction systems that more closelymimic the natural ecosystem structureand function, while still supplyingneeded products?

� How can land rehabilitation throughagro-ecological practices stimulate C-sequestration and contribute to thereduction of global warming?

� How can degraded lands and waters beturned into valuable land for alternativepurposes: forestry, infrastructure(recreational facilities), natureconservation, parks and aquaculture?

Improved Interactions

� How can nutrients in food and wastetransported from rural areas to citiesand rivers be recycled on a largescale?

� How can off-site effects be internalizedin production systems? Are thereoptions for interbasin and inter-catchment transfer of incomes betweenupland farmers and water managersand city dwellers? How can usersreward watershed-protection services inthe headwaters?

� To what extent is government supportrequired and effective on marginal landsto combat land and water degradationand improve land productivity?

� How can soil degradation issues relatedto C-sequestration and to regional orinternational transfers of nutrients infood and feed be included in globaltrade negotiations? How can water for

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crop production be made an explicit partof international commodity-tradenegotiations?

Legal Frameworks

� How do various forms of ownership andaccess to land and water affect attitudesand opportunities for sustainableagriculture?

� How can food and environmental securitybe defined at different scales for use innational legislative systems, to facilitateimplementation and monitoring, andrelate to international and regionalframeworks?

� Develop context-specific “model” legalsystems, so that countries canaccelerate their own developments withthese examples, and organize training atthe national level to do so.

Key Research Approaches

� Priority to marginal regions and hotspots.Research should be focused on regionswhere the interactions between land andwater degradation, food andenvironmental insecurity and poverty arethe most pronounced.

� Holistic, people-centered research. Muchof the research on resource managementat the watershed and landscape levels,and on poverty issues in marginal areasneeds to focus on the people, utilizing agender perspective. It should beparticipatory, involving variousstakeholders. The studies should includequantitative as well as qualitativemethodologies for data gathering.

� Integrated research on crop and naturalresources management should beframed from a multi-scale catchmentperspective. Deriving results obtainedfrom one small catchment located in theupper part of a river basin to a similarcatchment is crucial. Upscaling of theseresults is possible provided that otherprocesses are accounted for.

� Interdisciplinary research. A widespectrum of disciplines needs toexchange approaches, from ecologicalsciences (e.g., soil science, plantecology, hydrology) to managementsciences (e.g. agronomy, hydronomy),socioeconomics and health sciences.Yet, interdisciplinarity requirescontributions of sound mono-disciplinaryknowledge.

� Interinstitutional research. The need for acontinuum from strategic to appliedresearch requires the involvement ofvarious institutions and organizations:universities, advanced research institutions,international and national research centers,extension services, NGOs, and farmers’and resource users’ organizations.

� Utilizing existing knowledge. In theinformation disseminated aboutsuccessful technologies andmanagement strategies to reverse landand water degradation (the “successstories”), there is a crucial need todistinguish generic knowledge from case-specific elements. Increasing theaccessibility of existing information hasgreat value.

� Long-term monitoring to detect changes.Long-term monitoring is essential toexamine the effects of low-frequencyevents (e.g., severe droughts or very

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heavy rainfall), and to determinethreshold values of clearly definedindicators of land and water qualitybased on field assessment and remote-sensing observations. Even more thanbiophysical characteristics,socioeconomic characteristics are time-dependent. A data-clearing house needsto be established to oversee the qualityand document the material provided frommany sources, as well as the methodsby which the values of indicators aredetermined and the procedures ofsampling.

� Experiments to understand changeprocesses. Ecological sciences andagricultural sciences cannot be basedsolely on monitoring. To learn about the

key processes, how they are controlled,and their on- and off-site effects, alsorequires experimental and manipulativeapproaches (e.g., paired experimentalcatchments with different agriculturalpractices).

� Models to simulate and predict changes.Based on existing, long-term monitoringand experimental data, and realisticscenarios of land-use and climaticchanges, models enable the exploration ofthe consequences of land and waterdegradation or rehabilitation. Independentlyvalidated ecological, hydrological, land use,crop growth and socioeconomic modelsneed to be coupled to predict interactionsbetween ecological services, food securityand poverty.

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Glossary

Agricultural Plains, Lowland Plains or Plains, refer to the lower part of river basins, between theheadwaters and the coastal area, excepting urban areas. They are mainly flat or rolling lands withlarge streams or rivers. In Asia and parts of Latin America, they typically contain large contiguousareas with rain-fed agriculture and irrigation systems. Huge areas are under low-intensity grazing orranching in Latin America and Africa.

Agriculture. All human activities where natural resources are used to produce the raw materials forfood, feed and fiber. Use of equipment, fertilizer and fossil energy in the process is common, and sois the use of irrigation water. Agriculture includes crop production, livestock production fisheries andtimber. In most cases, the products are sold to markets.

Agro-ecological system. The total of the natural resources, the people and their interactions, in anarea, where the processes within the system are (relatively) independent of those in other agro-ecological systems.

C (Carbon)-sequestration. The process by which carbon (C) from the air (in CO2) is absorbed bygrowing plants and trees, and is left in dead plants (dead roots, exudates, mulch) in the soil. C-sequestration increases soil organic matter.* It counteracts buildup of CO2 in the air and henceclimatic change, and is also an aspect of land rehabilitation: the more C is retained in the soil, thebetter its fertility, water-holding capacity and resilience.

Coastal areas. The land area between the coast of the sea or the ocean and a line approximately 100km inland, with all water bodies in it, plus the marine zone where most fisheries, aquaculture andtourism take place.

Degradation. In this report, degradation is defined as the sum of the processes that render land orwater economically less valuable for agricultural production or for other ecosystem services.Continued degradation leads to zero or negative economic agricultural productivity. Degraded land andwater can have a significant nonagricultural value, such as in nature reservations, recreational areas,and for houses and roads, even though for these purposes non-degraded lands are far superior. Formore details, see Bridges et al. (2001). For loss of “land” in quantitative or qualitative ways, the term“degradation” is used. For water resources rendered unavailable for agricultural and nonagriculturaluses, we employ the terms “depletion” and “pollution.” “Soil” degradation refers to the processes thatreduce the capacity of the soil to support agriculture.

Desertification. A form of land degradation in which vegetation cannot reestablish itself after removalby harvesting, burning or grazing. It is due to overexploitation, and may occur in nearly every climate,but particularly in semiarid environments. Strong winds increase the vulnerability to desertification.

Devegetation. Removal of natural vegetation and crops that leaves the surface bare and exposed todegradation by water and wind erosion and leaching. Deforestation is the form of devegetation wheretress and shrubs are removed. Reestablishment of plant and tree species in devegetated areas isoften difficult because of harsh environmental conditions for germination and establishment. Grazing of

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emerging plants can modify the vegetation composition significantly so that mainly unpalatable, weedyspecies are present in low density, rendering land unfit for agriculture. Devegetation can lead todesertification.

Ecological footprint. The virtual area cultivated or exploited to grow the crops and livestock, whichsupply the food that an average person consumes annually. Typically, this area is not contiguous, andpart of this area may be far away, even in other countries. Its value ranges from 100 m2 to 1 hectare,or even beyond these values, depending on the type of food consumed (vegetarian or rich in animalprotein) and the productivity of the farming system (dependent on the intensity of managementpractices, and the quality of the natural resources). The size of the ecological footprint can be used tocompare consequences of different lifestyles in different zones.

Ecosystem services refer to various benefits that ecosystems provide to people, including food, cleanwater, nature and wildlife, and also protection against natural disasters such as flooding. Agriculture isalways part of an ecosystem, and agriculture can be seen as an ecosystem service.

Encroachment. People use land for agriculture in protected natural areas. While predominant inheadwaters and coastal areas, it is also common in plains. The term refers to people moving on tonew land, which happens when they have few alternatives for food production in unprotected areas. Inother situations, people have been living in and cultivating the “encroached” area for a long time,albeit in smaller numbers, and the notion of protected area was recently imposed on them.

Environmental flow. The flow of water required to maintain healthy wetlands and other ecosystems.

Environmental security refers to the condition of natural resources in a particular area. Fullenvironmental security is achieved when the resources provide full environmental services to thehuman beings who depend on this area and when this condition is sustainable. Rehabilitation ofdegraded areas to achieve this situation is only feasible if the damage threshold has not beenexceeded.

Erosion refers to the process of movement of soil particles, with organic matter and nutrientscontained in them, due to rain, water movement or wind. Erosion is accompanied by depositionnearby or at a distance. Erosion is a natural process that can be accelerated by soil cultivation ordeforestation. Construction of infrastructure (roads, paths) can contribute much to accelerating erosion.

Evapotranspiration refers to the process by which water passes from the liquid state in soil and plantsinto a gaseous state in the air. Only the fraction that passes through plants can contribute to cropproduction.

Food security. In this report, this term indicates the production of food, the access to food and theutilization of food. For global food security, the emphasis is that sufficient food is produced in theworld to meet the full requirements of all people: total global food supply equals the total globaldemand. For household food security, the focus is on the ability of households, urban and rural, topurchase or produce food they need for a healthy and active life; disposable income is a crucial issue.Women are typically gatekeepers of household food security. For national food security, the focus is

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on sufficient food for all people in a nation; it can be assured through any combination of nationalproduction and food imports and exports. Food security always has components of production, accessand utilization.

Globalization refers to the process by which more and more goods and services are tradedinternationally. It encompasses also greater commercialization of farming and more dependence ontrade for achieving food security.

Grain equivalent. Our daily food has an endless variety of composition, water content, edible parts,and is produced from many crops. To express all in a single dimension, the term “grain equivalent” isused. It indicates by how much weight of grain (typically wheat) a certain amount of food could bereplaced.

Groundwater is water extracted from the soil depth beyond the rooting zone, generally with manual ormotorized pumps.

Groundwater depletion is the process of extraction of groundwater from below the rooting zone,sometimes from depths below 50 m, at a rate faster than groundwater recharge takes place.

Headwaters (or upland watersheds) refer to the upper parts of river basins where water is collected insmall streams that merge into larger ones, and often flow into a reservoir or major river. Headwatersare typically hilly and mountainous areas, originally forested or covered with perennial vegetation, andin many cases the home of nature reservations. People in headwaters, sometimes living in tribes orother groupings of minorities, include the poorest people with often less formal rights than thosedownstream.

Heterogeneity and diversity. Both these terms refer to gradual changes in the nature and intensity ofnatural resources in space or in time, and to sociological and cultural diversity among the peopleliving there. This natural phenomenon is the cause of problems and opportunities, but it makeseffective management always highly site- and situation-specific. People at “peaks” can do very well.Poor people are generally found at the “troughs.”

Holistic and participatory approaches are successful approaches to reducing degradation andimproving food security consider how to make the best use of, or to increase, all resources thatpeople should have at their disposal: natural, human, physical, social and financial resources.Participatory means “with the people:” designing and implementing intervention strategies should occurtogether with all stakeholders.

Hotspots are the areas where the particular degradation problem is relatively intensive and significant.Bright spots are areas where various measures have led to halting degradation or even improvingland or water quality or supply.

Land refers to all dry natural surfaces, and is generally vegetated for at least part of the year. Land iscomposed of different soil types combined in a particular landscape. Land use refers to the type ofmanagement; major categories are annual crops, perennial crops, fallows, pastures, herding on

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rangeland, forest and conservation areas. Land quality refers to the capacity of the land to supportagriculture, apart from the way it is managed.

Nutrient depletion (nutrient mining) refers to the process that slowly depletes the soil of its mineralconstituents (mainly phosphorus [P], potassium [K], and nitrogen [N]). These are essential plantnutrients to crops. Depletion may take 5–50 years before the soil can no longer support economicallysustainable cropping. The process is common on marginal soils where crop residues are not recycled.The nutrient balance, which assumes a negative value under depletion, refers to the difference of theinputs of nutrients into a farm (or catchment, region or country) from fertilizers, manure, biological N-fixation, rainfall) and the outputs (in crop harvests, leaching, erosion). Plants also absorb micro-nutrients (including Ca, Mg, Fe, Zn, Cu) in small quantities. Correction of the negative balance waslong considered unnecessary, but micro-nutrient deficiencies are increasingly showing up in food cropsand in human nutrition. Appropriate fertilizers can remediate this.

On-site effects, off-site effects. Effects are observed at the same location or area or beyond. Off-siteeffects are often not included in economic evaluations of practices.

Plains, lowland plains refer to the area downstream of headwaters, and upstream of coastal zones,and excluding the urban and peri-urban areas. Plains are usually flat and contain most of theagricultural activities.

Potential productivity. Biological production in conditions where inputs are not limiting andmanagement is optimal. It is used as a reference value for the current level of productivity and “yieldgap.”

Resilience. A property of complex ecosystems and society to withstand external pressure withoutsignificant internal change. Pressure beyond a threshold causes the system to collapse.

Salinization is the process of building up concentrations of salt in water or soil to levels that reduce orprevent crop growth.

Seawater intrusion is the process of seawater moving through the subsoil into the land. If it reachesthe surface, salinization of soil and surface water occurs. The process occurs when freshwater nearthe coast is extracted from the soil.

Soil organic matter (SOM) comprises the remainder of plants and animals and microbes in the upperlayers of the soil. It contains carbon (40%), nitrogen (0.1–1%), phosphorus, potassium and other plantmicro-nutrients. SOM enhances the soil water-holding capacity.

Urban and peri-urban areas refer to those parts of the river basin where people and land and watermanagement are strongly affected by large concentrations of people. This refers to cities with morethan a few hundred thousand inhabitants, and particularly to mega-cities of several million personsplus the area with horticulture and animal husbandry that surround them. Most of these cities are inthe lower parts of basins, often at or close to the coast. Important exceptions include the highland

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cities of Mexico, the Andes, and the Himalayas. Peri-urban and urban agriculture (PUA) refers to veryintensive, small- and large-scale agriculture, particularly horticulture, floriculture, poultry and pigproduction that occur in or near cities. It is characterized by its strong ties to urban life and markets,more so than by geography. PUA is a major consumer of city wastes (liquid and solid), but contributesto groundwater pollution and health hazards.

Wastewater is water from households and cities that has been used domestically, and that oftencontains urine and faeces of humans and animals, plus organic remainders of food preparations;wastewater may contain valuable plant nutrients, but is often also a carrier of diseases and heavymetals.

Water refers to all surface water in rivers, lakes, reservoirs, wetlands and aquifers.Water quality includes both the change in the availability of water (increases or reductions) in quantity,the contents of particles and dissolved materials, and contamination with diseases.

Water productivity is the quantity of produce, measured in weight or monetary terms per unit of water,and can be determined at the plot, farm, catchment and basin scale.

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Research Reports

1. Integrated Land and Water Management for Food and Environmental Security.F. W. T. Penning de Vries, H. Acquay, D. Molden, S.J. Scherr, C. Valentin and O. Cofie.2003.

ISSN 1391-9407 ISBN 92-9090-543-3

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Integrated Land and Water Management for Food and Environmental Security

F. W. T. Penning de Vries, H. Acquay, D. Molden, S. J. Scherr, C. Valentin and O. Cofie

Research Report 1

I n t e r n a t i o n a lWater ManagementI n s t i t u t e