The Role of Water, Trees, Livestock, Crops, Wildlife Individually or in an

Integrated Way

Drylands Programme Meeting: Nairobi March 2011

Group 1

Clarify how the dimension we are working in contributes to successful implementation and

scaling up

• Is scaling up required? – design different approaches for different contexts

• Need to try multiple options across multiple circumstances to learn what works where and for whom

Overarching principles

• Water balance and soil health are compromised in many instances

• There are strong feedbacks between components – need to be managed in such a way as to optimise the benefits to people

• In an integrated way

Overarching principles

• Water and soil nutrients are an input and output that flows though the entire system

• Underpins primary production

• Influences livestock, wildlife

• Leaves the system

Roles of different actors

• What is generalisable? – difficult

• Need more cross location analysis

• Systematic analysis of all the case studies – integrated management solution of what’s making them work and where?

Roles of different actors

• Water is central?

• We need to ascertain who has tenure over water flowing through the system – particularly where management retains water in a particular area – negotiations over water rights issues

Is the dimension context specific?

• Yes– To agro-eco zone– Socio-economic, governance, cultural issues – We tend to think things are homogenous at a

larger scale than they are – so we need to design projects at a scale at which they are relevant – challenges the assumptions of scaling up

– So need context based intervention

Is the dimension context specific?

• This has implications for how we store and communicate knowledge about interventions and how they can be combined in specific locations/contexts

• Questions about climate change – focus on coping with climate variability?

• At the scale at which interventions need to be planned and where predictions of climate change are uncertain