Coordination and learning for adaptive management and change (V5)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/3921

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 26

Volta Basin Development Challenge. Abstracts of Final Science Workshop.
(Conference Proceedings, 2013) Olufunke, Cofie; Mahamoudou, Sawadogo
Volta Basin Development Challenge: management of rainwater and small reservoir for multiple uses.Final Science Workshop Report
(Conference Proceedings, 2013-09-17) Olufunke, Cofie
Final Workshop Proceedings, Volta Basin Development Challenge Program
(Conference Proceedings, 2013-09-17) Olufunke, Cofie; Schuetz, Tonya; Windham-Wright, Thor; Diarra, Aly; Dejesus, Adjara; Le Borgne, Ewen; Brakel, Martin L. van; Fremier, Alexander K.
A qualitative analysis of women’s farmer-based organizations and gender mainstreaming in national, regional and local level policies in the upper east region of northern Ghana
(Thesis, 2012-12) Lasiter, Kalie; Stawicki, Stephanie; Emory University
Gender dimensions of rainwater and livelihoods management in rural crop-livestock systems:Practices and Innovations in the Nakanbé River Basin in Burkina Faso
(Thesis, 2014) Neumayer, Karin
Environmental changes like increasingly variable rainfall patterns and degrading land resources crucially affect women’s and men’s livelihoods in rural crop-livestock systems in the Burkinabe Nakanbé basin. They are compounded by economic changes like increasingly dominant markets with rising prices for various agricultural products and livestock, and by social changes such as high population growth leading to increased competition over scarce land and water resources. The resulting vulnerability context affects local rural women’s and men’s livelihood strategies, implying various interdependent gender-differentiated opportunities and constraints for their practices in agriculture and livestock keeping. This study analyses gender dynamics of practices in agricultural production, access to and use of land, water, knowledge, necessary input resources and markets, as well as respective innovations. Data was acquired by an empirical qualitative research in the context of the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food and applied methods include semi-structured personal interviews, field observations and various participatory methods in the course of focus group discussions. Results suggest that access to crop and garden land, control of harvest outcomes and access to financial capital are particularly determined by male inheritance rights, gender-differentiated household fields and men’s improved access to participation in development cooperation initiatives. Furthermore, opportunities to increase crop yields via access to material and immaterial input resources are constructed differently, while they are crucially necessary for men as well as women to fulfil their different societal roles and responsibilities. Especially access to physical capital including fertilizer, improved seed varieties, agricultural tools and livestock are important to provide for gender specific needs, households’ sustainment and would provide disadvantaged women with considerable empowerment potentials.
Stories of Change and Innovation in the Volta Basin Development Challenge Program
(Other, 2014-03) Greenough, Karen Marie
Innovation seems to be the lead buzz-word of the 2010 decade, a must for funding proposals. In this report, to go beyond buzz words and dictionary definitions, I try to tell stories of change and innovation within the Volta Basin Development Challenge, or CPWF-Volta, of CGIAR’s Challenge Program for Water and Food. The stories about change and innovation told in this report come from the people involved in the VBDC: the project team members and project participants. Has the VBDC produced innovations? The answer to that question would seem to depend on how one defines and perceives the changes in knowledge, practices and relationships of VBDC stakeholders. These definitions and perceptions depend on context and point of view. We found that different people, of different statuses, see innovation in different lights, but also that the VBDC projects have produced many changes. It is too early to say whether they will persist as innovations in the eyes of outside evaluators, but many in- country researchers and facilitators have seen and experienced what they call innovations in their partnerships with VBDC.
Résumé de la Recherche du CPWF dans le Bassin de la Volta
(Brochure, 2013-12-31) CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food
Les agriculteurs dans le Bassin du fleuve Volta, étant parmi les plus pauvres dans le monde, ils dépendent généralement de l’agriculture pluviale. Cependant, les précipitations étant insuffisantes ou irrégulières les agriculteurs sont souvent exposés au risque de perte de leurs récoltes. En outre, le changement climatique fait que les précipitations deviennent de plus en plus variables et de moins en moins fiables. Le risque de perdre les cultures fait que les agriculteurs hésitent à investir dans l’agriculture et la gestion de l’eau. Les agriculteurs doivent avoir accès à un approvisionnement fiable en eau pour subvenir à leurs besoins.
Coordination and Change
(Brochure, 2011-12-31) CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food
The project will orient, align and integrate the four research for development projects (V1 -V4) that have been designed to respond to the basin development challenge in order to contribute to poverty reduction and improved livelihood resilience in the basin.
V5 Project Profile: Coordination and Change
(Brochure, 2011-12-31) CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food
The project will orient, align and integrate the four research for development projects (V1 -V4) that have been designed to respond to the basin deve- lopment challenge in order to contribute to poverty reduction and improved livelihood resilience in the basin.
Report of the Monitoring and Evaluation Workshop
(Conference Proceedings, 2011-10-01) Atengdem, Paschal
The Monitoring and Evaluation workshop was organized for key staff of the Volta Basin Development Challenge (VBDC) as part of the process in developing a Monitoring Plan for the VBDC of the Challenge Programme Water and Food (CPWF) Phase II. The Challenge Programme on Water & Food in Volta Basin (CPWF-Volta) was initiated as part of the global CGIAR Challenge program on Water and Food currently on-going in Asia, Africa and South America. The CPWF research (Phase II) in the basin is planned to run from 2010 -2013 as a follow-up on the first Phase of CPWF which ran from 2003-2009. The current program explores the institutional and technical aspects of small reservoir development and maintenance, embedded within a wider rainwater management system for the Volta River Basin. The main objective of the research program is to respond to: “Improve rainwater and small reservoir management to contribute to poverty reduction, and improved livelihoods resilience and people’s well- being in the dry lands of Burkina Faso and Northern Ghana while taking account of implications for downstream water users including ecosystem services”. The Volta Basin Development Challenge (VBDC) was therefore an initiative to achieve that objective through five interconnected but focused research-for-development projects, termed as V1, V2, V3, V4 and V5. The key Expected results of each of the 5 interconnected projects are highlighted below. V1: Targeting & Scaling up: based on socio-economic and bio-physical assessments, it will develop a web-based `decision-support tool’ to identify appropriate sites to introduce successful Agricultural Water Management interventions. (Partners: SEI, INERA, OoU, SARI, KNUST). V2: Management of rainwater for crop-livestock Agro-ecosystems: will identify, evaluate, adapt, and disseminate best-fit integrated rainwater management strategies (RMS), comprising of technological solutions, directed at different domains of the agro-ecosystems, strengthened by enabling institutional and policy environments and linked to market incentives that can drive adoption. (Partners: ILRI, IWMI, WUR-PPS, INERA, WRI & SNV) V3: Management of Small Reservoirs: focuses on integrated management options at local scale for small reservoirs (SR), in a multiple use context. These include maintaining infrastructures, protecting and where necessary improving the water quality for the various uses; enhancing water productivity potentials; and seeking for equity (Partners: CIRAD – G- EauIRD, 2iE, TU-Delft, WRI, INERA, SARI). V4: Governance of rainwater and small reservoirs: Project V4 will provide understanding of the processes that govern IWRM policy-making, practice and research in the basin and identify demand- driven opportunities for the management and the governance of rainwater and small reservoirs at the watershed (sub-basin) level. This will enhance impacts of on-going policy initiatives in the Volta basin.(Partners: IWMI, CIRAD; UPR-Green, SP-PAGIRE, WRC, WRI, UDS). V5: Coordination and enabling change this project is responsible for leadership and coordination of the above VBDC projects to ensure coherence, integration, alignment and delivery of research outcome related rainwater and small reservoir management. It is also an active concept development and feedback mechanism for the VBDC as a whole. (Partners: VBA, GWP, IWMI and INERA). For each of the projects, a theory of change was defined and expressed in project outcome logic model (OLM) which shows average of four outcome pathways per project. Based on the project OLMs, the VBDC level OLM was also drafted, and needs to be improved and agreed upon.
Report of the VBDC Capitalization Workshop
(Conference Proceedings, 2013-03-13) CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food
Representatives of three of the five VBDC projects met for the following specific objectives: - Review emerging messages from the projects and the audience category that could use the messages - Review emerging outcomes from the projects; - Identify other ‘quick wins’ that we need to focus on, in the next months including any scientific outputs that can be written up in the short term either within or between projects - Discuss preliminary plans and scientific contributions to the final VBDC Science Conference coming up in September 2013 Before the meeting project briefs were prepared and sent to each project team to be represented at the workshop. This brief consists of two sections: (a) a section on ‘looking back at what has been anticipated’ in the project at the beginning of the program i.e the research questions, potential target audience and expected outcome; (b) a second section on ‘projecting the project story’, which captures the emerging key messages, some outputs and project priorities for 2013. Moreover, some questions were listed in the brief to guide the process of reflection within project teams before and during the workshop: In addition to specific project brief, a summary of emerging key messages from projects V1 – V5 was distributed to the participants. This report and the attached synthesis in present the result of the various discussions and an update of the emerging messages from all VBDC projects.
Agricultural Innovation in the Volta River Basin: An Analysis of Changes in Knowledge, Skills and Livelihoods brought about by the Volta Basin Development Challenge
(Manuscript-unpublished, 2013-08-01) Lasiter, Kalie; Tarrant, Anna
Within the agricultural development sector, innovation has been identified as a primary pathway to achieve economic, social and environmental goals. Innovation is traditionally defined as a linear and relatively homogenous process involving the invention of a “new” technology that is then transferred and adopted by an intended user. However, recent definitions of innovation in agricultural development, most notably the Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS) definition, describe innovation as a systemic process resulting from extensive knowledge networks, interactive learning, and negotiations among a heterogeneous set of actors. One way to create an innovation system (AIS) is through the formation and utilization of certain innovation configurations known as Multistakeholder Platforms (MSPs) and/or Innovation Platforms (IPs). CGIAR’s Challenge Programs on Water and Food (CPWF) use both MSPs and IPs to bring together a diverse set of relevant stakeholders to address common challenges in river basins globally, and in the Volta River Basin system in West Africa in particular. The Challenge Program’s Volta Basin Development Challenge Project (VBDC) focuses primarily on strengthening integrated management of rainwater and small reservoirs. The Emory graduate student research team worked in conjunction with the V5: Coordination and Change Project in order to investigate how/if the knowledge produced by V2-V4 projects in two regions in northern Ghana is contributing to innovative changes in villagers’ knowledge, skills and livelihood activities. This particular research is part of a broader Innovation Research Project for V5 that aims to identify the concurrent changes that have also taken place among V2, V3 and V4 project implementers. Specifically, the broader research will identify project researchers’ and technicians’ definitions of innovation i.e. what they consider innovations as a result of their interactions with project participants. Because agricultural innovation involves change not only at the community level, but at the organizational and institutional levels as well, understanding the motivations and justifications of implementing partners is therefore integral to assessing if and how agricultural innovation has occurred. Since this particular report is focused solely on the community level, it is difficult to ascertain the extent to which new practices and skills exhibited by community members are truly products of agricultural innovation systems. For the purposes of this report, therefore, innovation ii is defined as any adoption of “technologies” (i.e. techniques and/or products of project interventions) that have led to changes in villagers’ knowledge, skills and practices. Furthermore, this research assesses not only the changes that have occurred among project participants, but also if/how the same new skills and practices have been learned and adopted by non-participants in order to determine knowledge spread. Using a snowball sampling strategy, the Emory graduate student research team conducted semi-structured surveys of project participants and nonparticipants in two project sites for a total of 44 surveys. Based on the analysis of these surveys, this study outlines five determinant categories of factors leading to adoption of technologies among both participants and nonparticipants: (1) involvement in a project, (2) access to inputs, (3) access to information, (4) ability to sell products that result from technologies, and (5) risk mediation. The conclusions of this study can provide valuable insights to organizations like the CPWF VBDC on how to understand and integrate factors that determine technology adoption into future research and programming efforts. In addition, the study’s analysis of agricultural innovation systems will hopefully engage all relevant stakeholders involved in agricultural development strategies in the Volta Basin River System on how to conceptualize, create and implement innovation configurations that not only produce, exchange and use knowledge, but do so for the purpose of enabling systemic and structural change. Without such change, achieving poverty reduction and sustainable natural resources management will remain a challenge.
Basin Development Challenges - Stakeholder Consultation Workshop Report - Volta River Basin
(Conference Proceedings, 2009-11-26) Schuetz, Tonya; Douthwaite, Boru; Nguyen Khoa, Sophie; Vidal, Alain
The overall objective of this workshop was to consult key stakeholders knowledgeable about the proposed Volta BDC on how research can best contribute to tackling the BDC. In the Volta, the proposed BDC was “Rainwater management and small reservoirs in Northern Ghana and Burkina Faso”. A brief description of the proposed BDC, taken from the CPWF’s 2010 – 2013 Medium Term Plan, was sent to orientate the participants before the workshop (see Annex 1). Participants were invited to the workshop to provide advice on how research can best contribute to the BDC, thus helping the CPWF Management Team design the BDC research program (Step 3 in Table 1). The specific objectives are shown in Figure 1 together with the process that was followed to achieve them. The process used elements of Participatory Impact Pathway Analysis (PIPA)1 and incorporated lessons learned in conducting similar consultations in other basins.
Parties prenantes VBDC Stakeholders
(Poster, 2012-06-01) CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food
Some questions: How is your project linked to each of these stakeholders? What is a “boundary partner”? How do you define “end user” and “next user”? Where are the bi-lateral organizations, e.g. DANIDA? How is your project linked your end/next users’ partners? How do these links affect your relationship with your end/next users? Do the stakeholder groupings and their colors make sense?
CPWF Volta V5 Main Message Poster
(Poster, 2013-09-01) CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food
High-quality scientific research, grounded in regular engagement with stakeholders, will improve the uptake of research results and lead to outcomes.
Agricultural Innovation in the Volta River Basin: An Analysis of Changes in Knowledge, Skills and Livelihoods brought about by the Volta Basin Development Challenge
(Poster, 2013-06-01) Lasiter, Kalie; Tarrant, Anna
Main message Farmers in Volta Basin Development Challenge project sites are generally not developing brand new practices on their own. Information about new technologies is slowly spreading from projects to the wider community, but adoption of these technologies could be strengthened by creating an enabling environment. This would mean taking into account the five determinants of adoption identified here and programming accordingly.
Rapport de L'Atelier de Concertation sur l'Eau Agricole au Burkina Faso
(Conference Proceedings, 2012-02-14) CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food
Contexte et Justification La maitrise et la valorisation de ses ressources en eau constituent un élément primordial dans les efforts du Burkina Faso à réaliser les objectifs du millénaire, en général, et la sécurité alimentaire et la réduction de la pauvreté, en particulier. Le Programme de Défi pour l’Eau et l’Alimentation ou « Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF)» est un programme de recherche pour le développement qui s’exécute déroule actuellement dans six (6) bassins fluviaux dans le monde : les Andes, le Mékong, le Nil, le Gange, le Limpopo et la Volta. Les activités courantes sont inspirées des résultats et des leçons apprises lors de la précédente phase du CPWF qui s’est déroulée de 2003 à 2008. Le défi de développement poursuivi dans le bassin de la Volta au cours de la phase actuelle du CPWF (2009-2013) est la gestion intégrée des eaux pluviales et des petits barrages pour des usages multiples. On y aborde les aspects institutionnels, socio-économiques et techniques liés au développement et à la maintenance des petits barrages, considérés dans un système plus vaste de gestion des eaux pluviales dans le bassin. Le CPWF-Volta entend ainsi apporter sa contribution à la réalisation des objectifs de développement de l’irrigation et de l’eau agricole au Burkina Faso. Le CPWF-Volta est exécuté par un consortium composé d’une vingtaine d’organisations partenaires, représentant les domaines de la recherche et du développement. Le programme CPWF-Volta s’articule autour de cinq thématiques principales : • Ciblage et dissémination des acquis et des résultats (Projet V1) ; • Gestion intégrée des eaux pluviales pour les agro-écosystèmes agro-pastoraux (Projet V2) ; • Gestion des petits barrages à usages multiples (Projet V3) ; • Gestion des sous bassins et gouvernance des eaux pluviales et des petits barrages (Projet V4) ; • Coordination et changement (Projet V5). Programme de recherche pour le développement, le CPWF-Volta a le devoir de poursuivre le dialogue avec tous les intervenants dans le bassin aussi bien au niveau régional que national et local, au Burkina Faso et au Ghana où nous intervenons. Dans cette optique, une base de données, qui détaille les profils (ex. mandat, intérêts, influence et contribution potentielles au CPWF-Volta) des acteurs et parties prenantes, a été créée et un inventaire des différentes initiatives en cours dans le bassin du Volta a été réalisé. Des institutions régionales sont étroitement impliquées dans la mise en œuvre du CPWF-Volta à travers les plateformes de l’Autorité du Bassin du Volta (ABV) et du Partenariat Mondial de l’Eau (GWP). Au niveau pays, des réunions avec des partenaires nationaux en marge de l’atelier de lancement du CPWF-Volta en mai-juin 2011 ont permis de clarifier les liens entre le programme et des initiatives nationales. C’est en vue de renouer et de consolider le dialogue déjà entamé avec les parties prenantes du CPWF-Volta au Burkina Faso que cet atelier national de concertation de haut-niveau a lieu. L’objectif principal était d’échanger avec les participants sur les défis que tente de relever la recherche du CPWF-Volta qui s’inscrit dans le contexte global des stratégies de gestion de l’hydraulique agricole au Burkina Faso. Il s’agissait aussi de rechercher la collaboration des participants dans la recherche de solutions à ces défis et dans la prise en compte de ces solutions. Après une année de fonctionnement, c’était aussi l’occasion pour le CPWF-Volta, de partager ses expériences et de recueillir les avis de ses interlocuteurs sur les progrès enregistrés et les perspectives du programme. En outre, la rencontre va explorer l’opportunité d’établir une plateforme d’échanges permanente sur la gestion de l’hydraulique agricole au Burkina Faso.
Agricultural Innovation in the Volta River Basin: An Analysis of Changes in Knowledge, Skills and Livelihoods brought about by the Volta Basin Development Challenge
(Poster, 2013-09-13) Lasiter, Kalie; Tarrant, Anna
Challenge Program on Water and Food: Volta Basin Development Challenge Management of Rainwater and Small Reservoir for multiple uses, 2012 Annual Reflection Report
(Conference Paper, 2012-08-01) CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food
As a program designed for bridging research to development outcome, the CPWF considers regular reflection, learning and adaptive management as crucial elements in the implementation of the basin programs. Reflection implies that the project teams and key stakeholders take stock of what is going on in the project in terms of the science and the process and revisit basic assumptions that underpinned their research. Such reflection provides opportunities for the learning which directs adaptive management. In 2012, basin level reflection took the form of a Field Tour, Learning Events, and a Science Workshop, held between 29 June and 5 July.
The Challenge Program on Water and Food: Volta Basin Development Challenge Inception Workshop Report
(Conference Paper, 2011-07-01) CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food

Browse

Recent Submissions