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SI; International audience; Boosting the productivity of smallholder farming systems continues to be a major need in Africa. Challenges relating to how to improve irrigation are multi‐factor and multisectoral, and they involve a broad range of actors who must interact to reach decisions collectively. We provide a systematic reflection on findings from the research project EAU4Food, which adopted a transdisciplinary approach to irrigation for food security research in five case studies in Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, South Africa and Tunisia. The EAU4Food experiences emphasize that actual innovation at irrigated smallholder farm level remains limited without sufficient improvement of the enabling environment and taking note of the wider political economy environment. Most project partners felt at the end of the project that the transdisciplinary approach has indeed enriched the research process by providing different and multiple insights from actors outside the academic field. Local capacity to facilitate transdisciplinary research and engagement with practitioners was developed and could support the continuation and scaling up of the approach. Future projects may benefit from a longer time frame to allow for deeper exchange of lessons learned among different stakeholders and a dedicated effort to analyse possible improvements of the enabling environment from the beginning of the research process. © 2020 The Authors. Irrigation and Drainage published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Commission for Irrigation and Drainage

Ethiopia has decades of experience in implementing land and water management interventions. Nonetheless, there remains persisting challenges to follow an adaptive management (AM) approach in efforts of restoring and transforming agricultural landscapes. This review was carried out to synthesize evidences on the impact on agricultural landscapes following the implementation of land and water management practices and to evaluate the use of AM approaches. We explored how elements of the structures and functions of landscapes have been transformed, and how the components of AM, such as structured decision-making and learning processes, have been applied. Despite numerous environmental and economic benefits of land and water management interventions in Ethiopia, this review revealed gaps in AM approaches. These include: (i) insufficient efforts in relation to evidence based contextualization of interventions, (ii) insufficient efforts in monitoring of bio-physical and socio-economic processes and changes post implementation, (iii) lack of trade-off analyses, and (iv) inadequacy of local community engagement and provision of feedback. Given the many uncertainties we must deal with, efforts to restore and transform agricultural landscapes cannot follow a business-as-usual approach. Future investment, in AM approach, tailored to the needs and context would help to achieve the goals of sustainable agricultural landscape transformation. The success depends on three interdependent pillars of action: the ability to make a robust, co-developed plan of interventions, the ability to continuously monitor changes based on key variables, and to learn from the knowledge generated and apply the learning as implementation evolves.

The reality of global climate change demands novel approaches to science that are reflective of the scales at which changes are likely to occur, and of the new forms of knowledge required to positively influence policy to support vulnerable populations. We examine some of the opportunities and challenges presented by a collaborative, transdisciplinary research project on climate change adaptation in Africa and Asia that utilised a hotspot approach. A large scale effort to develop appropriate baselines was a key challenge at the outset of the program, as was the need to develop innovative methodologies to enable researchers to work at appropriate spatial scales. Efforts to match research to the biophysical scales at which change occurs need to be aware of the mismatch that can develop between these regional scales and the governance scales at which decisions are made.

The development of smallholder irrigation is a policy priority in Ethiopia, yet little consideration has been given to the role state interventions play in enabling or constraining effective self-governance in farmer-managed schemes. To address this gap in evidence, research was conducted in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, in two irrigation sites. Focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews with key informants were the primary means of collecting data on local institutional arrangements, government interventions and management challenges. An opinion poll provided additional insights. Our case studies indicate that effective self-governance cannot easily be crafted by external actors. The introduction of modern irrigation technologies and formalized management arrangements has fostered dependency on external support and increased state influence in key decision-making processes, whilst traditional water user associations remain largely autonomous but have little access to financial resources. State interventions have also been poorly tailored to local context with negative consequences for performance, although there have been some successes where traditional arrangements for water management have been integrated into new institutions. The incorporation of farmer perspectives into performance assessments could facilitate more responsive interventions, and remains an important area of irrigation research and practice. (Resume d'auteur)

Studies of climate change at specific intervals of future warming have primarily been addressed through top-down approaches using climate projections and modelled impacts. In contrast, bottom-up approaches focus on the recent past and present vulnerability. Here, we examine climate signals at different increments of warming and consider the need to reconcile top-down and bottom-up approaches. We synthesise insights from recent studies in three climate-sensitive systems where change is a defining feature of the human-environment system. Whilst top-down and bottom-up approaches generate complementary insights into who and what is at risk, integrating their results is a much-needed step towards developing relevant information to address the needs of immediate adaptation decisions.

Ethiopia has decades of experience in implementing land and water management interventions. The overarching objectives of this review were to synthesize evidences on the impact of implementation of land and water management practices on agricultural landscapes in Ethiopia and to evaluate the use of adaptive management (AM) approaches as a tool to manage uncertainties. We explored how elements of the structures and functions of landscapes have been transformed, and how the components of AM, such as structured decision-making and learning processes, have been applied. Despite numerous environmental and economic benefits of land and water management interventions in Ethiopia, this review revealed gaps in AM approaches. These include: (i) inadequate evidence-based contextualization of interventions, (ii) lack of monitoring of bio-physical and socioeconomic processes and changes post implementation, (iii) lack of trade-off analyses, and (iv) inadequacy of local community engagement and provision of feedback. Given the many uncertainties we must deal with, future investment in AM approaches tailored to the needs and context would help to achieve the goals of sustainable agricultural landscape transformation. The success depends, among other things, on the ability to learn from the knowledge generated and apply the learning as implementation evolves

While adaptation to climate change has emerged as a key area of development research, little is known about the enablers and constraints to implementing adaptation-oriented frameworks for research and development programming. This paper documents lessons learned from the Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance (ACCRA) programme – a multi-stakeholder consortium comprised of four large international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and a research organization. It revisits the development and implementation of the conceptual framework that guided ACCRA’s work: the Local Adaptive Capacity (LAC) framework. Between 2009 and 2013, ACCRA’s research used the LAC to understand the impact of development interventions on levels of adaptive capacity at community and household levels. This in turn informed targeting of NGO and government programming. Challenges such as definitional overlaps between resilience and adaptation, difficulties in articulating the intangible elements of LAC’s five characteristics of adaptive capacity and differing interpretations of commonly used terms between academic and practitioner partners each had to be grappled with. Experiences from ACCRA’s research highlight the LAC’s utility as a unifying framework. However, they also point to the need to ensure that certain elements of the LAC are not under-represented (such as gender, power and politics). In addition, the need for improved guidance in describing how the conceptual elements of the LAC can be operationalized, and ensuring greater levels of collaboration between all stakeholders were identified. It is hoped that the lessons from ACCRA not only help to shape future applications of the LAC but the large number of other adaptation and resilience-oriented frameworks that guide development research and practice.

Rivers provide water for irrigation, domestic supply, power generation and industry as well as a range of other ecosystem services and intrinsic and biodiversity values. Managing rivers to provide multiple benefits is therefore foundational to water security and other policy priorities. Because river flow is often insufficient to meet all needs fully, water management experts have acknowledged the need for trade-offs in river management. Ecosystem scientists have classified and quantified goods and services that rivers provide to society. However, they have seldom examined the way in which water management infrastructure and institutional arrangements harness and direct goods and services to different groups in society. Meanwhile, water management paradigms have often considered freshwater ecosystems as rival water users to society or a source of natural hazards and have underplayed the role healthy ecosystems play in providing multiple social and economic benefits. We argue that physical and social structures and processes are necessary to realize multiple benefits from river ecosystems, and that these structures and processes, in the form of (formal and informal) institutions and (gray and green) infrastructure, shape how benefits accrue to different groups in society. We contend that institutions and infrastructure are in turn shaped by political economy. We suggest a more coherent framework for river management research, policy and planning that focuses on (a) the ways in which political economy, institutions and infrastructure mediate access and entitlements to benefits derived from ecosystem services, and (b) the feedbacks and trade-offs between investments in physical and social structures and processes.

This article discusses how decentralisation policies are enacted in the planning and implementation of natural resource management interventions in rural Ethiopia. A key element of decentralisation policy is the emphasis on greater participation by local communities. Drawing on qualitative research conducted with government staff and farmers, this paper illustrates how different actors perceive and implement national policy and how these actions affect the longer-term sustainability of land management interventions.

This paper synthesizes what is known about the physical and biophysical impacts of climate change and their consequences for societies and development under different levels of global warming in Central Asia. Projections show mean temperatures increasing by up to 6.5 °C compared to pre-industrial by the end of this century across the region. Associated physical impacts include altered precipitation regimes, more frequent heat extremes and increasing aridity. Increasing rates of glacial and snow melt could lead to greater river runoff, but also to greater seasonality of runoff in the short term and to decreasing water availability in the medium term to long term. These changes have negative implications for the water availability in the region and for conflicting water demands between agriculture and hydropower. Climate change could mostly decrease crop yields, challenging food security, but in more northern regions there could also be positive effects. Studies on climate change impacts on energy systems are scarce and yield conflicting results, but the more regional study shows decreasing prospects for hydropower. The health of the population is already sensitive to heat extremes and is projected to be exposed to more frequent and prolonged heat waves in the future, among other potential health impacts. While the evidence for a link between climate and migration is weak, the rural-to-urban migration can be especially expected to intensify. The paper concludes that Central Asia will be severely affected by climate change even if the global mean temperature increase is limited to 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, due to the potential for impacts to occur simultaneously and compound one another as well as interactions with wider development challenges, while risks will be strongly amplified if this threshold is crossed., This research has been funded through the World Bank Project “Turn Down the Heat: Confronting the New Climate Normal,” and we are grateful to everybody involved in this activity for making it a success.

An increasing number of research programs seek to support adaptation to climate change through the engagement of large‐scale transdisciplinary networks that span countries and continents. While transdisciplinary research processes have been a topic of reflection, practice, and refinement for some time, these trends now mean that the global change research community needs to reflect and learn how to pursue collaborative research on a large scale. This paper shares insights from a seven‐year climate change adaptation research program that supports collaboration between more than 450 researchers and practitioners across four consortia and 17 countries. The experience confirms the importance of attention to careful design for transdisciplinary collaboration, but also highlights that this alone is not enough. The success of well‐designed transdisciplinary research processes is also strongly influenced by relational and systemic features of collaborative relationships. Relational features include interpersonal trust, mutual respect, and leadership styles, while systemic features include legal partnership agreements, power asymmetries between partners, and institutional values and cultures. In the new arena of large‐scale collaborative science efforts, enablers of transdisciplinary collaboration include dedicated project coordinators, leaders at multiple levels, and the availability of small amounts of flexible funds to enable nimble responses to opportunities and unexpected collaborations.

For many centuries, (semi-)nomadic pastoralists used pasture areas in the Tien Shan and Pamir mountains. Under Soviet rule, sedentarization began in the 1930s and collective farms replaced socioeconomic units based on kinship. Soviet land use was monofunctional and dependent on high levels of inputs such as chemical fertilizers, machinery, concentrated feed, and subsidies and was neither ecologically sustainable nor economically viable. In the process of political and economic transformation after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, state farms have been dismantled, land and livestock privatized, and specialized employees such as technicians have suddenly become independent farmers. Today, large farms and herds no longer exist, having been replaced by a multitude of small household enterprises. Each household's socioeconomic situation is unique, and so are household livelihood strategies. Activities focusing on sustainable development and sustainable pasture management must therefore take a...

This paper investigates the performance of selected soil and water conservation measures in the highlands of Ethiopia and Eritrea, namely Fanya Juu , soil/stone bund, grass strips and double ditches. The impact of these techniques on runoff, soil loss, crop yield and biomass production is measured at on-farm experimental sites in seven research sites under different agro-ecological conditions. On one hand, most measures brought about a considerable reduction in soil loss and runoff. The latter, however, increases the waterlogging hazard, particularly in sub-humid environments. On the other hand, crop yield and biomass production did not increase, as it would have been necessary to compensate for the high costs of soil conservation. Thus, the measures tested only partially fulfil their requirements. To enhance their adaptability to local conditions, they must be supplemented with biological and agronomic measures that help improve production.

Prelims (Foreword, by the Ethiopian Ministry of Water Resources and DFID ) 1. Introduction Roger Calow, Zemede Abebe and Alan Nicol 2. Ethiopia's water resources, policies, and institutions Eva Ludi, Bethel Terefe, Roger Calow and Gulilat Birhane 3. WASH sector monitoring John Butterworth, Katharina Welle, Kristof Bostoen and Florian Schaefer 4. Innovative approaches for extending access to water services: the potential of multiple-use water services and self-supply Marieke Adank, John Butterworth, Sally Sutton and Zemede Abebe 5. Sanitation and hygiene promotion in rural communities: the Health Extension Programme Peter Newborne and Anu Liisanantti 6. Sustainability of water services in Ethiopia Nathaniel Mason, Alan MacDonald, Sobona Mtisi, Israel Deneke Haylamicheal and Habtamu Abebe 7. Water for livelihood resilience, food security, and poverty reduction Josephine Tucker, Zelalem Lema and Samson Eshetu Lemma 8. Responding to climate variability and change: implications for planned adaptation Lindsey Jones, Lorraine Coulter, Million Getnet Gebreyes, Beneberu Shimelis Feleke, Naomi Oates, Leulseged Yirgu Gebreamlak and Josephine Tucker 9. Policy and practice influence through research: critical reflections on RiPPLE's approach Josephine Tucker, Ewen Le Borgne and Marialivia Iotti

Equity and empowerment underpin poverty reduction. They are also important in improving "enabling environments" for poverty reduction and pro-poor growth because they can increase access to opportunities and enhance democratic processes. Some equity challenges constitute discrimination and structural barriers to empowerment. Donors can support the marginalised, build the capacity of civil society and support decentralised government. Donors must build broad-based alliances, working with non-traditional partners and fostering networks. Explicit attention to equity and empowerment reduces the likelihood of unforeseen negative effects and places principles of fairness and social justice clearly at the heart of the work of development agencies.

Change is a constant in the lives of rural people in Africa. They have had to cope with both sudden shocks such as war, rain failures and food price spikes and with long-term stresses such as increasing population pressure on land, declines in their terms of trade, and the degradation of land and water. They will have to cope with these pressures in the future, coupled with the growing impact of climate change. People need the ability to maintain (and even improve) their well-being in the face of change – whatever that change may be. This is what we call adaptive capacity. Drawing on evidence from the Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance (ACCRA) project (2010-11) – a research and advocacy consortium in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Uganda – this Briefing Paper aims to understand better how different kinds of development interventions affect the characteristics of adaptive capacity. Do interventions take it seriously enough? Are they having a positive effect? Given that ultimately it is people’s adaptive capacity that determines the sustainability of all interventions, it is ACCRA’s contention that these are critical qu

Simon A Mason, Tobias Hagmann, Christine Bichsel, Eva Ludi and Yacob Arsano, 2007 forthcoming: "Linkages Between Sub-national and International Water Conflicts: the Eastern Nile Basin ", in: Brauch, Hans Gunter; Grin, John; Mesjasz, Czeslaw; Krummenacher, Heinz; Behera, Navnita Chadha; Chourou, Bechir; Oswald-Spring, Ursula; Liotta, P. H.; Kameri-Mbote, Patricia (Eds.): Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts (Berlin Heidelberg New York Hong Kong London Milan Paris Tokyo: Springer-Verlag).

The coffee sub-sector is very important to the Ethiopian economy – in 2005, coffee export generated 41% of foreign exchange earnings – and provides income for approximately 8 million smallholder households. Policy attention to the sector was always considerable, and its importance has been renewed in the latest Poverty Reduction Strategy, the Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP). PASDEP puts forward a development strategy based on accelerated economic growth, part of which is hoped to be achieved via increased smallholder commercialisation and market integration. This paper addresses commercialisation in selected coffee growing areas in Ethiopia. The objectives of the study were (i) to assess the scale of commercialisation in coffee growing areas and to detect household and farm characteristics which might explain variation in the levels of coffee commercialisation among households; and (ii) to answer two separate questions: why some sampled households didn\'t take part in output markets (i.e. identify determinants of market entry) and why some households sold more products than others (i.e. determinants of market supply). Answering these questions will help to identify policy options promoting market participation and commercialisation of smallholder agriculture. Agricultural commercialisation was found to be comparatively high in the studied Weredas (Districts). On the average, farmers marketed 84% of their farm production. Overall, coffee contributed 70% to the total value of output sold. There is, however, a high inter-household differentiation: the 25% highly commercialised smallholders generated over 95% of their cash income from coffee sales, while the bottom 25% earned 63% of their cash income from selling food crops. Keeping other factors constant, the total volume of farm production explained about 72% of the variation in the degree of commercialisation among sampled farm households. Demographic and household factors, wealth and total farm size had no effect on the observed variation in the degree of coffee commercialisation among sampled households. A negative and significant association between the level of household coffee commercialisation and land productivity in non-coffee crops was found, indicating potential trade-offs between the production of coffee, the major cash crop, and other, mainly food crops. No evidence was found of increasing labour intensity as a result of increased coffee production. Similarly, the degree of coffee commercialisation was found to have a statistically insignificant effect on household-level food consumption. Overall, the findings demonstrate the integrated nature of the farming system in coffee growing areas. Despite an overall high level of coffee commercialisation, diversified farming is a strategy pursued by the majority of the surveyed households. The study findings, however, suggest that further specialisation in coffee could enhance overall agricultural commercialisation in the study areas. As the propensity to supply more coffee is significantly higher among households depending more heavily on purchased food, minimising the trade-offs in the production of coffee and non-coffee staple food crops, especially in the short-term, is very important, which signifies the importance of addressing risks associated with food supply and price. In general, increasing smallholder coffee commercialisation is expected to be a viable pathway for agricultural development in coffee growing areas of Ethiopia, if the problem of low productivity, barriers for production expansion (e.g. shortage of farm land or constrained access to farm land) and addressing market risks in both the food and coffee market are addressed by increased research and policy attention. Ethiopian Journal of Economics Vol. 16 (1) 2007: pp. 89-118

The coffee sub-sector is very important to the Ethiopian economy – in 2005, coffee export generated 41% of foreign exchange earnings – and provides income for approximately 8 million smallholder households. Policy attention to the sector was always considerable, and its importance has been renewed in the latest Poverty Reduction Strategy, the Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP). PASDEP puts forward a development strategy based on accelerated economic growth, part of which is hoped to be achieved via increased smallholder commercialisation and market integration. This paper addresses commercialisation in selected coffee growing areas in Ethiopia. The objectives of the study were (i) to assess the scale of commercialisation in coffee growing areas and to detect household and farm characteristics which might explain variation in the levels of coffee commercialisation among households; and (ii) to answer two separate questions: why some sampled households didn’t take part in output markets (i.e. identify determinants of market entry) and why some households sold more products than others (i.e. determinants of market supply). Answering these questions will help to identify policy options promoting market participation and commercialisation of smallholder agriculture. Agricultural commercialisation was found to be comparatively high in the studied Weredas (Districts). On the average, farmers marketed 84% of their farm production. Overall, coffee contributed 70% to the total value of output sold. There is, however, a high inter-household differentiation: the 25% highly commercialised smallholders generated over 95% of their cash income from coffee sales, while the bottom 25% earned 63% of their cash income from selling food crops. Keeping other factors constant, the total volume of farm production explained about 72% of the variation in the degree of commercialisation among sampled farm households. Demographic and household factors, wealth and total farm size had no effect on the observed variation in the degree of coffee commercialisation among sampled households. A negative and significant association between the level of household coffee commercialisation and land productivity in non-coffee crops was found, indicating potential trade-offs between the production of coffee, the major cash crop, and other, mainly food crops. No evidence was found of increasing labour intensity as a result of increased coffee production. Similarly, the degree of coffee commercialisation was found to have a statistically insignificant effect on household-level food consumption. Overall, the findings demonstrate the integrated nature of the farming system in coffee growing areas. Despite an overall high level of coffee commercialisation, diversified farming is a strategy pursued by the majority of the surveyed households. The study findings, however, suggest that further specialisation in coffee could enhance overall agricultural commercialisation in the study areas. As the propensity to supply more coffee is significantly higher among households depending more heavily on purchased food, minimising the trade-offs in the production of coffee and non-coffee staple food crops, especially in the short-term, is very important, which signifies the importance of addressing risks associated with food supply and price. In general, increasing smallholder coffee commercialisation is expected to be a viable pathway for agricultural development in coffee growing areas of Ethiopia, if the problem of low productivity, barriers for production expansion (e.g. shortage of farm land or constrained access to farm land) and addressing market risks in both the food and coffee market are addressed by increased research and policy attention.

The paper considers the various and potential meanings of commercialisation (or market-oriented agriculture) for Ethiopia. Much attention has been paid recently to high-tech, large-scale, export-oriented enterprises such as floriculture: butinternational evidence and Ethiopian realities demonstrate that this is only one of many complementary pathways to commercialisation. Most of Ethiopia’s small farm households are already engaged with markets to varying degrees: improving theterms of that engagement is likely to have a greater and more widespread impact on poverty than a few large ventures, and should be given equal policy attention. Policy debates on commercialisation of agriculture are not new in Ethiopia: various approaches and strategies have been dominant in different periods of history. While improving productivity, increasing foreign currency earnings through export and developing a strong agro-industrial sector were the focus of policy attention in the 1950s and 1960s; accelerating growth and poverty reduction have been much more the focus of recent attempts to increase the commercial orientation of farm households. We suggest that four types of commercial farms can currently be discerned in Ethiopia : - Farming households in marginal or remote areas who have had relatively little interaction with markets until now, but who have the potential and interest to benefit from greater commercialisation or more advantageous interactions; - Farming households living in more productive and market-linked areas, and/ or growing highly commercialised crops (such as coffee and tea), who have a long experience of production for the market;Small investor-farmers, mostly educated and town-based, some of them agricultural professionals, who have begun to establish farming businesses in the last few years in response to the freeing up of land regulations; and - Large capital-intensive business ventures. Different policy support is likely to be needed for different agro-ecological and socioeconomic environments and for different groups of farming households, but all can benefit from (and contribute to) enhanced market oriented agricultural growth. Whichever pathways are followed, the destination should be increased income and improved quality of life for rural Ethiopians.