Wetlands construction and restoration has been adopted as an agri-environmental measure in some of the Baltic Sea Region countries to help make agriculture more environmentally sustainable. However, Sweden’s experience shows that despite great efforts, the country only achieved 60% of its target of adding 12,000 hectares of wetlands in the agricultural landscape between 2000 and 2010.The main objective of this study, conducted within the EU-financed project Baltic COMPASS, was to draw lessons from Sweden’s wetland implementation and identify key enabling and disabling factors, especially in the governance system. Of special interest is to what extent wetlands can generate multiple benefits. The study is based on a participatory analysis involving interviews with professionals from governmental agencies, civil society organizations and the private sector, carried out in January to June 2012

It is now widely recognized that stakeholder interaction and dialogue is essential to improve decisions about and awareness of climate change. The term ‘stakeholder’ is broad and researchers and practitioners may have interrelated and contrasting views on who is a stakeholder or who is (or should be) responsible for adaptation to climate change. To engage stakeholders in research or other projects on adaptation thus requires a careful mapping of the stakeholder landscape and identification of relevant actors at different levels. Through a case study approach, based on studies of two Swedish urban regions, Stockholm and Gothenburg, this paper proposes a systematic method to analyse and identify roles and responsibilities in the stakeholder landscape. The initial mapping exercise was complemented by participatory studies of local and regional stakeholders’ perceptions of who is, or should be, involved in adaptation and their significance for climate change adaptation in the respective regions. The results indicate the value of careful stakeholder analysis for sustainable, effective, planned adaptation that is flexible, but also systematic enough to fulfil practical and scientific requirements for the study and advancement of ongoing adaptation processes and implementation.

At the international level, India is emerging as a key actor in climate negotiations, while at the national and sub-national levels, the climate policy landscape is becoming more active and more ambitious. It is essential to unravel this complex landscape if we are to understandwhy policy looks the way it does, and the extent to which India might contribute to a future international framework for tackling climate change as well as how internationalparties might cooperate with and support India’s domestic efforts. Drawing on both primary and secondary data, this paper analyzes the material and ideational drivers that are most strongly influencing policy choices at different levels, from international negotiations down to individual states.  We argue that at each level of decision making in India,climate policy is embedded in wider policy concerns. In the international realm, it is being woven into broader foreign policy strategy, while domestically, it is being shaped to serve national and sub-national development interests.  While our analysis highlights some common drivers at all levels, it also finds that their influences over policy are not uniform across the different arenas, and in some cases, they work in different ways at different levels of policy. We also indicate what this may mean for the likely acceptability within India of various climate policies being pushed at the international level.

Om alla människor på jorden hade samma livsstil som vi i Sverige skulle vi behöva resurser motsvarande 3,25 jordklot. Det säger sig självt att detta är en orättvis fördelning av jordens resurser som inte är hållbar på längre sikt. För att komma tillrätta med denna obalans kommer det att behövas mycket stora investeringar i teknikutveckling, infrastruktur, marknadsstyrsystem och konsumenter som tar större ansvar för sin totala miljöpåverkan.Sveriges kommuner har en viktig roll att spela i arbetet för en hållbar utveckling. En stor del av vår miljöpåverkan genereras som ett resultat av aktiviteter på lokal nivå, till exempel genom vårt resande och vårt boende. Många kommuner har idag ett ambitiöst miljöarbete med miljöplaner och miljöledningssystem, men fortfarande finns mycket kvar att göra för att omsätta nationella och lokala miljömål i praktiken och för att bättre kunna illustrera vilka miljöförbättringar olika åtgärder leder till. Den här rapporten har tagits fram för att användas som informationsmaterial under en seminarieserie på temat klimaträttvisa i städerna Göteborg, Linköping, Malmö och Stockholm. Rapporten presenterar miljö-påverkan ur ett konsumtionsperspektiv för dessa fyra kommuner med hjälp av verktyget REAP samt jämför avslutningsvis konsumtionsperspektivet med den nationella miljörapporteringen. Konsumtionsbaserat perspektiv på utsläppen innebär att man studerar den miljöpåverkan som uppstår som ett resultat av vår totala konsumtion av varor och tjänster, såsom boende, transporter, livsmedel m.m. och därmed även inkluderar vår import, istället för att bara studera de utsläpp som sker nationellt.Rapporten syftar dels till att skapa förståelse för konsumtionsperspektivet och dels till att illustrera hur ett verktyg som REAP kan användas. Rapporten fungerar vidare som en kortfattad sammanfattning över de fyra städernas miljöpåverkan och innehållet kommer att diskuteras mer utförligt under de regionala seminarierna.

Meso-scale watershed management (1-10,000 km2) is receiving growing attention as the spatial scale where policy in integrated water resource management (IWRM) goes into operational mode. This is also where aggregated field-level agricultural water management (AWM) interventions may result in externalities. But there is little synthesised 'lessons learned' on the costs and benefits of interventions at this scale. Here we synthesise selected cases and meta-analyses on the investment cost in 'soft components' accompanying AWM interventions. The focus is on meso-scale watersheds in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. We found very few cases with benefit-to-cost evaluation at full project level, or separate costing of hard and soft components. The synthesis suggests higher development success rates in communities with an initial level of social capital, where projects were implemented with cost- and knowledge-sharing between involved stakeholders, and where one or more 'agents of change' were present to facilitate leadership and communications. There is a need to monitor and evaluate both the external and the internal gains and losses in a more systematic manner to help development agents and other investors to ensure wiser and more effective investments in AWM interventions and watershed management.

Food insecurity affects a large portion of the population in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). To meet future food requirements current rainfed farming systems need to upgrade yield output. One way is to improve water and fertiliser management in crop production. But adaptation among farmers will depend on perceived risk reduction of harvest failure as well as economic benefit for the household. Here, we present risk analysis and economical benefit estimates of a water harvesting (WH) system for supplemental irrigation (SI). Focus of the analysis is on reducing investment risk to improve self-sufficiency in staple food production. The analysis is based on data from two on-farm experimental sites with SI for cereals in currently practised smallholder farming system in semi-arid Burkina Faso and Kenya, respectively. The WH system enables for both SI of staple crop (sorghum and maize) and a fully irrigated off-season cash crop (tomatoes). Different investment scenarios are presented in a matrix of four reservoir sealants combined with three labour opportunity costs. It is shown that the WH system is labour intensive but risk-reducing investment at the two locations. The current cultivation practices do not attain food self-sufficiency in farm households. WH with SI resulted in a net profit of 151–626 USD year⁻¹ ha⁻¹ for the Burkina case and 109–477 USD year⁻¹ ha⁻¹ for the Kenya case depending on labour opportunity cost, compared to −83 to 15 USD year⁻¹ ha⁻¹ for the Burkina case and 40–130 USD year⁻¹ ha⁻¹ for the Kenyan case for current farming practices. Opportunity cost represents 0–66% of the investment cost in an SI system depending on type of sealant. The most economical strategy under local labour conditions was obtained using thin plastic sheeting as reservoir sealant. This resulted in a net profit of 390 and 73 USD year⁻¹ ha⁻¹ for the Burkina Faso and Kenyan respective site after household consumption was deducted. The analysis suggests a strong mutual dependence between investment in WH for SI and input of fertiliser. The WH system is only economically viable if combined with improved soil fertility management, but the investment in fertiliser inputs may only be viable in the long term when combined with SI.

For most of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, energy security is a key developmental issue, given the limited capacity and supply of modern energy services. Fortunately, the region is bequeathed with abundant natural resources that can potentially be developed to support a thriving biomass energy industry. The development of modern biomass energy is likely to contribute to solving energy security concerns, improving rural livelihoods, and mitigating a number of environmental and socioeconomic impacts of current energy systems. This chapter explores the numerous opportunities and challenges associated with an expansion of biofuel production from the sugar industry as well as potential international trade implications. Current analysis shows that land is not a limiting constraint to bioenergy production from sugar resources. This chapter discusses possible implementation mechanisms to maximize the benefits of sugar resources through multiproduct strategies. One of the key issues to emerge from the analysis is the implementation of regional biofuel strategies to take better advantage of the complementarities in local, regional, and global biofuel markets.

This paper explores the interrelationship between gender, ethnicity, migration/mobility and livelihood opportunities in the urban area of Shashemene in Southern Ethiopia in the period immediately prior to the end of the Ethiopian Empire in 1974. The major finding is that gender is a determining social factor in the mobility and livelihood opportunities of individuals. A striking result from the study is that livelihood alternatives were “urban” to a relatively small extent. Most persons found a living in activities that are to be found in rural as well as in urban areas. For men, ethnicity provides a mediating factor whereas the mobility and livelihood patterns for women are less differentiated by ethnic identity. Individual mobility is characterised both by urban-urban and rural-urban movements. In a study carried out in 1973, women had spent less number of years migrating when they arrived at Shashemene compared to their male counterparts. Similarly, the average number of new places, where they resided for at least one year, was fewer for women than for men. Our results also indicate differences in the migration/mobility rates of women and men across ages. Women’s migration seems to drop abruptly after the age 25. In general, the mobile period of life was shorter for women than for men.

Ethiopia is often highlighted as a country in which a lot of foreign land acquisition is occurring. The extent to which these investments also constitute significant acquisitions of water is the subject of this paper. It is apparent that water availability is a strong driver of the recent surge of investments in agricultural land globally, and in general the investments occur in countries with significant 'untapped' water resources. Ethiopia is no exception. We propose that the perception of unused and abundant water resources, as captured in dominant narratives, that drives and justifies both foreign and domestic investments, fails to reflect the more complex reality on the ground. Based on new collections of lease information and crop modelling, we estimate the potential additional water use associated with foreign investments at various scales. As a consequence of data limitations our analyses provide only crude estimates of consumptive water use and indicate a wide range of possible water consumption depending on exactly how foreign direct investment (FDI) development scenarios unfold. However, they do suggest that if all planned FDI schemes are implemented and expanded in the near future, additional water consumption is likely to be comparable with existing water use in non-FDI irrigation schemes, and a non-trivial proportion of the country’s water resources will be effectively utilised by foreign entities. Hence, additional water use as well as local water scarcity ought to be strong considerations in regulating or pricing land leases. If new investments are to increase local food and water security without compromising local and downstream water availability they should be designed to improve often very low agricultural water productivity, and to safeguard access of local populations to water.

This report explores the long-term future of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) from an explicitly ecosystems perspective. It seeks to make a case that the optimal long-term pathway for the CAP must strike a balance in which the policy’s primary aims – viable food production to ensure food security, territorial balance, and environmental sustainability – are mutually reinforcing and thereby optimally achieved.

The value of the ecosystems approach is that it provides a conceptual framework that integrates the provisioning services of food, energy and forest products with regulating, supporting and cultural services that are all underpinned by healthy biodiversity. Only by recognizing this intrinsic interdependence between nature and our food production can we devise an appropriate agricultural policy which embraces the aim of protecting and strengthening the resilience of ecological systems as a core organizing principle.

We all are aware that climate change is evident and will cause adverse impacts on the social and natural systems of all nations; however, its impact will hit developing countries the worst and the hardest. This book focuses on the impact of climate change on the Lake Tana Basin - a source of the Blue Nile river. The Lake Tana has vital role for the livelihoods of the people residing in the region in particular and the downstream countries in general. In this work, GCM derived scenarios of climate change data are used for predicting the plausible future climate of the region. Statistical Downscaling Model (SDSM) is used to downscale the GCM data into a finer scale. A physically based hydrological model called SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) was setup, calibrated, validated and used for impact assessment. This book encompasses sound methodological approaches from climate change science to hydrological modeling, and can serve as an essential guide for practitioners and graduate students who are working on water resources and related disciplines. Yet, I remind the reader that the future is full of uncertainties, and so does climate change projections.

Climate change is likely to have severe effects on water availability in Ethiopia. The aim of the present study was to assess the impact of climate change on the Gilgel Abay River, Upper Blue Nile Basin. The Statistical Downscaling Tool (SDSM) was used to downscale the HadCM3 (Hadley centre Climate Model 3) Global Circulation Model (GCM) scenario data into finer scale resolution. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was set up, calibrated, and validated. SDSM downscaled climate outputs were used as an input to the SWAT model. The climate projection analysis was done by dividing the period 2010-2100 into three time windows with each 30 years of data. The period 1990-2001 was taken as the baseline period against which comparison was made. Results showed that annual mean precipitation may decrease in the first 30-year period but increase in the following two 30-year periods. The decrease in mean monthly precipitation may be as much as about -30% during 2010-2040 but the increase may be more than +30% in 2070-2100. The impact of climate change may cause a decrease in mean monthly flow volume between -40% to -50% during 2010-2040 but may increase by more than the double during 2070-2100. Climate change appears to have negligible effect on low flow conditions of the river. Seasonal mean flow volume, however, may increase by more than the double and +30% to +40% for the Belg (small rainy season) and Kiremit (main rainy season) periods, respectively. Overall, it appears that climate change will result in an annual increase in flow volume for the Gilgel Abay River. The increase in flow is likely to have considerable importance for local small scale irrigation activities. Moreover, it will help harnessing a significant amount of water for ongoing dam projects in the Gilgel Abay River Basin.

Poverty alleviation in rural areas is a top priority for social and economic development, particularly against a backdrop of rising populations up to 2050 and to meet growing food demands in a rapidly urbanizing world. Sustainable intensification of agricultural techniques are therefore required, such as water management practices that result in higher agricultural production without causing severe environmental impacts, whilst at the same time improving resilience to drought and dry spells. Water harvesting practices have shown promising results in reducing risks, and improving yields whilst also delivering positive impacts on other ecosystems. However, before large scale implementation of water harvesting, further investigation of local downstream impacts are warranted. We conclude that water harvesting remains a promising option for sustainable agricultural intensification in the water scarce tropics, resulting in both risk reduction and yield improvements.

This special issue brings together prominent scholars to explore novel multilevel governance challenges posed by the behavior of dynamic and complex social-ecological systems. Here we expand and investigate the emerging notion of “resilience” as a perspective for understanding how societies can cope with, and develop from, disturbances and change. As the contributions to the special issue illustrate, resilience thinking in its current form contains substantial normative and conceptual difficulties for the analysis of social systems. However, a resilience approach to governance issues also shows a great deal of promise as it enables a more refined understanding of the dynamics of rapid, interlinked and multiscale change. This potential should not be underestimated as institutions and decision-makers try to deal with converging trends of global interconnectedness and increasing pressure on social-ecological systems.

This case study compares policy and practice on sanitation and hygiene in Rwanda, where these issues are government priorities, and a range of guidelines and standards are prescribed for toilet technologies.

The paper looks specifically at the guidelines and standards for urine diversion dry toilets (UDDTs), as well as those on the use of treated human excreta as fertilizer, and on pit latrines (“drop and store”). It then describes how these guidelines and standards are enforced at the community level – specifically in the Rugarama sector, Burera District, one of four Rwandan districts where the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is carrying out a water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programme.The paper presents the prevailing sanitation and hygiene norms and practices and, using qualitative research methods, evaluates how and why they differ from the prescribed guidelines and standards. In fact, the study shows, health, hygiene, convenience, and safety aspects of sanitation in the study area remain unsatisfactory.Most of the toilets in these communities are neither properly constructed nor properly used. Reasons for the contradictions between prevailing practice and national guidelines and standards include the following: people do not place a high priority on toilets; financial constraints limit household investment in toilets; there is a lack of proper understanding of prescribed sanitation and hygiene guidelines and standards; and there are challenges in carrying out sanitary inspections.For the productive sanitation system in particular, poor understanding of how the system works was identified as the main cause of the mismatch between standards and practice. This study posits that a common understanding of prescribed guidelines and standards at all levels of society is vital to ensure health and safety, improved livelihoods, and to maintain minimum hygiene and sanitation standards.Furthermore, improved understanding of the importance of having properly constructed and well maintained sanitation and hygiene facilities will, undoubtedly, create a demand for such facilities irrespective of the economic hindrances reported by most community members.

Small-scale farmers in semi-arid and dry sub-humid sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are vulnerable to dryspells, a primary reason for agricultural droughts. We used large-scale publicly available datasets to analyze frequency and trends over time in dryspells of critical length for farmers. 54 rainfall stations across the croplands of semi-arid and dry sub-humid SSA were included. Results show that stations with long-term seasonal rainfall averages below 600 mm experience critical dryspells in more than 60% of their seasons, whereas the corresponding figure for stations with averages above 600 mm is 40% or less. Almost every season is affected by dryspells for stations below 400 mm. Further, dryspell seasons are often affected by multiple dryspells. Most stations do not show any trends of changing dryspell frequency. Among the 21 stations that do exhibit changes over time, 19 have been subjected to an increasing trend, and only 2 to a decreasing trend. For six stations the increase is statistically significant. We conclude that frequent dryspell seasons with multiple dryspells, is a reality of rainfed farming systems, especially in semi-arid SSA. Efforts to increase productivity in these systems must include strategies to manage dryspells to be effective. The publicly available data contains large gaps that restrict the analysis. This is highly problematic, particularly given the fundamental importance of rainfall dynamics for livelihoods in the poorest regions of the world.

Yield levels in smallholder farming systems in semi-arid sub-Saharan Africa are generally low. Water shortage in the root zone during critical crop development stages is a fundamental constraining factor. While there is ample evidence to show that conservation tillage can promote soil health, it has recently been suggested that the main benefit in semi-arid farming systems may in fact be an in situ water harvesting effect. In this paper we present the result from an on-farm conservation tillage experiment (combining ripping with mulch and manure application) that was carried out in northeastern Tanzania from 2005 to 2008, testing this hypothesis. Special attention was given to the effects on the water retention properties of the soil. The tested conservation treatment only had a clear yield increasing effect during one of the six experimental seasons (maize grain yields increased by 41%, and biomass by 65%), and this was a season that received exceptional amounts of rainfall (549 mm). While the other seasons provided mixed results, there seemed to be an increasing yield gap between the conservation tillage treatment and the control towards the end of the experiment. Regarding soil system changes, small but significant effects on chemical and microbiological properties, but not on physical properties, were observed. This raises questions about the suggested water harvesting effect and its potential to contribute to stabilized yield levels under semi-arid conditions. We conclude that, at least in a shorter time perspective, the tested type of conservation tillage seems to boost productivity during already good seasons, rather than stabilize harvests during poor rainfall seasons. Highlighting the challenges involved in upgrading these farming systems, we discuss the potential contribution of conservation tillage towards improved water availability in the crop root zone in a longer-term perspective.