The Challenge Program on Water and Food: A new paradigm for research in the CGIAR - Water Scarcity, Livelihoods and Food Security - page 3

“The proposal demonstrates clear linkages with global work on water and
food, demonstrates wide stakeholder inclusion, national agricultural research
systems (NARS) participation is very high, and other partners are well
represented.”
After the iSC endorsement, the World Summit on Sustainable Development
(WSSD) was held in Johannesburg 26 August-4 September 2002. The WSSD
produced the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, of which paragraph 40
states,
Agriculture plays a crucial role in addressing the needs of a growing global
population and is inextricably linked to poverty eradication, especially in
developing countries. Enhancing the role of women at all levels and in all
aspects of rural development, agriculture, nutrition and food security is
imperative. Sustainable agriculture and rural development are essential to
the implementation of an integrated approach to increasing food produc-
tion and enhancing food security and food safety in an environmentally
sustainable way.
Subparagraph 40(d) reads, “Promote programmes to enhance in a sustainable
manner the productivity of land and the efficient use of water resources in
agriculture, forestry, wetlands, artisanal fisheries and aquaculture, especially
through indigenous and local community-based approaches.”
Paragraph 40 provided the policy legitimacy for the research directions and
themes of the CPWF: it can be seen from two sides. The global water com-
munity needed to address the issue of water management in agriculture within
the context of finite water resources under increasing pressure. The agricultural
sector needed to identify ways to enhance resource productivity in agriculture,
including water productivity. This view supported the establishment of the
CPWF as a worldwide program aimed at increasing water productivity in
agriculture from the community to whole basin scales.
The focus on water productivity remained foremost in the thinking of the
CPWF for several years after its inception. “The most important question in
the current debate on water scarcity is not so much whether it is true or not,
whether we are going to run out of water or not, whether water scarcity is
fact or fiction, but whether this debate will help increase water productivity”
(Rijsberman, 2004).
CPWF context within the CGIAR's new programmatic approach
As intended by the CDMT, the CPWF introduced a new model for research
for the CGIAR with the emphasis on collaboration, both between Centers,
and between Centers and national agricultural research and extension systems
(NARES) and advanced research institutes. When appropriate, the new
model used a participatory, integrated natural resource management (INRM)
approach to develop and disseminate technology (Sayer and Campbell, 2003).