Messages and meaning - Water Scarcity, Livelihoods and Food Security - page 200

9 Messages and meaning

Larry W. Harrington a* and Alain Vidal b

a CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food CPWF, Ithaca, NY, USA;
b CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food CPWF, Montpellier,
France; * Corresponding author, [e-mail].

The CPWF was a 10-year program (2004-2013) designed to address inter-
related issues of water scarcity, water productivity, livelihoods, food security,
poverty and the environment. Over time, the Program's focus evolved from
research on themes to research on development challenges in basins.
As of this writing (November 2013), the program is approaching closure.
During the final year, the CPWF reflected on the experience accumulated in
123 projects in ten river basins to develop messages that sum up that
experience (see Chapter 3, Table 3.1 for a further breakdown of projects and
Appendix for a complete project list). Note that our messages are largely drawn
from preceding chapters of this topic and from opinion/reflection from Basin
Leaders in working with their teams to compile final basin-specific messages. 1
These were shared and discussed in the final peer-assist session with Basin
Leaders and management team. They were not usually drawn from the CPWF
monitoring and evaluation mechanism. Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in
Phase 1 focused on compliance, not analysis and learning. M&E in Phase 2
added outcome logic models and “most significant change” stories but com-
pilation and quantitative analysis of monitoring data was effectively terminated
with the 45 percent cut to the CPWF central program budget (vs 21 percent
cut to basin program budgets) during the budget crisis of March 2012.
We summarize the principal messages that the CPWF wishes to convey (Box
9.1). The messages are directed at several audiences, among them researchers
interested in development, development workers interested in the contri-
butions of research to problem solving, research managers from national and
international institutions, donor and development assistance agencies, NGOs,
students and young scientists, the CPWF community, and the CGIAR and its
Research Programs. Our intent in sharing these messages is to encourage
others to build on the change processes with which the CPWF engaged.