International World Water Day, held every 22 March, focuses public attention on the importance of fresh water and promotes sustainable management of freshwater resources. This year’s theme, ‘Clean Water for a Healthy World’, reflects the importance of water quality in natural resource management.

According to The World Water Development Report 2009, the link between water and poverty is clear: the number of people living on less than US$1.25 a day coincides approximately with the number of those without access to safe drinking water.

Nearly 1.2 billion people do not have guaranteed access to water and more than 2.6 billion are without adequate sanitation. In developing countries, 80 per cent of health problems are linked to inadequate water and sanitation, claiming the lives of 5 million people per year, 1.8 million of whom are children.

Lack of access to adequate, safe food – which is related to water resources management – causes malnutrition, accounting for one third of the disease burden in low- and middle-income countries.

“These statistics paint a disturbing picture,” says Rudolph Cleveringa, Senior Technical Adviser for Rural Development and Manager of IFAD’s Learning and Knowledge on Innovations in Water and Rural Poverty (InnoWat) project. “It’s obvious that if we want to reduce hunger and poverty, we have to improve access to clean and reliable water for poor rural people. The good news is, we have the means to do so. But it is going to take a concerted effort, along with new and innovative approaches from developed and developing nations alike at all levels.”

Making better use of water resources

The demand is growing for drinking water and water for livestock, fisheries, and food and fodder crops – for production, processing and value adding. However, available water resources are declining and becoming increasingly unpredictable. In semi-humid areas, where most poor rural people live, agriculture already consumes as much as 80 per cent of available freshwater resources. By 2050, analysts expect demand for food in the poorest countries to double, yet freshwater availability for agriculture is likely to be less than it is today.

Prospects for developing new water resources are limited or are becoming prohibitively expensive. As a result, matching of water supply to demand will largely depend on making better use of available resources for agriculture. This means increasing the agricultural productivity of water today and in the future, which can be achieved by producing more with less and lowering post-harvest losses and consumptive waste.

A new pro-poor strategy

The improvements made in agricultural water management in developing countries over the last century have had an initial impact on world hunger and poverty. These gains are now gradually being offset because agency- and government-led interventions tend to still use ‘blueprint’ approaches that do not take important local issues into account. Too often, programmes and projects focus on what needs to be done, rather than on how to do it, and ignore the complex interactions among individuals, the state and service providers. This approach also reflects the limited capacity of agencies and governments to translate plans into practice.

“Poor rural people cannot afford to continue to lose in the struggle for declining water resources,” says Cleveringa. “That is why a new, innovative pro-poor water management strategy is needed, one that focuses more on how to do it, while still addressing what to do, where and with whom. It also has to take into account the changing nature of rural livelihoods – the ‘new rurality’ – and its impact on poverty, as well as the complexity of socio-economic systems, especially where governance and local and national institutions are weak.”

Water is a key entry point

About two thirds of the programmes and projects that IFAD supports are related to community-based natural resource management, including water. Poor rural people and their institutions are at the core of this approach. Water security is critical to these communities and is the key entry point for improving livelihoods.