Bridging the gap between technology and policy

Abstract

Water use has increased with double the rate of population growth in the twentieth century. Combined with changing diets due to increased global economic wealth, almost 50 per cent more food needs to be produced to meet demand, implying that fresh water availability will face even greater stress. At the same time, climate change is predicted to have a massive impact on water availability by drastically altering hydrological regimes across the globe. The development of a tool to monitor water productivity is part of the first objective of the Dutch government to increase water use efficiency in agriculture with 25% in the Dutch partner countries. Water Productivity is an indicator that links agricultural yield with the amount of water that had been consumed for its production (kg/m3). The FAO WaPOR (Water Productivity Open-access Portal) project, implemented by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), has been funded by Dutch Ministry of Foreign affairs and uses remote sensing data to monitor agricultural land- and water productivity throughout Africa and the Middle East. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs aims to have the FAO WaPOR data portal used as a tool to assist and provide policymakers with information needed to make policy decisions in a way that benefits and contributes to SDG 6. Furthermore, the data is supposed to be used for yearly reports in which progress of the projects that are funded with the Dutch developing aid budget are presented to the Dutch parliament. However, implementation of the FAO WaPOR data for monitoring has been a challenge due, among others, to the fact that both the use of satellite technology as well as the concept of water productivity are relatively new and still need time to embed in the current policymaking sector. In addition, it is not yet clear what information policymakers, such as the Dutch government and parliament, actually need to make good policy decisions with respect to SDG 6 and 2. In this additional thesis, the definition of Crop Water Productivity will be limited to the crop yield per unit of water evaporated that was used for its production in (kg/m3). The evaporated water is subsequently defined and limited to the amount of water that was brought in for irrigation purposes, the so-called blue water evaporation. A draft methodological note is proposed that includes guidelines on how to use and present the available information on FAO WaPOR data portal for results reporting and are complementary to the international frameworks and standards of SDG 6.4. A distinction was proposed between a so-called active and passive results. Passive results involve the investments made to enable policy and decision-makers with supporting tools (such as data provision) and capacity (building) to improve water use efficiency in agriculture. Active results directly contribute to improved water use in agriculture on the field level and can be quantified in terms of an increased percentage in water productivity. A final recommendation is given to invest in the partner countries that suffer from physical water scarcity, considering that the incentive to improve water productivity in those countries are much higher. Countries with physical water scarcity and are so-called partner countries of the Netherlands include, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories, Yemen and Sudan.