Africa

• Negotiating a new path for water management
• CPWF's Research Director: Study tour reflections
• Taking a look at gender

• Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol stakeholder training workshop in Laos
   

• Merging expert and community opinions

   

• Participatory hydrological monitoring in Ethiopia
• Less than two years to go, much science to show

• Reflection in the City of Kings

   

• National Forum in Burkina Faso
• Volta communications Workshop

CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems research is designed to improve the wellbeing of people dependent on aquatic agricultural systems.

Our research addresses the key constraints that are driving poverty and vulnerability in aquatic agricultural systems.

We have used the key hypotheses and theory of change to focus our research on six objectives and associated research themes:

Theme 1: Sustainable increases in system productivity
Theme 2: Equitable access to markets
Theme 3: Social-ecological resilience and adaptive capacity
Theme 4: Gender equity
Theme 5: Policies and institutions to empower Aquatic Agricultural Systems users
Theme 6: Knowledge sharing, learning and innovation

The CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems will work with partners to pursue participatory action research in these six areas. The outputs generated will support, inform and guide further investments in each of these.

Rice is the staple for most of the world, and is an integral part of Aquatic Agricultural Systems in Africa and Asia.
Photo courtesy Mike Lusmore.

• Participatory action research
• Learning hubs
• Hypotheses and theory of change
• Focus on gender

News
Our Research
Partnerships

The complexity and diversity of communities that rely on aquatic agricultural systems means that there can be no single blueprint solution to the challenges they face.

The CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems takes a new approach to agricultural research that embraces an innovative view of how to achieve development in agricultural systems.

The Program will be a catalyst for innovation in aquatic agricultural systems that build networks of knowledge, learning and influence.

Key features of our approach are:
a) Participatory action research
b) Learning hubs
c) Hypotheses of change
d) Focus on gender.

Aquaculture and vegetables in Malawi.
Photo courtesy Jamie Oliver.

	Aquatic Agricultural Systems Proposal
	Program Brief
	CGIAR Research Program Collaboration on NRM Impact Assessment: Workshop Report
	Gender Strategy: a transformative approach to gender mainstreaming

Participatory action research

Learning from rural development practice shows that community empowerment plays a central role in the success of development interventions.

The Program reflects this learning by placing community empowerment at the core of our approach to participatory action research.

Action research seeks to create participative research communities. It seeks to engage those who may otherwise be subjects of research or recipients of interventions as inquiring co-researchers.

In our case, our co-researchers will be farmers, women fish traders, youth groups, local government officials, aid workers and others.

The Program’s action research approach aims to place the capacity for generating and using that knowledge in the hands of people who are trying to improve their lives.

To ensure that the program’s participatory action research is useful at a broader scale, CGIAR Research Program Aquatic Agricultural Systems has taken a carefully structured approach to identifying the countries and localities where we work and the issue we address. Our learning hubs are at the heart of our action research approach.

Learning hubs

Aquatic agriculture farmer stands in front of his pond, Bangladesh.
Photo courtesy Finn Thilsted.

The Program will work in a limited number of localities (learning hubs) selected on the basis of their large and important aquatic agricultural systems and the high incidence of poverty.

In these hubs we will build partnerships among fishers, farmers, traders, women‘s groups, private firms, local governments and other agents of change.

Each hub will scope the major development challenges and their relevance to national agricultural and rural development policy priorities. We will then work with the communities to address these challenges.

While our approach focuses on people and place, we also recognize that external drivers like economic, environmental and political processes often determine the fate of these systems.

Our scoping and subsequent research will therefore analyze this broader vulnerability to these macro processes. Particular emphasis will be given to understanding how to reduce the vulnerability of aquatic agricultural systems to these factors, and build resilience of the poor who are most exposed to them.

Hypotheses and theory of change

The Program has identified six hypotheses of change to form the basis of our research agenda.

These hypotheses build on our analysis of the key constraints that are driving poverty and vulnerability in aquatic agricultural systems. They focus our approach on pathways of action that are likely to have impact.

These hypotheses comprise our preliminary theory of change.

This theory of change argues that for the poor to benefit from the productive potential of aquatic agricultural systems, the users and their partners will need to generate innovations in farming, natural resource management, marketing, livelihood strategies and social institutions.

The capacity and confidence to innovate will be greater if people are less poor and vulnerable, better fed, and better integrated into economic, social and political processes.

Focus on Gender

Woman working in the rice paddies, Indonesia.
Photo courtesy Mike Lusmore.

Decades of development activity and research has recognized the critical role of women’s participation and empowerment in poverty reduction through improving agricultural productivity, environmental sustainability, livelihoods and nutrition.

Key to the Program’s success is addressing the concerns of women and engaging their resources.

Aquatic agricultural systems are changing rapidly with globalized market processes, population growth, migration and urbanization, and these are all strongly gendered processes.

The CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems is taking a transformative approach to gender. This approach involves working to understand gender roles and norms and how development interventions can be more effective within these, as well as identifying where and how these norms present obstacles to improving the lives of the poor. We will then engage with partners to develop and test approaches that can help change these norms.

The CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems is initially focusing on three major types of Aquatic Agricultural Systems:

1. Asia’s mega deltas
Targeting the Ganges-Megna-Brahmaputra system in Bangladesh and the Mekong system in Cambodia.

2. African inland freshwater systems
Targeting the Zambezi and Luapula systems in Zambia.

3. Small islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific
Targeting the Philippines and Solomon Islands.

Setting sun over aquaculture ponds, rural Bangladesh.
Photo courtesy Mike Lusmore.

These systems and countries have been chosen because they:

• are representative of the challenges being faced by the mega deltas, African inland systems, and small islands

• are areas with a high incidence of poverty in specific aquatic agricultural systems

• provide opportunities for cross regional and cross system learning

• provide opportunities for scaling out the learning developed through work in initial focal countries

Countries

Zambia

Factsheet: Aquatic Agricultural Systems in Zambia

Scoping Mission to Western Province, Zambia

Solomon Islands

Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems: Program summary: Solomon Islands

Learning hubs

Inter-center collaboration at a community engagement meeting.
Photo courtesy WorldFish Center.

The Program’s engagement in countries will be focused through geographic hubs that provide a focus for innovation, learning and impact through participatory action research.

The learning hubs are located in areas where dependence on aquatic agricultural systems and poverty are both high.

A hub typically has fairly homogenous biophysical characteristics and production systems, and presents a set of common challenges, opportunities and intervention points. It also generally aligns with administrative units, either provinces or districts.

In each hub, we will develop learning alliances with key stakeholders, and use approaches such as participatory impact mapping to guide our investments in partnerships, capacity building and knowledge management and learning.

Descriptions and maps of initials focal hubs can be seen for Bangladesh, Cambodia, Philippines, Solomons and Zambia. We will provide information on focal communities as this becomes available.

The program’s roll-out manual describes the detailed process of scoping, diagnosis and design of learning hubs.

The CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems is a multi-year research initiative launched in July 2011. It is designed to pursue community based approaches to agricultural research and development that target the poorest and most vulnerable rural households.

This approach responds to the call expressed at the 2010 Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD) and in regional consultations for CGIAR to engage more effectively with development processes and build more effective partnerships with the full range of organizations required to deliver development impacts.

The Program aims to reduce poverty and improve food security for people whose livelihoods depend on aquatic agricultural systems.

We believe we can achieve this through participatory action research, which empowers communities and strengthens their capacity to harness the farming, fishing and livestock potential of these systems.

The CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems is partnering with diverse organizations working at local, national and global levels and help achieve impacts at larger scale.

About the program

Husking rice beside the multi-use pond Bangladesh.
Photo courtesy Mike Lusmore.

In aquatic agricultural systems, families cultivate crops, raise livestock, farm or catch fish, gather fruits and other trees crops, and utilize natural resources such as timber, reeds and wildlife.

These systems occur along freshwater floodplains, coastal deltas and inshore marine waters. They are dependent on seasonal changes in productivity, driven by seasonal variation in rainfall, river flow and/or coastal and marine processes.

The farmers, fishers and herders who depend upon aquatic agricultural systems pursue complex, highly adaptive livelihood strategies. They rely upon a diversity of crops and natural resources to overcome the constraints they face and reduce vulnerability in the face of external shocks.

Farming Waters, Changing Lives

We're working in Bangladesh to help small-scale fish farmers improve their lives through better farming practices.

What is an aquatic agricultural system?

More than 700 million people depend on aquatic agricultural systems for their livelihoods, but the difficulties they face mean that a third or more live on less than US $1.25 a day.

Living in coastal zones and along river floodplains, these communities are not only poor, they are also vulnerable to multiple drivers of change, notably demographic trends, climate change, sea level rise, and increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events.

They live in aquatic agricultural systems despite their vulnerability because these are highly productive systems that provide multiple opportunities for growing or harvesting food and generating income.