Project Name Middle East North Africa Water and Livelihoods Initiative (WLI) - Regional
About
Funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and managed by the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA), the Water and Livelihoods Initiative (WLI) aims to improve livelihoods of rural households and communities in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Tunisia, and Yemen.
Impact
Goals
The goal of this project is to improve the livelihoods of households and communities in selected countries by increasing economic, social, and educational opportunities through addressing key priority water and land management issues identified in each country.
Objectives
Our objective is to pilot-test sustainable and integrated water, land use, and livelihoods strategies in selected benchmark sites for scaling out to other areas within the country and the region as a whole.
Impact pathways
The ultimate goal of the WLI is to improve rural livelihoods in selected countries in the MENA region. This will be achieved through the implementation of a variety of bio-physical and socio-economic related activities geared towards the development of improved technologies and innovation packages to address critical development challenges; as well as to build local, national, and regional capacity to ensure sustainable adoption and utilization of proposed solutions.
Effective implementation of activities will result in one or more of the following outputs which are aligned with USAID’s Feed the Future (FtF) Indicators. WLI partners have been collecting data on these indicators on a yearly basis since 2012.
1. Number of hectares under improved technologies or management practices as a result of USG assistance
2. Number of farmers and others who have applied new technologies or management practices as a result of USG assistance
3. Number of individuals who have received USG supported short-term agricultural sector productivity or food security training
4. Number of food security private enterprises (for profit), producers organizations, water users associations, women's groups, trade and business associations, and community-based organizations (CBOs) receiving USG assistance
5. Number of stakeholders implementing risk-reducing practices/actions to improve resilience to climate change as a result of USG assistance
6. Number of new technologies or management practices in one of the following phases of development:
a. Phase 1: Number of new technologies or management practices under research as a result of USG assistance
b. Phase 2: Number of new technologies or management practices under field testing as a result of USG assistance
c. Phase 3: Number of new technologies or management practices made available for transfer as a result of USG assistance
The outputs identified above will in-turn contribute to the achievement of selected outcomes presented below:
1. Increased water, land, and crop (for human and animal consumption)
2. Enhanced awareness of sustainable water and land management practices
3. Increased rural income
4. Increased resilience and environmental sustainability
Achievements of the proposed outcomes will then result in attaining the WLI goal – Improved Rural Livelihoods. The outcomes will also contribute to the following CGIAR Intermediate and Sub-Intermediate Development Outcomes (IDOs and sub-IDOs).
a. IDO (1.3 ) - Increased incomes and employment of the CGIAR strategic goal (1) “Reduced poverty”; and particularly to Sub IDO 1.3.2: Increased livelihood opportunities
b. IDO (B.1) of the CGIAR strategic goal (B) “Gender and youth” – through improved capacity of women and youth to participate in decision-making (sub IDO B.1.3).
c. IDO (C.1) of the CGIAR strategic goal (C) “Policies and institutions” by Increasing capacity of beneficiaries to adopt research outputs (sub IDO C.1.1).
d. IDO (D.1) of the CGIAR strategic goal (D) “Capacity development” by enhancing institutional capacity of partner research organizations (sub IDO D.1.1)
Jordan’s ‘Badia’ is a vast arid area stretching across 80% of the country. It is a severely degraded ecosystem caused by mono-cropping and overgrazing over the past few decades. The ICARDA-managed Middle East Water and Livelihoods Initiative (WLI) worked with local...
Water-harvesting practices, which capture and concentrate surface runoff for crop or range
production, can help to re-establish the productive functioning of Jordanian Badia environments. The main objective of this study is to assess the rate of...
Homs governorate watershed is considered as the agricultural production hub and a strategic water reservoir of Syria. However, land fertility and the increase of population, as well as climatic changes, urged the farmers in this region to intensify...
This paper investigates the impacts of the main primary production factors (e.g. seed, nitrogen, phosphorus, etc.), on the total production of the main crops produced in Egypt (cotton, berseem, maize, rice and wheat), with special emphasis on the...
In this article, we investigate the determinants of farmers’ decisions to adopt water harvesting technologies (WHT) in the arid agricultural area of Jordan. In particular, we investigate the effect of different socio-demographic, economic, and...
Social and economic development depends on the sustainable management of natural resources to withstand shocks of climate change and reliably support livelihoods. In this context, extension and advisory services are critical for raising awareness and...
This study aims to analyse Tunisian farmers’ ability to pay (ATP) in a citrus area and
propose a penalising price strategy based on the block‐pricing process to decrease over‐irrigation
without affecting farmers’ incomes. The methodology is based on...