The Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF) was launched in 2002 as one of the reform initiatives of CGIAR. CPWF aims to increase the resilience of social and ecological systems through better water management for food production. It does this by focusing on the nexus between water, food and poverty in developing countries. It develops water-related innovations to reduce poverty, improve food security, strengthen rural livelihoods, and maintain ecosystems services.
CPWF accomplishes this through an innovative research and development approach that brings together scientists, development specialists, policy makers and rural communities. CPWF is an international, multi-institutional research initiative with a strong emphasis on partnerships, adaptive management and participation of stakeholders to manage water more equitably, efficiently and sustainably.
In its last ten years of work, CPWF has gained experience in more than 68 projects carried out throughout the world including in the Andes, Ganges, Limpopo, Mekong, Nile and Volta river basins.
As CPWF’s approaches to natural resources management and scientific research continue to evolve, CPWF research has found that, despite challenges in many river basins, overall the planet has enough water to meet the full range of peoples’ and ecosystems’ needs for the foreseeable future, but equity will only be achieved through judicious and creative management. CPWF science is uncovering how this can be done. This approach includes:
- The wise use of water resources for strengthening (rural) livelihoods and ecosystem services requires simultaneously using water more productively and sharing it and its benefits more equitably.
- Higher water productivity and greater social equity can be obtained only through a radical in change of policies and institutional arrangements in both developed and developing nations.
- The CPWF research-for-development strategy identified and promotes the policy, institutional and technological innovations required in developing countries for people to increase water productivity and ecosystem services in an equitable and sustainable manner.
CPWF is part of the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems. This new Program combines the resources of 14 members of the CGIAR Consortium and numerous partners to provide an integrated approach to natural resource management research, and to the delivery of its outputs.
