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.

Wetlands are habitats with temporary or permanent accumulation of water. The degradation and loss of wetlands is more rapid than that for other ecosystems, and wetland-dependent biodiversity in many parts of the world is in continuing and accelerating decline. They have been confirmed to deliver a wide range of critical and important services vital for human well-being.

This paper focuses on the application of the concept of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in Tanzania. It asks: how did IWRM affect the rural and fast-growing majority of smallholder farmers' access to water which contributes directly to poverty alleviation and employment creation in a country where poverty and joblessness are high?

This paper applies the principles of water-use accounts, developed in the first of the

series, to the Niger River basin in West Africa. The Niger Basin covers 10 countries, and

rises in the highlands of southern Guinea near the border with Sierra Leone just 240

km inland from the Atlantic Ocean, but there are substantial downstream tributaries

from Cameroon and Nigeria. A unique feature is the inland delta which forms where its

gradient suddenly decreases.

Net runoff is about 12% of total precipitation. Grassland is the most extensive

The Indus Basin Irrigation System suffers significant inequity in access to surface water across its millions of users. Information, i.e., monitoring and reporting of water availability, may be of value in improving conditions across the basin, and we investigated this via an experimental game of water distribution in Punjab, Pakistan. We found evidence that flow information allowed players to take more effective action to target overuse, and that overall activities that might bring social disapproval were reduced with information.

Wetlands occur extensively across the Nile Basin and support the livelihoods ofmillions of people. Despite their importance, there are big gaps in the knowledge about the current status of these ecosystems, and how populations in the Nile use them. A better understanding is needed on the ecosystem services provided by the difl:erent types of wetlands in the Nile, and how these contribute to local livelihoods.

This paper applies the principles of water-use accounts, developed in the first of

the series, to the Nile River basin in Northeast Africa. The Nile and its tributaries

flow though nine countries. The White Nile flows though Uganda, Sudan, and Egypt.

The Blue Nile starts in Ethiopia. Zaire, Kenya, Tanzanian, Rwanda, and Burundi all

have tributaries, which flow into the Nile or into Lake Victoria. Unique features are

Lake Victoria and the Sudd wetland where White Nile loses about half of its flow by

Accountability and adaptive management of recent global agreements such as the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Climate Agreement, will in part rely on the ability to track progress toward the social and environmental targets they set. Current metrics and monitoring systems, however, are not yet up to the task. We argue that there is an imperative to consider principles of coherence (what to measure), standardization (how to measure) and decision-relevance (why to measure) when designing monitoring schemes if they are to be practical and useful.

The Yellow River Basin (YRB) Focal Project set out to study water poverty, water

availability and access, water productivity, and water and related institutions in the

Yellow River basin to develop and rank a series of high-priority interventions aimed at

increasing water and food security for the poor, while maintaining environmental

sustainability. The YBFP identified complex relations between water and poverty in the

YRB; identified streamflow declines in the basin despite predicted higher rainfall;