News
Thinking Like a Water Model
September 19, 2018
In the Stung Chinit basin of Cambodia, rice farmers and fishermen depend on the same water. More rice means more water diverted from the river – and if too much water is diverted, unhealthy river flows lead to fewer fish. But that doesn’t mean the two sectors must be at odds. Last month, my colleagues […]
The Future of Forests: An Optimist’s View
September 17, 2018
“I believe that there’s hope, there’s great hope for us to change the course of the future of the planet,” said Winrock President and CEO Rodney Ferguson at the Redlands Forum in Redlands, California. “And the way we can do that is through the application of technology.” The Redlands Forum, sponsored by the mapping technology […]
Pumps and Pineapples
September 13, 2018
Small and medium-scale farmers in Guinea face a common problem that threatens food security, constrains agricultural production and limits incomes. And young entrepreneurs-in-training are helping solve it with motorbikes. “Here in Lower Guinea, we have an irrigation problem,” says Mamadou Sidibe. He is one of many young people gaining hands-on experience in agricultural extension, entrepreneurship […]
Three Steps to $3 Million
September 13, 2018
Could algae address the coming food crisis and provide additional income for women? A European investment firm answered that question with a resounding ‘Yes!’ with their $3 million stake into EnerGaia, a spirulina cultivation technology firm based in Thailand and actively supported by USAID’s Feed the Future Asia Innovative Farmers Activity. To bring this critical […]
Sustainable Development and Science: Bridging the Gap with Tools
September 12, 2018
While sipping your tea this morning, chances are you weren’t thinking about the journey it made to reach your cup. A world away, on a plantation in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, those tea leaves grew, were handpicked by farm workers and hauled off in diesel trucks to processors who fermented and dried them. The […]
Women, Water and World Hunger
September 10, 2018
For hundreds of millions of women, providing food to feed their families is a daily imperative. Many of them depend solely on the meager yields of small plots and farms, with little or no access to support when vital crops fail. At the same time, they shoulder the burden of household chores like fetching water, […]
Towards More Resilient Solutions
August 27, 2018
On August 26, water professionals turned their attention to Stockholm, Sweden. At World Water Week, the world’s premier conference on water issues, attendees chose from hundreds of panels, presentations and plenaries, and enjoy the opportunity to network with other experts, decision-makers and innovators. Sharing experience and information with fellow practitioners, working toward solutions to the most critical water-related challenges — what more could a water wonk ask for? […]
‘The River Belongs to the People’
August 21, 2018
Photos by Bobby Neptune Gordon Mumbo grew up in the small village of Kamuga, in Kenya’s Kisumu County. Year after year, he watched as frequent floods from one of Kenya’s major rivers, the Nyando, disturbed the peaceful flow of village life. “In school we were reading about how the Dutch were able to control floods […]
Clubs That Help Kids Stay in School
August 15, 2018
Leonard Thedison, age 15, was listening closely. As a member of the anti-child labor club at Chiponde Primary School in the Mchemani Education Zone of Lilongwe Rural East, Malawi, he had already taken to heart the importance of education, how it could create a new life for himself and his family. But today’s topic was […]
Seeing the Forests for the Water
August 14, 2018
The world is experiencing both unprecedented forest loss and increasingly severe floods and drought events. These issues are often approached independently, despite the critical influence forest and water have on each other and in providing ecosystem services. This seminar will discuss innovative research demonstrating these interrelationships and how these findings can be used for policy […]