STRIVER - Strategy and methodology for improved IWRM - An integrated interdisciplinary assessment in four twinning river basins

Keywords

IWRM, Irrigated-rainfed farming, Collective action, Agrarian change

Countries

India

Summary

ZEF is a partner in the European Commission funded research project called STRIVER (Strategy and methodology for improved IWRM - An integrated interdisciplinary assessment in four twinning basins; under SUSTDEV-2005-3.II.3.6: Twinning European/third countries river basins).

The ZEF research focuses on the Tungabhadra basin in south India, which is one of the four basins studied in the project. Tungabhadra river is a tributary of the Krishna river. ZEF will be mainly active in Work Package (WP) 9 "IWRM in the twinned Tungabhadra and Tejo/Tagus river basins, with a focus and land and water use interactions". The research focuses on the interaction between irrigated and rainfed farming in the lower Tungabhadra basin, in the border area of the states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. The districts on the Karnataka side are Raichur, Koppal and Bellary, on the Andhra Pradesh side Mahbubnagar and Kurnool.

Some of the sub-themes ZEF will look at, together with other partners, are:
1)  Flows and relations (people (livelihood linkages, labour), nutrients and energy, money/income, water);
2) Institutional and policy (dis)integration (departmental coordination, agency coordination, policy contradictions and alignments);
3)  Innovations (water saving farming systems (SRI and other), (tiered) water users associations, water pricing and water rights, substitutability of technical and institutional solutions to water problems);
4) History (heads and tails of different kinds: the spatial dimension of social differentiation; evolution of policy regimes, natural resources degradation/conservation in historical perspective, land and water use change over time and its implications).

It is part of the research design to compare the situation in the Tungabhadra basin with that in the Tajo/Tegus basin in Spain/Portugal. Other basins studied in the larger project are the Glomma basin in Norway and the Sesan basin in Vietnam/Cambodia).

Main Cooperation Partners

• Soppecom (Society for Promotion of Participatory Ecosystem Management), Pune;
• ISEC (Institute of Social and Economic Change), Bangalore;
• SaciWATERs (South Asia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies), Hyderabad;
• Jalaspandana (South India Farmers' Organisation for Water Management), Bangalore

Duration of the Project

1 July 2006 - 30 June 2009

Project Homepage

http://www.striver.no/about.php