ABSTRACT
Clearly, increasing agricultural water productivity can play an important role in reducing poverty and vulnerability. A mix of small-scale technologies and water resources infrastructure designed from a multiple-use perspective can maximize benefits per unit of water for poor women and men. These efforts need to be combined with greater access to assets (land, water, working capital, human capital), markets, information, and services for poor people, particularly poor women. More priority needs to be given to equity and poverty reduction in water management projects and scaling up successful local innovations. Appropriate legal frameworks and functioning institutions that enable a wide ranging of stakeholders to share information and learn from successes and failures are critical for managing water in a way that ensures environmental sustainability and protects, promotes, and enhances poor people’s rights, assets, and freedoms.
