Improving water security through Sustainable Land Management : story of change : key findings & emerging impacts

This note presents key findings from research for the Fragile Environments Observatory of the REACH programme (2015-2024) in Ethiopia. This research was a collaboration between the Water and Land Resource Centre (WLRC), the University of Oxford, IFPRI and IRC, which investigated the role of Sustainable Land Management (SLM) activities in securing water for livelihoods and household use.

The summarised key findings were:

• SLM techniques can improve water security and agricultural productivity in rural areas, with water availability and reliability appropriate measurable outcomes of SLM success
• Increased groundwater development without consideration of water quality can increase consumption of unsafe water
• Women face more barriers to uptake of SLM than men, including access to information, time and energy constraints
• Consideration of gendered barriers to SLM and access to clean water and sanitation have been integrated into SLM in a new project which will benefit up to 65,000 people in the Kunzila region of Ethiopia