MP1aqua

= **MP 1: Agricultural Systems for the Poor and Vulnerable** = = **Component 3: Harnessing the development potential of aquatic agricultural systems for the poor and vulnerable** =



Over seven hundred million people depend on aquatic agricultural systems, and over 250 million of these live on less than US$1.25 a day. Living in coastal zones and along river floodplains these communities are not only poor, but they are also vulnerable to multiple drivers of change, notably demographic trends, climate change, sea level rise, and potentially increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events. They live there despite their vulnerability because these are highly productive systems that provide multiple opportunities for growing or harvesting food and generating income.

These aquatic agricultural systems have long been on the agenda of the CGIAR. They have been the focus of efforts to improve crop yields (especially of rice), sustain wild fisheries and increase production from aquaculture, and improve the development benefits from livestock production. Yet only rarely, at best, have these efforts, or those of the wider AR4D community, been effectively combined in ways that reflect the diversified livelihoods strategies of the women and men who live in these systems. As a result these integrated livelihoods have been marginalized by our AR4D and the opportunities they offer for reducing poverty have been missed.

MP 1.3 is designed to change the way that the CGIAR engages with aquatic agricultural systems and so respond to this weakness. To do so we will pursue innovations in ways of thinking, operating, and working in partnership, together with new science that will improve production and increase wider development benefits from these systems. This will include engagement with gender issues, the absence of which has been a particular weakness of past approaches.

We will focus our attention on three aquatic agricultural systems: Asia’s mega deltas, the Coral Triangle region of Asia-Pacific, and the freshwater floodplains, rivers and lakes of sub-Saharan Africa. In the first three years of the program we will focus on the delta of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Megna rivers in Bangladesh and India, the lower Mekong in Cambodia and Vietnam, the smaller islands of the Philippine archipelago and the Solomon Islands, and in Africa on the freshwater systems of the Zambezi, Lake Victoria/Kyoga, and the Niger.

By building partnerships and targeting investment to enhance and sustain the benefits from aquatic agricultural systems, MP 1.3 seeks to improve the lives of 15 million poor and vulnerable people over the next six years. By further expansion and dissemination of IPGs derived from this effort we expect to increase that number to 50 million by 2022. We will achieve these impacts at scale by focusing the CGIAR’s combined strengths in AR4D, and building upon best practices in effective partnerships that engage the skills and capacities of NARS, NGOs, ARIs, producer groups, the private sector and others.