IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature

By focusing on integrating policy and practice, IUCN contributes to water policy development and implementation around the world. It combines its support to members and partners at national levels with its work in demonstration sites. This linkage provides the basis for testing and implementing policies and scaling-up successful field-level results. It creates the necessary capacities amongst state and non-state actors to create sustainable solutions.

The underlying assumption is that when knowledge is available and people and institutions are empowered, they can better participate in decision making. This is translated into the Water-Value Chain: the value created by IUCN to influence, encourage and assist water managers to develop more sustainable practices. Individual actors (IUCN staff, commissions, members and partner organizations) contribute in their specific way to the creation and maintenance of a part of the Water-Value Chain.

Key elements of the Water-Value Chain include:

• the research on and development of an approach, service or product (e.g. research on economic instruments for water requirements of downstream ecosystems);
• the marketing of an approach, service or product that enables using gained insights and newly developed techniques (e.g. an environmental flow tool book and distance learning course);
• the tailoring of an approach, service or product to a specific situation and/or the needs of a partner (e.g. adapt an environmental flow assessment approach in a specific river basin to the local situation in collaboration with the river basin authority);
• the assistance in applying an approach, service or product in specific situations through project level work (e.g. providing technical backstopping to support the implementation of an environmental flow);
• the building of a constituency network including individuals and institutions that can maintain and promote the application of the approach, service or product (e.g. setting up a network of environmental flow specialists and practitioners);
• the establishment of a common standard regarding an approach, service or product that would allow for both up-scaling and adaptation (e.g. developing a ‘menu’ of standards on environmental flow assessments).