This map shows the locations where IUCN-The World Conservation Union and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) are leading basin-level projects under three initiatives. These initiatives are: the Water and Nature Initiative (WANI), the Challenge Program for Water and Food (CP), and the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture (CA).

The IUCN Water and Nature Initiative (WANI) is a 5-year action plan to develop practical solutions to polluted waterways, dried-up rivers, and drained wetlands. The Initiative finds and tests these solutions in river basins around the world with the aim to demonstrate that ecosystem-based management and stakeholders participation will help solve today’s water dilemma—bringing rivers back to life and sustaining their capacity to produce the natural resources on which so many people depend. The main goal of WANI is the mainstreaming of an ecosystem approach into basin-level policies, planning and management. The Initiative is organized into 6 components. The first component aims to demonstrate ecosystem management in river basins. In field projects, nature conservation and integrated management of land and water resources is combined with establishing the required institutional, legal and economic frameworks.Components 2-5 are designed to support the demonstration projects and to develop 'stand-alone' outputs that can be applied more widely. Tools will be developed and capacities built at national, provincial and local levels to empower local groups and government agencies in developing and implementing an ecosystem approach to basin management. Finally, component 6 will focus on coordinating the Initiative and building a solid internal and external communication system and outreach activities. Further information is available on-line at:http://www.waterandnature.org.

The Challenge Program on Water and Food is a new initiative of the CGIAR(Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research), launched in 2003. The Challenge Program is governed by a Joint Venture Consortium of 18 partners which includes five CGIAR centers, six National Agricultural Research and Extension System centers, four Advanced Research Institutes, and three non-governmental organizations. The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) is the lead partner. The objective of this Challenge Program is to maintain or reduce the current level of global diversions of water to agriculture, while increasing food production, to achieve internationally adopted targets for decreasing malnourishment and rural poverty by the year 2015. The program is being implemented over the next 5 years in 7 Challenge river basins, with low average incomes and high physical, economic or environmental water scarcity or water stress. The major research themes focus upon improving crop water productivity, multiple uses of upper catchments, aquatic ecosystems and fisheries, integrated river basin management, and analysis of the global and national food and water system. Further information is available on-line at: http://www.waterforfood.org/.

The Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture (CA) is the first international research and capacity building program to take stock of the past 50 years of water management and development—the costs and the benefits. The result will be better quality decisions on water investments and management, and better targeting of development funding to meet food and environmental security targets in the near future and over the next 25 years. One of the components of the CA is a river basin comparative study, which will look at the historical development of 10 river basins. Each CA river basin assessment is aimed at deriving an understanding of how societies manage water resources under growing pressures, and to explore alternatives for future water management and use. The Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management is being carried out by a coalition of partners, including 11 CGIAR centers, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Resources Institutes, IUCN-The World Conservation Union, and partners from some 40 research and development institutes globally. Further information is available on-line at: http://www.iwmi.org/assessment.