Water and Land Resource Centre (WLRC)

The WLRC in Ethiopia is developing and managing the Knowledge Base for Natural Resources (NR) and Sustainable Land Management (SLM) in Ethiopia, (SLM-KM). It is an institutional member of WOCAT and has signed an MoU with the WOCAT Secretariat in March 2016. It also started to document SLM best practices with the WOCAT SLM Technologies and SLM Approaches questionnaire.



wlrc eth.jpg

About the project

The Water and Land Resource Centre (WLRC) project concerns two transboundary river basins in the Horn of Africa and East Africa: the Blue Nile/ Eastern Nile Basin in Ethiopia, and the Ewaso Ng’iro Basin in Kenya/ Somalia. In these river basins, negotiations and decision-making on transboundary and trans-contextual hydropolitics are extremely challenging and often stall, due to uneven political and economic power among the parties involved. WLRCs aim to help overcome these obstacles by facilitating evidence-informed negotiation and knowledge-based diplomacy, ultimately contributing to sustainable water and land governance.

In Phase I (2011 – 2013) of the project, the Centre for Development and Environment and its local partners established two WLRCs in Ethiopia and Kenya. During Phases I and II (2013 – 2015) both WLRCs established hydro-meteorological observatories, which feed rich and open-access data and information repositories, produce tailor-made information products for various stakeholder groups, and implement transformative land and water management activities on the ground, such as learning watersheds. These efforts will be continued and strengthened in Phase III, which will run until the end of 2018.

The overall goal of the project is to improve sustainable water and land resource management and governance, secure environmental services, and deal more effectively with inherent conflict in national and transnational river basins in the Eastern Nile and East Africa. It does so by generating knowledge for devolved processes of negotiation, planning, implementation, and conflict resolution, with a view to balancing benefit-sharing and long-term preservation of water-related environmental services.

The project is designed to systematically collect, integrate, and share data that are otherwise highly fragmented, incomplete, or not available at all. Indeed, cross-sectoral and cross-scale knowledge generation and dissemination are essential preconditions for integrated regional management of water resources and resulting sustainable use of water and land. Both WLRCs have been consolidated institutionally and now serve as knowledge platforms for cross-scale policy dialogue, learning, informed action, and improved decision-making on water and land management, and governance.

Furthermore, the WLRC in Ethiopia is developing and managing the Knowledge Base for Natural Resources (NR) and Sustainable Land Management (SLM) in Ethiopia, (SLM-KM). The WLRC in Ethiopia is an institutional member of WOCAT and has signed an MoU with the WOCAT Secretariat in March 2016. It also started to document SLM best practices with the WOCAT SLM Technologies and SLM Approaches questionnaire.

Project results and impacts

Both WLRCs have established rich data and information repositories, produced tailor-made products, and implemented activities on the ground.

The following knowledge products are designed to be of national, regional, and global relevance. They are targeted at policymakers/ decision-makers, the scientific community, development practitioners, and resource and land users.
  • Policy makers/ decision makers: policy briefs, communication material, concept notes for Ministers
  • Development practicioners (planners/ implementers): WALRIS/ SHIP platforms, documentation of best practices and approaches (e.g. in WOCAT network), guidelines (Learning Watersheds; Sustainability guidelines; WRUA development cycle), communication material, sub-catchment directory of Upper Ewaso Ng'iro basin (KEN)
  • Scientific community: WALRIS/ SHIP platforms including geonetworks, scientific papers, research reports, synthesis reports, GIS/maps – Ethio-GIS-II, sub-catchment directory (KEN)
  • Methods/ tools/ networks: watershed delineation tool, new conceptual and methodological approach for land use/ land cover classification (KEN), hotspots of water scarcity map and working document (KEN), the expanded hydromet monitoring network (ETH, KEN)
  • Resource/ land users / WRUAs: communication material, water resources mapping, the WRUA data transmission interface, translated WRUA development cycle (WDC) document (KEN), sub-catchment directory of Upper Ewaso Ng'iro basin (KEN), Waso Mara subcatchment management plan (KEN)

Publications

Shaping Sustainable Socio-Ecological Landscapes in Africa

Traditional systems of land and water use in Africa are increasingly under pressure. In the “Water and Land Resource Centre” project, scientists from CDE, CETRAD Kenya, and WLRC Ethiopia worked with land users and decision-makers in Kenya and Ethiopia to develop locally adapted solutions for managing water and land sustainably and resolving conflicts. Now they have summarized experiences and highlights from 40 years of transformative research in the book “Shaping Sustainable Socio-Ecological Landscapes in Africa”.

Year: 2019, Languages: English

» Show media
Socio-Economic Atlas of Kenya

Author: Wiesmann U, Kiteme B & Mwangi Z, Year: 2016, Languages: English

» Show media
Guidelines for Development Agents on Soil and Water Conservation in Ethiopia

Author: Hurni H, Berhe WA, Chadhokar P, Daniel D, Gete Z, Grunder M, Kassaye G, Year: 2016, Languages: English

» Show media
EthioGIS-2 DATA CATALOG: National Geospatial Database System, Ethiopia

Author: Juerg Krauer, Matthias Fries, Ursula Gaemperli, Elias Hodel, Tibebu Kassawmar, Gete Zeleke, Yohannes Aragie, Year: 2014, Languages: English

» Show media
Model parameter transfer for streamflow and sediment loss prediction with SWAT in a tropical watershed

Author: Vincent Roth, Tibebu Kassawmar Nigussie, Tatenda Lemann, Year: 2016, Languages: English

» Show media

CDE: http://www.cde.unibe.ch/research/projects/the_water_and_land_resource_centre_project_wlrc/index_eng.html


Online data portals of the WLRCs:

Ethiopia: WALRIS http://walris.wlrc-eth.org/

Kenya: Social Hydrological Information Platform (SHIP) http://wlrc-ken.org/


Contact

Isabelle Providoli

CDE Centre for Development and Environment
Senior Research Scientist
isabelle.providoli( at )unibe.ch
Switzerland Switzerland

» View profile

Official websites

Project duration

2011 - 2018

Involved partners

University of Bern - Centre for Development and Environment (CDE)

» Read more about their involvement in the WLRC project

Water and Land Resource Centre (WLRC) Addis Abeba, Ethiopia

» Read more about the WLRC of Ethiopia