Harnessing the Potential of Aquatic Agricultural Systems for the Poor and Vulnerable

Table 9: Indicative list of categories of target audiences and the products and processes that may be used to build and sustain knowledge sharing and learning .. Executive Summary Over 700 million people depend on aquatic agricultural systems (AAS), and some 250 million live on less than US$1.25 a day. Living in coastal zones and along river floodplains, these communities are not only poor, they are also vulnerable to multiple drivers of change, notably demographic trends, climate change, sea level rise, and increasingly frequent and severe 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. AAS have long been on the agenda of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), with investments made to improve crop yields, sustain wild fisheries, develop aquaculture and increase benefits from livestock. Yet only rarely has this research been well integrated to reflect the multiple choices faced by the women and men who live in these systems. Too often our investment has been targeted solely at component crops, fisheries, or other single dimensions of each system and so has failed to deliver its full benefits to the poor. As a result, stakeholders' integrated livelihoods have been marginalized by our agricultural research investments, and the opportunities they offer for reducing poverty have been missed. CRP 1.3 is designed to confront this weakness and change how the CGIAR engages with AAS. We will pursue a program of integrated research to identify key constraints faced by smallholder households, seek ways to overcome them, and pursue a research agenda to guide development investment along pathways to impact. We will bring together the combined knowledge of AAS users, governments and civil society organizations, integrating it with the capacities of the CGIAR and its partners. Together we will pursue improvements in system productivity, markets, resilience, gender equity, policies, and knowledge sharing. A demand-driven and participatory gender approach lies at the core of the program. We will identify gender-equitable options to improve the lives of smallholder households. These options will embrace both old and new technologies that combine permutations of farming, fishing, aquaculture, livestock rearing and forestry with processing and trading of agricultural commodities, and with non-agricultural livelihoods. Our demand driven focus will help tailor these solutions to the specific needs of different households living in different environmental and socio-cultural conditions. CRP 1.3 …