There are important opportunities for new investments in water but their success depend on the development of new models of interventions, centered on enhancing the diversity of livelihood conditions of rural populations. These maps show various layers of information to help assessing and establishing patterns between water and rural livelihoods.

Experts meeting at FAO have discussed possible implications of climate change for agriculture in terms of water availability and demand. For a series of major agriculture systems, climate change drivers, challenges and response options have been analysed and are presented here.

For millions of smallholder farmers, fishers and herders in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), water is one of the most important production assets.

Water is key to enhancing rural people livelihoods, because insecure access to water for consumption and productive uses is a major constraint on poverty reduction in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa. FAO and IFAD are working together to explore ways to better the livelihoods of many, through targeted interventions.

The "Handbook on pressurized irrigation techniques" is now available in French

To produce food, water is consumed by the plants in the field through evaporation and transpiration. The amount of water needed varies with crops and depends from place to place, on local productivity and conditions of available water supply through rainfall or irrigation. Once the product is harvested and becomes available on the market, the water embedded in the product changes status from ‘real’ water to ‘virtual’ water. In this poster you can see how much water is "embedded" in each product and discover how much water is needed to produce it.