26 July 2013: The Global Water Partnership (GWP) released a Technical Focus Paper, titled ‘Water and Food Security – Experiences in India and China,’ which identifies as critical the challenges of water and energy for food and agriculture. It stresses the “wicked challenge” posed by the complexity of hydrology, engineering, legal and political systems, sectors, institutions and agronomic elements that drive country outcomes.

Focusing on the case studies of China and India, the report compares the balance between centralized and decentralized management. The report includes chapters on: water and food as global priorities; India and China – similarities and contrasts; water governance in India; water governance in China; selected experiences from other countries; lessons from India, China and others; and a role for integrated water resources management (IWRM).

In the section on selected experiences from other countries, the report examines challenges faced in sub-Saharan Africa. Among conclusions, the report stresses that small-scale water management solutions are more likely to succeed when governance and institutional capacity is weak, but such solutions are unlikely to sufficiently address increased competition for scarce water resources or the threat of climate change.

The UN Development Programme (UNDP), the World Bank and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) founded the GWP in 1996 to promote IWRM. [Publication: Water and Food Security – Experiences in India and China] [GWP Press Release]