Modernizing Irrigated Agriculture to Protect and Restore Aquatic Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in South-East Asia

The project is under implementation. It is being implemented in three phases between 2019 to 2021: each phase is approximately a year long.

Asia contains 70% of the worlds irrigated area. The extensive irrigation comes with many downsides. One of the most unmitigated of the downsides are the negative impacts irrigation infrastructure bring to aquatic ecosystem and fisheries. This is particularly pernicious in the Lower Mekong Basin where the aquatic animals make up 50-80% of animal protein consumed by people. The traditional irrigation systems are often designed with sole purpose of achieving efficient water delivery for agriculture often neglecting the damages it could bring to water resources, particularly to the fisheries that are dependent on it.

Without undermining the role of irrigation schemes in hunger and poverty reduction, the project aims to synergize irrigation productivity as well as nutritional benefits from the water used in irrigated agriculture. These synergistic opportunities span technical interventions relating to the design and operation of delivery and storage infrastructure in ways that minimize harm and maximize biodiversity benefits including via environmental flows, increased connectivity and the construction or improvement of critical habitat and refuge areas within and around irrigated systems. The project envisages to reduce the negative impacts of irrigation infrastructures through a combination of both technological solutions (incorporating new design features) and policy solution (introducing new policies, guidelines, etc.)

While the project proposes the regional impact across the Southeast Asian Region, the specific targeted consultations will take place in Indonesia and Myanmar. The project draws upon the learnings from Australia’s endeavors in flagship freshwater ecosystem and environmental management through improved fish passage and aquatic biodiversity. The project proposes to build and contextualize ‘Guide to Managing Water for Environment’ based on Southeast Asian realities.

Given high interlinkage of aquatic biodiversity with various sectors, the emphasis of the project is on facilitating collaborative processes between ministries and stakeholders. The team has already participated in a series of workshop with national policy makers and influencers. This has allowed for dissemination of ideas and knowledge products that emphasize the need for protection and enhancement of aquatic biodiversity and ecosystem services for resilient and diversified livelihood brought by irrigation retrofitting, rehabilitation, and modernization The team has also made most of international forums, particularly of the World Irrigation Forum held in Indonesia, 2019 by hosting a booth and specialist workshop.  

Given the inexperience in the region, large number of capacity building activities are envisaged. These include, inter alia, training of trainers, as well as and feedback loops to capture continual learning. A targeted outcome will be improved lending portfolios, processes, and procedures of the major investors in the region (ADB, World Bank, JICA, IFAD, GEF) so that the protection of aquatic biodiversity and ecosystem services is mandated as part of project formulation and implementation. To do so, extensive involvement of Australian expertise and experience in design and operation will relied upon. 

The project emphasizes the need for improving technical and policy-making capacities for practitioner and decision makers from various sectors and makes most of various forums to voice concerns and garner greater support. International conferences and forums can be a very important platform not only to disseminate experiences and expertise, but also to muster a greater buy-in. This can build a solid foundation for the rest of the work by eliminating possible frictions.

The project envisages to build upon best practices from elsewhere in the world and focuses on contextualizing the issues with ground reality. This can serve as a learning for similar projects elsewhere as it not only increases co-ordination among stakeholders during contextualizing processes but also equips them with a greater technical acumen to conceptualize synergies irrigation systems can bring. Such initiatives can create an enabling environment for national governments to design technically sound and bankable irrigation and environment project based on sound policies.