Green Water Credits - Background

Green water is the water held in soil and available to plants. It is the largest fresh water resource but can only be used in situ, by plants.

Blue water is groundwater and stream flow, supporting aquatic ecosystems, that can be tapped for use elsewhere: for domestic and stock water, irrigation, industrial and urban use.

Green Water Credits (GWC) is a mechanism for transfer of cash to rural people in return for water management activities that determine the supply of green and blue water at source. These activities are presently unrecognised and un-rewarded.

The long-term goal of the GWC-program is to enable rural people to better manage land and water resources in order to improve food security, water security and public health, and to combat and adapt to climatic and related environmental changes.

Phase 1 started in 2006 to demonstrate the viability and feasibility of the offer–and–demand aspects of the GWC concept as a sustainable environmental service mechanism; improve local resilience to external shocks by asset building (green water resource, stable soils, shortening the hunger gap, diversified rural incomes); deliver enhanced blue water resources, and reduce the hazards of flood and landslip downstream.

The GWC Proof-of-Concept will be undertaken in a basin, to be selected from 4 potential basins, located in the Savannas and Semi-Humid Zones of West and Eastern Africa. Given a favourable outcome to the proof-of-concept phase, pilot operations of the GWC mechanism will be established.

The Proof-of-Concept phase is supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. Implementing institutions are: ISRIC – World Soil Information, Stockholm Environmental Institute (SEI), International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), Agricultural Economics Research Institute (LEI), a financial management institution (to be defined) and national partners.

                             
                                                                   Poster explaining Green Water Credits

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Contact: 
David.Dent@wur.nl
Sjef.Kauffman@wur.nl