Tea Time Talk on the topic: "Sustainable Irrigation Development: A Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus Perspective Towards Achieving More Crop Per Drop Per Joule Per Hectare Under Climate Change"

Date: 15 March at 17:00 hrs (UK time)

Organized by Irrigation Water Forum (IWF/ICID .UK)

PRESENTER

Dr. Tafadzwanashe Mabhaudhi, Senior Researcher: Agricultural Water Management International Water Management Institute (IWMI), South Africa

Tafadzwa has experience in research, development, capacity building and building partnerships across academia, public and private sectors, civil society, and communities. He worked as the Co-Director for the Centre for Transformative Agricultural and Food Systems (CTAFS), University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in South Africa. He holds a B.Sc. Agriculture Honours in Crop Science from the University of Zimbabwe, M.Sc. in Agric. Crop Science and PhD in Crop Science from UKZN. He has experience in multi- and transdisciplinary research covering sustainable food systems, global environmental change and the water-energy-food nexus. His goal is to work on research and development that is dynamic, transformative, informs policy and achieves real-life impacts within poor communities.

The background for the talk is that food production needs to increase by 50% by 2050, with linked demand increases of approximately 6-55% for water, 60-100% for energy, and 10-20% for land. This is against a backdrop of climate change impacts such as increasing water scarcity that threatens water availability for agriculture particularly in the global South. Agricultural water management needs to align with long-term strategies and commitments proposed at COP26 to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century. Sustainable irrigation development under climate change will require, among other things, integrative approaches and irrigation technologies and strategies that help to increase yields while optimising water, land, and energy use efficiencies and environmental wellbeing. This is a daunting and complex task, which calls for (i) managing rather than meeting demand, (ii) transformative and systems approaches, (iii) landscape-level management, and (iv) transitioning food systems towards being sustainable and resilient. This will require an understanding of trade-offs and synergies among the interlinked water, energy, food and land systems.

This talk will focus on sustainable irrigation development, particularly how the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus approach can be applied to systematically appraise the performance of irrigation technologies for optimizing synergies, and managing and mitigating trade-offs in resource utilization under climate change. Secondary to this, the impact of adopting the WEF nexus on improving efficiency in irrigated agriculture through irrigation modernization and managing trade-offs across spatial and temporal scales will be discussed.

Please register in advance through this talk:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwrf-qsqjMpH9PnkT4DeWQ_lrpi7QKnYvxH

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Contact: Dr Ian Tod, Chair, British National Committee of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (IWF/ICID.UK), 53 Victoria Park, Cambridge, CB4 3EJ, United Kingdom, Tel:+44 1223 367118: Cell: +44 787 500 6034, E-mail: Iantod@mac.com