WATER GLOBAL PRACTICE IRRIGATION & DRAINAGE (I&D) LEARNING NOTE Strengthening Climate-Informed Project Design February 2022 KEY LESSON public disclosure authorized To ensure food security and other social needs, support profitable farms that create jobs, reduce GHG emissions and bolster resilience to climate extremes and other shocks, agriculture must become more productive, resource efficient, and environmentally sustainable. This requires improvements in water service provision and soil water management. Sustaining agricultural water resources, enhancing resilience for farmers, and improving the quality of water service provision all require: institutional strengthening by supporting reforms that increase accountability; modernizing infrastructure and promoting innovation; and encouraging data- based and participatory decision-making by all stakeholders. CHALLENGE Water in agriculture is central to feeding the world, improving livelihoods, reducing GHG emissions and building resilience. However, several challenges make achieving these goals sustainably difficult: growing demand for food and other agricultural products, unsustainable resource (water, soil, energy) use, widespread land degradation, and vulnerability of smallholder farmers. Most water used in agriculture is in the form of soil moisture from precipitation and water abstracted for irrigation, both vulnerable to weather shocks. Sustainable irrigation helps safeguard against droughts via irrigation and floods/waterlogging/soil salinity via drainage. Hybrid solutions are needed to improve water productivity and yield long-term climate adaptation and mitigation outcomes. This learning note is the fourth of a 4-note-series developed by the Water Global Practice (GP) Climate Change Team to highlight successful examples of water operations that support climate change–related activities and provide useful lessons and recommendations for project design. WATER GLOBAL PRACTICE Irrigation & Drainage (I&D) – Strengthening Climate-Informed Project Design LEARNING NOTE WHAT TO DO HOW TO DO IT • As climate change places additional stress on • Reducing water consumption in irrigation generally requires (1) often scarce or overexploited water resources, improvements in water delivery systems (reduction of water/ improving water use efficiency and productivity seepage losses) and (2) on-farm investments that enhance soil and in irrigated agriculture can lead to outcomes water management through, among others, improved drainage and that are positive from adaptation and mitigation climate-smart agriculture (CSA). In addition to energy savings for perspectives, as long as overall water use is kept consumers and utilities, improved water use efficiency is expected within sustainable limits. to lead to more fertile, carbon-rich agricultural lands, yielding the double benefit of increased crop productivity and carbon sequestration. Moreover, infrastructure components should be accompanied by strong engagement with farmer organizations (e.g., through Farmers Field Schools or other good CSA-related activities) to establish lasting water conservation practices. • Provide adequate incentives for consumers • Energy savings can be achieved through interventions such as: and utilities to increase energy efficiency converting pump-based systems for water delivery to gravity-based investments and therefore boost mitigation systems, replacing lower-efficiency pumps with higher-efficiency efforts. or renewable energy-powered pumps, and decreasing energy consumption by reducing water and seepage losses, among others. Mechanisms include: (1) introducing water-pricing to promote water conservation and ensure efficient water allocation among farmers to improve service cost recovery, (2) providing farm-level advisory services, access to credit, and targeted subsidies for increasing water use productivity, (3) promoting the adoption of CSA practices, (4) including indicators to monitor the performance of energy efficiency measures, (5) conditioning utilities to extend service coverage if they make progress on aspects like nonrevenue water (NRW) reduction. • Introduce participatory approaches [e.g., Water • Give WUAs and FDIAs responsibilities that go beyond irrigation. User Associations (WUAs) or Farmer Drainage They should be actively involved in energy efficiency, water and Irrigation Associations (FDIAs)] for water conservation and allocation, drainage, and the maintenance infrastructure operation and maintenance of minor infrastructure. In addition, WUAs may introduce a (O&M) and I&D management. This helps address cost-recovery scheme to finance maintenance and repairs equity and sustainability issues of water delivery on infrastructure works. Cost-sharing systems, where end services but also supports climate change users contribute to the cost of infrastructure investments, are adaptation and mitigation (e.g., sustainable instrumental to raise users’ sense of ownership, and support the water services, based on improved O&M, can sustainability of climate gains in the form of reduced energy use, increase the resilience of targeted communities and increased water availability and system resilience. to climate-related risks; and support for O&M can also improve energy efficiency). • Follow climate-informed project preparation • Consider major technical, financial, governance, and sustainability practices as a precondition for achieving aspects in design and address them during preparation. Prepare expected climate benefits, such as building technical designs, (pre)feasibility studies, terms of reference targeted assets and local population’s resilience (ToRs), safeguard instruments, and other technical studies and against climate change-exacerbated threats (e.g., documents for critical project activities. Developing robust (i.e., droughts and floods) and defining related climate climate-resilient) and flexible engineering designs for infrastructure indicators. construction and rehabilitation takes time and can require large amounts of data and sophisticated decision support tools. Starting early gives more time to solve problems and make the necessary adjustments. Once infrastructure is built, any changes to increase robustness are in general much more challenging and costly. WATER GLOBAL PRACTICE Irrigation & Drainage (I&D) – Strengthening Climate-Informed Project Design LEARNING NOTE WHAT TO KEEP IN MIND • Prioritize capacity-building and institutional strengthening activities, particularly related to addressing adaptation and mitigation concerns. Client-tailored training on procurement for low- carbon infrastructure or technologies, or on procurement for climate-resilient infrastructure may be warranted. Moreover, when a country does not possess sufficient experience with the Bank's procurement rules, or if the country's rules differ strongly from the Banks procurement rules, undertaking training to diminish the differences will be crucial. • Weighing trade-offs between upstream and downstream users’ benefits and impacts are key elements of climate-informed project design. Interventions in a water system may entail climate- related gains and losses, with potential winners and losers (e.g., increased productivity and resilience in the upper basin, and negative impacts such as increased salinity in the tail reaches). These trade- offs should be carefully evaluated during project design to take actions which reduce potential losses and ensure climate-related benefits are fairly distributed and sustainable during and after project implementation. • While the importance of participatory irrigation management (PIM) is widely recognized as an essential feature of successful climate-informed water and irrigation management projects, privileged groups can feel threatened by this approach. When such a risk is identified during project preparation, a comprehensive stakeholder engagement plan, built around targeted messages for each group of actors, should be developed to manage expectations. • When projects offer technical assistance (TA) and training activities, it is advisable to measure whether these inputs ultimately contribute to behavior change of project beneficiaries. These behavior changes—increased water conservation by farmers, increased monitoring of water use, and higher uptake of improved irrigation techniques, and the like— are critical for improving irrigation service delivery. Indicators for activities such as farmer advisory services, demonstration activities, or farmer field schools (FFS) should go beyond number of people trained, to evaluating the beneficiaries' adoption rate of improved water management practices. It is critical to measure the impact and the effectiveness of such capacity-building activities to assess the contribution of these activities to climate-related outcomes. • Promote Farmer-led Irrigation Development (FLID). Scaling up and accelerating FLID holds significant potential for short-term recovery for the most vulnerable farmers and, in the longer term, can also help to safeguard domestic food security and strengthen farmers’ ability to recover from shocks and adapt to a changing environment. WATER GLOBAL PRACTICE Irrigation & Drainage (I&D) – Strengthening Climate-Informed Project Design LEARNING NOTE Case study: China Huai River Basin Flood Management and Drainage Improvement Project FY11-FY16, IBRD: $199.5 M The project’s main activities include flood protection and drainage improvement works; establishment and expansion of farmer drainage and irrigation associations (FDIAs); establishment of a disaster assessment center in Hefei, Anhui Province, which includes participatory decision- making processes and innovative waterlogging mitigating measures; training and TA studies; and resettlement action plan implementation. Objective • Provide better and secure protection against floods and waterlogging, increase farmland productivity, and reduce property losses in predominantly poor rural areas in four provinces of the Huai River Basin (Jiangsu, Shandong, Anhui, and Henan). Aspect Lesson PIM approach FDIAs were created to take part in irrigation and drainage management and take care of the O&M for planning and of on-farm infrastructure in their coverage area. This was a key design component that ensured implementation ownership, accountability, and transparency. of O&M Climate The design included structural and nonstructural measures (e.g., flood modeling, disaster resilience preparedness, and institutional strengthening) to address flood and drainage problems affecting four provinces bordering the Huai River. Providing modern technologies such as hydrometric equipment and an automated computer system for flood forecasting and warning systems, to support decision making, significantly improved flood control and reduced the flood risk. Combining these measures with civil engineering solutions also minimized waterlogging damage to crops. Cost recovery (collecting water use fees) and water-pricing mechanisms were introduced to incentivize water conservation. The collection of water fees created a sustainable revenue stream to cover the cost of FDIAs’ regular O&M costs. The project not only increased farm productivity and farmers’ incomes, but also improved water use efficiency and the reliability of flood and drainage facilities, contributing to enhanced climate resilience. In addition, studies were completed on innovative waterlogging mitigation and strategies. Thorough Key technical, financial, governance, and sustainability aspects were considered in design and project addressed during preparation. Several (pre)feasibility studies, terms of reference (ToRs), and the preparation as environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) were initiated early in project development. a precondition The sound preparation contributed to the attainment of climate outcomes such as increased for building resilience to flood and waterlogging problems. Procurement for major civil works started early climate in the preparation phase, facilitating an effective, competitive bidding process. The introduction resilience of a procurement and financial management information system (PROMIS) during preparation was instrumental in improving project management, thus facilitating the attainment of climate results. Capacity-building activities laid a solid foundation for implementation. Strong government ownership was key to the project’s smooth implementation. The government covered a large share of total project costs and established fully staffed project management units (PMUs) and project coordination groups at all administrative levels. Government funds were committed before implementation was underway, and contributions from counties were determined based on their financial capacities. Local governments budgeted funding for O&M of the off-farm infrastructure. Full safeguard compliance. The project developed and implemented a robust resettlement action plan (RAP) for each subproject to comply with the Involuntary Resettlements Safeguard. The Safety of Dams Safeguard was fully complied with; independent dam safety Panels of Experts (PoEs) were established, which contracted dam O&M experts. Safety reports were submitted to the Bank and remedial measures were implemented promptly. WATER GLOBAL PRACTICE Irrigation & Drainage (I&D) – Strengthening Climate-Informed Project Design LEARNING NOTE KEY RESOURCES Bonzanigo, Laura, Julie Rozenberg, Gregory C. Felter, Robert J. Lempert, and Patrick M. Reed. 2018. Building the Resilience of WSS Utilities to Climate Change and Other Threats: A Road Map. Washington, DC: World Bank. Engle, Nathan L., Daniel Medina, Gregory C. Felter, and Sean Nelson. 2020. Resilient Water Infrastructure Design Brief. Washington, DC: World Bank. García, Luis, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Marcus Wijnen, and Inge Pakulski. 2016. Earth Observation for Water Resources Management: Current Use and Future Opportunities for the Water Sector. Washington, DC: World Bank. Hallegatte, Stéphane, Rubaina Anjum, Paolo Avner, Ammara Shariq, Michelle Winglee, and Camilla Knudsen. 2021. Integrating Climate Change and Natural Disasters in the Economic Analysis of Projects: A Disaster and Climate Risk Stress Test Methodology. Washington, DC: World Bank. Izzi, G., J. 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