Mozambique

This document reports on the 'IWRM Demonstration Project: Improved livelihoods in lower Limpopo' carried out in Ndonga community, Mozambique. The project aimed to demonstrate how principles of IWRM can be put into practice in poor rural areas. The focus was on those principles that have received limited attention as yet: water resource management at the lowest appropriate levels, users’ participation, and the inclusion of women.

In short, the starting point for local-level IWRM is the recognition that people have multiple domestic and productive water needs, certainly in rural areas where agriculture-based diversified livelihoods depend in many ways upon water. Better access to water brings health and alleviates women’s and girls’ burdens of water fetching and it improves production of crops, vegetables, animals and fisheries for food and income.