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2021 Navigation Home Foreword Global relevance At a glance Major trends Stories of change Awards and events Contributions to CGIAR Financials Investment partners Partnerships Board of Governors Our locations Home Foreword Global relevance At a glance Major trends Stories of change Awards and events Contributions to CGIAR Financials Investment partners Partnerships Board of Governors Our locations Building a water-secure future Annual Report 2021 Message from the Board Chair and Director General We cannot help but look back at 2021 and see that the challenges of building water security and delivering on Goal 6 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are becoming only more urgent. The demands on IWMI and CGIAR to do more – to use our research-for-development to deliver impact at scale and with speed – are only growing, and our responsibility to ally with partners to meet that demand is only deepening. READ FOREWORD Read Foreword Roberto Lenton CHAIR, BOARD OF GOVERNORS Mark Smith DIRECTOR GENERAL Global relevance IWMI at a glance in 2021 Major trends shaping IWMI’s strategic and operational context in 2021 Water, Food and Ecosystems In 2021, hunger hit an all-time high. The United Nations reports that last year, 193 million people in 53 countries were at an ‘acute’ risk of hunger. This figure shows a jump of almost 40 million compared to 2020. Conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Yemen, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Sudan, Syria, Nigeria and, more recently, Ukraine have led to further food price increases. Climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic have also exacerbated the situation. Nonetheless, water-smart agricultural solutions are being developed and scaled up globally, and efforts to put water at the forefront of environmental research, policy and action are growing. Biodiversity loss remains acute. Extinction rates are 100 to 1,000 times higher than they have been over the past tens of millions of years. In 2021, Earth Overshoot Day happened on July 29, almost a month earlier than the year before, which was strongly influenced by the pandemic. However, smart water practices such as accounting for environmental flow requirements and nature-based solutions contribute to protecting critical ecosystems. Today, a great majority of development interventions adopt sustainable strategies for our ecosystems. Water, Climate Change and Resilience According to the most recent IPCC report , 3.5 billion people are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Every year, the number of people affected by flooding increases by half a million, and over three billion suffer severe water shortages. Water risks are intensifying around the world, and as climate change tightens its grip, rising temperatures are promoting the spread of diseases in crops and livestock. Unless immediate and bold action is taken, the impacts of climate change are set to worsen. Water scarcity and less reliable rainfall patterns could spark conflict, provoke migration waves and trigger famine in many regions of the world. Awareness of the role of water in climate change impacts and solutions is growing, and the ever-increasing number of climate adaptation and mitigation responses is encouraging. However, the scaling of water management innovations and technologies is urgently needed in the most vulnerable regions of the world. Water data fragmentation continues to slow us down, and research-policy-action gaps have yet to be fully bridged. Fortunately, IWMI research and innovation are fueling a growing number of disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation and mitigation projects, a step in the right direction towards a climate-, food-, energy- and water-secure world. Water, Growth and Inclusion Smallholder farmers produce at least one third of the global food supply. However, in developing countries, 80% of these farmers live in water-scarce regions, despite being the main source of food production. In 2021, the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted food distribution channels, led to layoffs, restricted physical access to food markets, slowed transport, and diminished the capacity of institutions that support social safety nets for food security. Inclusion strategies are now a growing focus of development solutions, and gender empowerment is becoming more urgent in development solutions worldwide. Despite the global mobility limits which resulted from the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2021 World Migration Report revealed a dramatic increase in internal displacement due to disasters, conflict and violence. Although remittances dropped slightly in 2020, the number of international migrants continued to increase the following year, especially in Europe and Asia. Migration continues to be a major factor in development and change. Water Data Science and Digital Innovation Almost half of the world’s population still has no access to the internet. This digital divide predominantly impacts women, rural populations and vulnerable communities living in developing regions of the world, where fewer than one in five people are connected to a mobile or internet network. Knowledge gaps, including the lack of data on water services, and the fragmentation of water science data, are slowing the implementation of comprehensive policy solutions. Nevertheless, new initiatives to render data and the internet more accessible have reached unprecedented numbers. Stories of change Major awards IWMI’s Nafn Amdar and Arif Anwar were awarded the World Food Forum Transformative Research – Innovation Lab Award in line with IWMI’s work carried out under the Water Innovation Technologies (WIT) project in Jordan. This award recognizes researchers and aspiring researchers who are committed to transforming agri-food systems. Eight finalists were selected from over 80 entrants for their pioneering approaches and potential to create a better food future for all. READ MORE WATCH THE AWARDS CEREMONY Key events The year 2021 saw another virtual World Water Week (#WWWeek) due to continued Covid-19 restrictions. With the theme of World Water Week emphasizing climate and resilience, IWMI played a significant role at the conference, taking part in around 30 sessions during the period August 23-27, 2021, either as convenor or co-convenor. IWMI staff members from around the world engaged as moderators, speakers and panelists. COP26 was held in Glasgow, Scotland, during the period October 31–November 13, 2021. The main aim of IWMI’s participation in the conference was to communicate an urgent and clear message to climate negotiators: Transforming water systems to build water security is central to climate action and must serve as the foundation for a climate-resilient future. As a global leader in identifying, refining and implementing innovative water-based climate solutions, IWMI used COP26 as a platform to engage with not only negotiators and policymakers, but also with current and prospective partners, media outlets, donors and other key stakeholders in the water and climate arenas. IWMI staff led, co-led, or participated in around 40 events throughout COP26, with our participation anchored by daily programming at the first-ever Water and Climate Pavilion , of which IWMI is a core partner. IWMI hosted a webinar titled Water, Extremes and Climate Change on August 20, 2021, to discuss the findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of Working Group I. Two lead authors of IPCC presented findings from their round of the IPCC Assessment: Prof. Friederike Otto , Associate Director, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, UK, and Dr Krishnan Raghavan , who specializes in climate modelling. They were joined by a panel of water experts to explore the implications of the latest climate change findings for regions including Asia and Africa. The webinar was facilitated by IWMI’s Dr Aditi Mukherji , a Coordinating Lead Author of the Water Chapter of...