Frank Steenbergen

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Managing Director at MetaMeta Research

Climate variability and change pose a major challenge to rain-fed agriculture in Africa. Extreme weather events are projected to continue affecting African drylands. Thus, it is essential to assess how rural farming communities in marginal environments are adapting to environmental changes. Specifically, there is need to assess local adaptations th...

Traduction en français du manuscrit. French translation of the manuscript.

Rainwater harvesting from Roads For Indigenous Pasture production and improved rural livelihoods in Kitui, Kenya (ROFIP) is an applied research project. It assessed the potential of combining multiple sustainable land management practices, for example native grass reseeding, rainwater harvesting from roads and in situ microcatchments to enhance veg...

English version available.

The use of synthetic chemical rodenticides is the most commonly practiced rodent management method in sub-Saharan Africa which results in health and environmental risks without any significant improvement in terms of reducing rodent pest populations sustainably. In this paper, which is a second part of a diptych, we advocate for better control of t...

water allocation, Middle East, irrigation, groundwater

urban water services, conflict, Yemen, asset management, finance, customer relations

green roads, climate resilience, water management, green infrastructure

regenerative agriculture, India. Jharkand, Madhya Pradesh, cases, system change, silvopastoral, hedges, biofertilizer, local economy, green roads for water, rodents, silvo-pastoral, farm tools, seeds, composting

groundwater management

The use of synthetic chemical rodenticides is the most commonly practiced rodent management method in sub-Saharan Africa which results in health and environmental risks without any significant improvement in terms of reducing rodent pest populations sustainably. In this paper, which is a second part of a diptych, we advocate for better control of t...

A participatory rural appraisal (PRA) conducted in the Al-Mujaylis area, Tihama Coastal Plain, Yemen provided a contribution, as a bottom-up approach, to the assessment of the needs of communities and their views on how to avoid groundwater degradation. It was found that PRA tools could be applied usefully in an area with data scarcity and a cultur...

This compendium focusses on interventions that improve the biophysical water productivity. While the focus is on improving water productivity, it also includes interventions that improve land productivity and the water use efficiency as they go hand in hand.

In the drylands of Ethiopia, several road water harvesting practices (RWHP) have been used to supplement rain-fed agriculture. However, factors affecting adoption of RWHP and their impacts were not studied systematically. Understanding the factors influencing the adoption of RWHP for sustainable agricultural intensification and climate resilience i...

Infrastructure development (including roads and railways) are among the major investments in many countries in Africa. Road hydraulic structures (road side drainages, culverts and bridges) are mostly designed to discharge concentrated flow of water. Unmanaged water from roads could lead to erosion, flooding, water logging, siltation, and even lands...

This study investigated the engagement of men, women spouses (WS) and women heads-of-household (WHH) in the planning and construction of rural roads in two Ethiopian districts of Tigray and Amhara, and the differential impacts of rural roads on the mobility and transport of men, WS and WHH. The fieldwork established that there is a strong demand am...

Flood-based farming systems (FBFS) are extensively used throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Consisting of spate irrigation, flood recession and flood rise farming, inundation canals and depression agriculture, it is estimated that these farming systems cover close to 25 million hectares in this region alone. For each of these FBFS, different techniques...

With an investment of 7–10 billion USD in sub-Saharan Africa, the development of roads is a major factor in the change of landscapes and the drainage patterns. Thus, roads often act as conveyance systems, but the impact is often negative, leading to erosion, waterlogging and flooding. These impacts come down hardest on the more vulnerable and least...

Groundwater overexploitation is a worldwide phenomenon with important consequences and as yet few effective solutions. Work on groundwater governance often emphasises the roles of both formal state-centred policies and tools on the one hand, and self-governance and collective action on the other. Yet, empirically grounded work is limited and scatte...

Land use patterns and management practices have a great influence on the quantity and quality of groundwater. Conversely, groundwater is instrumental in the development of land use activities by providing a source of water and secure moisture. This facilitates productive and consumptive water uses, but goes further by affecting natural soil fertili...

A participatory rural appraisal (PRA) conducted in the Al-Mujaylis area, Tihama Coastal Plain, Yemen provided a contribution, as a bottom-up approach, to the assessment of the needs of communities and their views on how to avoid groundwater degradation. It was found that PRA tools could be applied usefully in an area with data scarcity and a cultur...

To reduce the gap between groundwater demand and supply caused by agricultural groundwater over-exploitation, the Prepaid Smart Meter System (PSMS) is being strongly implemented by the Chinese government in northern China. This study reports the analysis and results of PSMS field surveys in six typical provinces in northern China as well as domesti...

The Indo-Gangetic aquifer is one of the world's most important transboundary water resources, and the most heavily exploited aquifer in the world. To better understand the aquifer system, typologies have been characterized for the aquifer, which integrate existing datasets across the Indo-Gangetic catchment basin at a transboundary scale for the fi...

ion from the transboundary Indo-Gangetic Basin comprises 25% of global groundwater withdrawals, sustaining agricultural productivity in Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh. Recent interpretations of satellite gravity data indicate that current abstraction is unsustainable, yet these large-scale interpretations lack the spatio-temporal resolution...

p> Roads have both positive and negative impacts in the areas surrounding them. With the expansion of roads growing at an inexorable speed in Ethiopia and all Sub-Saharan Africa, these impacts need to be well understood. A questionnaire was used to gather information on road-related impacts on the rural population. A total of 529 sample household...

The coastal areas in Yemen are threatened by much environmental degradation such as sand dunes movements, desertification, groundwater drawdown and seawater intrusion. Collaborative research based on participatory rural appraisal (PRA) was conducted in Al-Mujaylis village, located in the downstream part of Wadi Zabid and Wadi Rima (wadi is Arabic t...

This paper focuses on the scope of conjunctive management in the Lower Indus part of the Indus Basin Irrigation System (IBIS), and the contribution this could make towards food security and socio-economic development. The total Gross Command Area (GCA) of the Lower Indus is 5.92 Mha, with a cultivable command area (CCA) of 5.43 Mha, most of which i...

The development of roads nowadays often has negative impacts. Roads cause floods and water logging along the way, whereas the more concentrated run-off from drains and culverts cause erosion and sedimentation. These negative impacts are often related with the practice in road engineering to evacuate water away from the roads as soon as possible rat...

Resilience to climate change and abstraction Executive Summary Groundwater within the Indo‐Gangetic Basin (IGB) alluvial aquifer system forms one of the world's most important and heavily exploited reservoirs of freshwater. In this study we have examined the groundwater system through the lens of its resilience to change – both from the impact of c...

Groundwater is the main source of agricultural and municipal water and contributes 70% of total water use in Yemen. All aquifers are depleting at a very high rate owing to combined effects of a host of socioeconomic, institutional and climate-change factors. The government policy on diesel subsidy was largely believed to be one of the significant f...

They are unknown but they cover an area of more than one million hectares, which is close to 10% of all irrigated land in Pakistan: spate irrigation systems, also called 'rod kohi', 'sailaba' or 'nai' in different parts of the country. Dependent on making the most out of short duration floods, they embody a unique and ancient culture of water shari...

This paper explores the role of politics in water management, in particular, comparing groundwater management in Yemen and Ethiopia. It tries to understand the precise meaning of the often-quoted term 'political will' in these different contexts and compares the autocratic and oligarchic system in Yemen with the dominant party 'developmental state'...

The study area, Raya and Kobo valleys, are located in the northern parts of Ethiopia. From the hydrological point of view, the sites are located within the Afar drainage basin. The areal coverage of the valleys is 2369 km2 for Raya and 1439 km2 for Kobo. The amount of groundwater that is currently discharged for irrigation purpose in Raya and Kobo...

"Water is life" and in areas like Balochistan with intermountain valley set up, ari climate, very low rainfall and high evaporation the limited groundwater resources are sustaining the lifeline and for production of the food and fiber for growing population. Limitations on resources - such as limted groundwater - lead to misappropriations for survi...

Al-Mujaylis, locates within Tihama coastal plain along Red Sea, was initiated to investigate the effect of the changes in agriculture practices and political decisions on groundwater deterioration. The methodology used is a collaborative research based on participatory rural appraisal (PRA). It was found that the area suffer from many problems such...

Yemenis are amongst those populations with the lowest water availability per capita in the world, an acute water crisis looms over the country. The scarcity of this resource is an immediate threat to stability and human security. To tackle the root of this problem, The Hague Institute published the report “The political economy of water conflicts i...

Roads are generally perceived as infrastructure to deliver transport services, but they are more than that. They are major interventions in the hydrology of areas where they are constructed - concentrating runoff and altering subsurface flows. At present, water-related damage constitutes a major cost factor in road maintenance. Using ongoing resear...

See for online publication: http://thehagueinstituteforglobaljustice.org/index.php?page=Publications&pid=179#yemen

In numerous countries of Sub-Saharan Africa the strategic agenda of the water-sector is undergoing substantial change because of demographic pressure, climate change and economic transformation. Two new policy questions are arising from the need to make better use of available groundwater storage to improve water-supply security: What is the scope...

Local groundwater management in Yemen and the means by which stakeholders can work together to improve water governance are discussed. In the last few decades the discourse on groundwater management in Yemen has increasingly been cast in terms of crisis, triggered by rapidly declining water tables around cities and in the main agricultural areas. H...

KeywordsWater resources–Conjunctive use–Groundwater management–Groundwater resources

This paper provides an overview of major groundwater issues for Sub-Saharan Africa, with an assessment of their policy implications in terms of potential development and appropriate management. In terms of construction time, capital outlay and drought resilience, groundwater is the preferred source to meet most water-supply demands, despite hydroge...

This article discusses spate irrigation in Ethiopia and aims to take stock of the current status of spate irrigation development. It summarizes experiences so far and formulates a number of recommendations on the development of this upcoming resource management system. It argues that raised weirs are useful mainly in areas where a large head for sp...

Spate irrigation, a floodwater harvesting and management system, has for the past 70 centuries provided a livelihood for about 13 million resource‐poor people in some 20 countries. Despite being the oldest, the system still remains the least studied and the least understood. It is only in the past two decades that the system has been subject to som...

In Halaba district in Southern Ethiopia fluoride levels from boreholes are high (2.6 to 7.0 mg/l), yet the inci-dence of fluorosis is modest. Drinking water users living in the vicinity of four drinking water systems that have been in operation for more than 35 years were surveyed. Out of 625 persons 5 percent had severe dental fluorosis and 42 per...

This book is about sustainable land management, the development of water buffers and the business case underneath it. It is part of the discussion on the green economy: investment in natural resource management makes business sense. This also applies for investment in land, water and vegetative cover. Some of the parameters may be different – retur...

The aim of this overview is to provide a strategic guide to current practices of conjunctive use of groundwater and surface water resources for both irrigated agriculture and urban water-supply in the developing world-and the great potential that planned conjunctive use has as an adaptation strategy to accelerated climate change. It is primarily (b...

Spate irrigation is a system of harvesting and managing flood water. In spate irrigation, flood water is emitted from wadis (ephemeral streams) and diverted to fields using earthen or concrete structures. By nature, flood water is unpredictable in occurrence, timing and volume, which puts special challenges to the farmers who use, co-share and co-m...

This paper describes the mechanisms that underlie the management of spate irrigation systems. Spate irrigation is a fascinating type of river basin water management, unique to semi-arid environments, whereby floods are diverted from ephemeral rivers to cultivate subsistence or sometimes cash crops. In Eastern Africa the area under community spate i...