Marian Fuchs-Carsch

1989 - 1996
Project Development Officer and Head, Donor Relations and Project Development

We had some pretty spectacular board members during my time at IIMI, and none more spectacular than Robert McNamara. What an incredible man he was! Looking and acting like a man half his age, he would show up at board meetings in slacks and a polo shirt, with a small piece of hand luggage, straight from the airport, ready for the meeting. He wasn’t interested in formalities or small talk. He would always have read and remembered the relevant materials. He threw away all pages that weren’t useful or of interest to him. Despite his illustrious past and forceful personality, he never tried to dominate the meetings. But on the topics he cared about, he was passionate, and insistent. “Performance!” “Performance!” he would urge. Measurement of results was what he wanted. This was great advice, still highly relevant today – results-oriented R&D is the watchword of almost every research or development organization I visit these days. He was also one of the few board members to take time to check in with those who did not attend the Board Meetings but whose work interested him.

Chris Scott

Regional Director, Asia
Currently – Professor, University of Arizona, and IWMI wastewater irrigation collaborator,
cascott@email.arizona.edu

The Challenge of Policy-Relevant Science

IWMI’s greatest challenge is to be a catalyst in innovating with national and local partners while responding to rapidly evolving framing conditions.  How do we ensure continuity with change?  Agriculture and the water needed to support it, with all the tradeoffs we know so well, will increasingly be buffeted by global economic forces, climate change, other environmental processes, urban growth … the list goes on.  And for IWMI’s enterprise, a crucial element of change is donor commitment, which can be fickle.

To make progress towards our mission, we must remain focused on harnessing the talents of the NARS, universities, and NGOs in the many locations where we work.  For this, the regional offices and country programs are central to IWMI’s effectiveness; headquarters must play a support role while sparking innovation.  I say this based on the nearly a decade I spent working in regional offices (hence, I’m still using the first-person, “we at IWMI”).

The institute has no miracle crop variety or global systems model to distinguish us, which is fortunate, because we’re able to respond to rapidly evolving needs.  It’s crucial that we work not just on our partners’ current priorities, but help to shape their future objectives and capabilities to respond to rapid global changes.  In the process, we’ll undoubtedly find that our objectives change too in unexpected way.

IWMI’s research hallmarks are interdisciplinarity and stakeholder outreach.  The process of assembling integrated teams is increasingly sought after in the research I’m presently involved in.  And to make science relevant to policy-making, indeed to frame science questions based on stakeholder engagement, is the next wave.  My time at IWMI prepared me well, though it was difficult finding a ‘disciplinary’ home in U.S. academia.  But I’m pleased to say I continue to work today on many of the questions I unexpectedly came upon at IWMI.  And I’m keenly aware of how changing conditions drive us to innovate, seek new partners, and remain focused on the broader relevance of our work.

Dr. Walter Huppert

Former Member of IWMI ‘ s Board of Governors, currently Consultant, Water Management and Institutions

Making the “water issue” a top priority in the international debate on global development. In my opinion, IWMI’s biggest achievement is its contribution to ‘agenda setting’ in the international debate on water issues in general and on the topic of ‘water scarcity’ in particular. Linking sound scientific evidence with awareness raising efforts and joining forces with other prominent actors has generated a previously unknown international attention to global water issues. The latest evidence of IMWI’s leading role in this respect is its scientific guidance and coordination of a landmark interdisciplinary work, the “Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture” in 2007. 

Emphasizing the importance of ‘water productivity’ and making the slogan ‘more crop per drop’ becoming an internationally accepted guiding principle for water management in agriculture. IWMI’s longstanding efforts and exceptional achievements with respect to issues of efficiency in agricultural water use are legend. They culminated in the propagation of water productivity in agriculture in water scarce environments and in delivering the scientific knowledge base for such directions. Coining the slogan ‘more crop per drop’ helped greatly in disseminating the message of water productivity in agriculture. Re-defining ‘efficiency’ in ‘closed’ river basins added another important new perspective to the efficiency debate in the water sector. 

Creating a sound scientific knowledge base on “Agricultural Water Management” in general and “Irrigation Management” in particular. It is hard to imagine today that ‘irrigation management’ was a kind of non-topic in irrigation in the 1960’s and 1970’s and even in the early 1980’s when irrigation attracted the bulk of international investments in agricultural development. It is due to IWMI – the former Irrigation Management Institute – that the issue of “management” and related topics gained access into the international debate on agricultural water development and have been given ever increasing importance and a sound interdisciplinary scientific foundation since then. 

Roberto Lenton

Director General, IIMI (1987-1994)

 

Largely as a result of high quality publications and effective outreach, IWMI has now become the most authoritative source of research-based information on the management of water for agriculture, and increasingly, on the management of water more generally. IWMI’s work is quoted regularly, not only in scientific circles but also in broader publications with significant influence.

 

IWMI's research over the last two decades has played a major role in making the case, especially to the traditional water engineering community, that the management of water, especially for agriculture, is as important as its development. While few people would dispute this today, in the 1980s this was not at all the conventional wisdom.

 

IWMI's admission to the CGIAR system and its increasing prominence and respectability within the group and beyond (including through the Challenge Programs) has helped make the case to the agricultural research community that research on the management of water for agriculture is not only a vital part of agricultural research, but it also provides new methodological approaches and insights that have helped advance agricultural research more generally.

David Seckler

Director General, IWMI (1995-2000), currently Director, Winrock Water

Extension, refinement, elaboration and promotion of the basin perspective in water resources. Of course IWMI did not discover basins or the limitations of classical irrigation efficiency concepts, but it did do a lot in the way of the above four words.

World Water Supply and Demand Projections. That study was a first and has been followed by many others, including the later IWMI work. It has had a large effect on getting the world to recognize the ongoing and worsening water crisis.

Promoting the use of remote sensing in analyzing irrigation systems. IWMI provided Wim Bastiansen with his first substantial opportunity to apply his theories and sponsored several large-scale tests for a technique that is now being used all over the world.

The work on the health effects of irrigation in terms of malaria control and use of wastewater in irrigation. I believe that this work started a very important movement of research and action around the world.