DWFI expertise tapped for national reports and publications

DWFI’s research and expertise is frequently requested for inclusion in respected industry publications and reports. Below is a sample of the publications.

DWFI featured in 2022 Global Agricultural Productivity Report

The Global Agricultural Productivity Report, known as the GAP Report, is an annual call to action to invest in proven strategies to produce food, feed, fiber, and bioenergy in a sustainable manner to meet the needs of a growing world. DWFI is a consultative partner of the GAP Report and the GAP Initiative at Virginia Tech University that supports it.

Global agricultural systems have been rocked by COVID-19, climate change, extreme weather events, and conflicts in Ukraine and elsewhere, driving up prices for food and agricultural inputs. Thus, the focus of the 2022 GAP Report was "troublesome trends and system shocks."

DWFI provided a partner story for the 2022 GAP Report, featuring the innovative tools the institute has created to help farmers make decisions on their farm. These synergistic tools can boost crop production and reduce negative environmental impacts — both critical parts to increase water and food security around the world. The 2023 report will be released in fall 2023 and include a story on DWFI’s research on the smallholder irrigation ecosystem in Rwanda.

McCornick co-authors paper on water resilient food systems

DWFI Executive Director Peter McCornick co-authored an article in Water Security on water resilient food systems, titled Elevating the role of water resilience in food system dialogues. The article stresses that incentives, innovations in institutions, and technology will be critical to address trade-offs, make difficult decisions and make sound investments.

Authors identify six foundational elements of good governance that could reduce future water insecurity in food systems:

• Treating the food system as a system
• Adopting multi-level governance and participation
• Enabling continual innovation, new knowledge, learning, and dissemination
• Incorporating diversity and redundancy—living resilience
• Ensuring system preparedness
• Plan for the long term

Bell contributes to federally mandated 5th National Climate Assessment

After three years of collaboration, DWFI Director of Water, Climate and Health Jesse Bell and University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health Dean Ali S. Khan will make their final contributions to the Fifth National Climate Assessment in fall 2023.

Federally mandated by Congress in the Global Change Research Act of 1990, the National Climate Assessment is released every five years to serve as the foremost review of research on the current and future impacts of climate change in the United States. After a national search for contributors, Bell and Khan were nominated in 2020 to serve as authors of the assessment’s chapter on human health.

“[The assessment has been] one of the most thorough projects that I have ever worked on and brings together diverse expertise from multiple perspectives. The impacts of climate change are now. We live in a changed climate and see the current impacts of climate change on human health and will continue to see them in the future,” said Bell.

World Wildlife Fund report on sustainable groundwater management for agriculture features Nebraska case study

A recent report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) features a case study from Nebraska and the work of DWFI Water Markets Program Manager Renata Rimšaitė. The report, titled Sustainable Groundwater Management for Agriculture, was launched at World Water Week, an annual global event focused on water management and held in Stockholm, Sweden in which several DWFI staff attended. The highlighted case study focused on statewide groundwater management through local conservation districts, known as Natural Resources Districts in Nebraska.

Groundwater is the most abundant source of freshwater available to humans, despite being largely unseen and unprotected. It supports nearly half of all freshwater ecosystems and the volume of groundwater is 30 times greater than all available liquid freshwater resources found on the surface of our planet (lakes, streams, rivers combined). But groundwater is being overexploited, especially due to agriculture, which threatens ecosystems, infrastructure, food security and resilience, especially in the face of climate change. With one-quarter of global irrigated food production currently dependent on unsustainable groundwater extraction, agricultural use and management of groundwater needs to change.

The WWF report consolidates what is needed for sustainable groundwater management into four basic principles: 1 ) Measure and Manage; 2) Set Sustainable Limits; 3) Recharge and Replenish; and 4) Reduce Demand and Maintain Balance. An easy-to-read literature review, it provides examples of successful solutions from all over the world, including Nebraska.