Water and Land Resource Centre
Water and Land Resource Centre (WLRC) is an autonomous research-for-development (R4D) think tank which was reconstituted in 2011 from projects and programs that succeeded the Soil and Water Conservation Program (SCRP) of the 1980s, which had been implemented in the highland areas of Ethiopia. The Centre is governed by a Board of Trustees (BoT), and its executive organ is headed by a Director General (DG), seconded by a Deputy Director General (DDG).
WLRC’s thematic focus for research and development is on diverse strategic issues of water and land resources management, knowledge management, resource governance, and climate risk management. Starting from the early 2020s, much of its work has been significantly anchored also to livelihoods, resilience building and food systems.
A Snapshot of Contributions
Since its establishment, WLRC has implemented a number of grant projects and made outstanding contributions to society (economy, ecosystems and institutional landscapes) . To name just a few, WLRC has:
- done lots of research works and generated ample scientific knowledge needed for pursual of sustainable water and land resources management, which it shared with government institutions and stakeholders in different forms and avenues.
- demonstrated and extensively supported the implementation of innovative water and land management approaches such as Integrated Landscape Management (ILM) and Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) at watershed or catchment and landscape levels;
- shared knowledge, experiences and lessons with stakeholders and influenced public policy and decision-making relating to water and land resources management;
- piloted and introduced the Learning Watershed model as living ecological labs or live-learning platforms for demonstrating how a complete restoration of degraded landscapes can be achieved through integrated landscape and watershed management approaches;
- developed state-of-the art knowledge management systems for water and land resources, namely Water and Land Resource Information System (WALRIS); Knowledge Management and Information System for Sustainable Land Management (KMIS_SLM); Ethio-GIS; Ethio-Water Audit Information System (WAIS); AwashWare; Coffee Traceability Systems; Exit Strategy, Performance and Sustainability Assessment for Watershed Management (ESPAWM) guidelines; and a number of MobileApps and dashboards; and
- Provided community services, technical backstopping and capacity development support to stakeholder organizations and Ministries whose engagements relate to aspects of water and land.