The world is experiencing both unprecedented forest loss and increasingly severe floods and drought events. These issues are often approached independently, despite the critical influence forest and water have on each other and in providing ecosystem services. This webinar, held on August 23, 2019 and sponsored by Winrock International, discusses innovative research demonstrating these interrelationships and how these findings can be used for policy and decision-making to achieve informed and coordinated natural resource management.

Moderator:

Between April and October 2018, Whave conducted five factor mapping workshops in Kamuli District, Uganda to learn about factors that affect the functionality of rural water services in the area. Factor mapping is a stakeholder-driven activity that seeks to create understanding of local systems and system leverage points by sharing, challenging, and making explicit stakeholders’ assumptions of how issues arise from a complex interaction of unique factors. This SWS report presents a synopsis of findings and methodology from the factor mapping and learning (IFML) process.

The U.S. Government Global Water Strategy sets water security as its overarching goal. The strategy envisions a water-secure world, where people and nations have the water they need to be healthy, prosperous, and resilient. Achieving water security requires understanding how complicated and interconnected social, environmental, political, and economic factors shape access to safe drinking water and sustainable management of water resources.