COSTEA – A think tank dedicated to water for food in the face of climate change challenges
COSTEA is a think tank dedicated to water for food in the face of climate change challenges. It brings together an international community for reflection and action, including experts, scientists, agricultural water managers, project owners, public officials, and technical and financial partners. It aims to produce, share, and promote knowledge and public policy recommendations to meet the challenges of irrigated agriculture.
Context
Demographic, food security, and climate change issues have been at the heart of discussions since the late 2000s, returning irrigation to a subject of interest for countries in the Global South. However, past failures and poor performance linked to changing social, environmental, climatic, and technical contexts have led to a renewal in how irrigation is conceptualized. It was in this context that COSTEA was created in 2013 in France by the AFD (French Development Agency), the project funder, and Eau Agriculture et Territoires (formerly AFEID), the project owner, to support the growing demand from Southern states for reinvestment in irrigation.
The think tank has progressively expanded internationally by networking these partners within a scientific and technical council of nearly 800 members from several countries.
Its collective governance is based on a Steering Committee, a strategic body composed of representatives from member states (through their sectoral ministries in charge of water for agriculture), which sets strategic directions and validates COSTEA’s objectives.
To date, the member states are:
Cambodia
France
Mauritania
Morocco
Palestine
Senegal
Chad
Tunisia
Our conviction is simple: the challenges related to water for food can only be met through cooperation, knowledge sharing, and dialogue between the various stakeholders involved.
Our work is part of a systemic vision of irrigated agriculture. It is based on the idea that food security, food sovereignty, and territorial resilience issues require a renewal of public policies and practices. Irrigated systems cannot be understood solely from a technical perspective: they must integrate the environmental, social, institutional, economic, land tenure, and territorial dimensions that determine their sustainability.
COSTEA also considers that adaptation to climate change and the reduction of the environmental footprint of irrigated agriculture are major priorities for the coming years. In this perspective, agroecology represents an essential path to support the transition of agricultural systems, strengthen their resilience, and reconcile productive performance, natural resource preservation, and food security.
Finally, COSTEA advocates for an approach based on dialogue between research, technical expertise, public decision-makers, managers, and field actors. It believes that the most relevant solutions emerge from the confrontation of knowledge, experiences, and local realities.
Produce knowledge and references through multi-year structuring actions
Promote the expertise and experiences of its members through collaborative actions resulting in various forms of publications
Provide operational expertise and consulting services in response to requests from member countries
Offer training on some of the themes addressed by COSTEA
Communicate its actions to members and stakeholders in irrigated agriculture
Participate in international events related to the irrigated agriculture sector
The deliverables and outputs resulting from actions funded by COSTEA are public, accessible to all, and intended to be distributed freely and widely by COSTEA, its members, and its partners.
The think tank promotes open and inclusive participation, attentive to the diversity of genders, generations, territories, disciplines, and professional backgrounds. This diversity constitutes an essential asset for the quality of exchanges and the relevance of collectively produced knowledge.
COSTEA organizes reflection groups, field expertise, cross-experience feedback, and training on four main themes:
Agroecological re-engineering and management of collective irrigated systems
Wastewater reuse for agriculture
Mitigating the impact of irrigated agriculture on climate change
Participatory and inclusive territorial water governance
We bring together the full range of French and international expertise in the field of irrigation, including consulting firms, research, institutional actors, and civil society
We can thus capitalize on and promote shared experiences and expertise to make them available to actors involved in irrigation policies and projects in AFD intervention countries and in France. We offer them a conceptual and methodological framework and occasional support to improve the effectiveness of their actions
We thus wish to contribute to improving irrigation policies and projects in AFD intervention countries, for the realization of sustainable irrigated systems, taking into account productivity requirements and all dimensions of economic, social, and environmental sustainability
Since its creation, COSTEA has developed its activities through several successive phases, marked by the progressive expansion of its network, its intervention themes, and its international roots:
2013 – 2017
This first phase laid the foundations of COSTEA with a central ambition: to bring together research, public decision-making, and field actors. The period was devoted to structuring the scientific and technical community, defining priority areas of work, and initial actions to capitalize on the performance of hydro-agricultural developments and water management in agriculture.
2017 – 2023
The second phase marked a change in scale. COSTEA expanded its network of partners, diversified and deepened its work on the major challenges of irrigated agriculture: agroecological transition, treated wastewater reuse, water resource governance, irrigated land tenure, services to irrigators, and economic analyses. Territorial and participatory approaches took on a growing role, with increased attention paid to the production and dissemination of knowledge useful for action and public policy.
This phase also strengthened the production and capitalization of knowledge from research and field experience, as well as its discussion with decision-makers and practitioners to inform public policies.
Since 2023
Rooted in a context of heightened climate urgency, the third phase directs COSTEA’s action toward the sustainable transformation of irrigated systems and direct support for public policies.
This ambition is embodied in a major evolution of its governance, ‘the strengthening of COSTEA’s institutional anchoring’: the Steering Committee (COPIL) now includes decision-makers representing the sectoral ministries of eight member states. This body sets the think tank’s strategic directions to directly support countries in developing their agroecological transition and climate change adaptation strategies.