Efforts in developing countries to improve the food supply, increase employment, and alleviate poverty all depend on an adequate and equitably distributed supply of water. Since the 1950s, developing countries have spent billions of dollars—and they plan to spend billions more—for irrigation projects to improve crop yields and keep food production ahead of population growth. Yet these projects often fail to achieve the results their designers planned. The head reaches of some irrigation systems are often overwatered, while the tail reaches that deliver water to farmers' fields do not receive enough. In tube-well irrigation systems, farmers with deeper wells and more powerful pumps often lower the level of groundwater so that their poorer neighbors, with shallower wells, get little water at all.

Helping governments to devise solutions to these and other problems will be the responsibility of the International Irrigation Management Institute (iimi), a new institution now being set up with the assistance of a consortium of governments and aid organizations, including the Foundation. iimi, which will be headquartered in Sri Lanka, will organize field research, train specialists, and disseminate information on ways to ensure efficient and equitable water distribution. iimi will have a small staff of specialists trained in engineering, agriculture, management, and the social sciences. It will assign field units to countries to work with national irrigation agencies in finding remedies for poorly functioning systems. The Foundation this year contributed $1.55 million toward iimi's core operating costs, about one-fifth of the total required for its first three years.

In some countries with largescale irrigation systems, major changes need to be made if water is to be distributed more equitably and at lower cost. In Egypt, for example, delivery of water to many farmers is irregular, and water rotation schedules are often poorly adjusted to cropping needs. Partly for these reasons, food output has failed to keep abreast of a population growth rate of 2.3 percent a year. To make more water available to small-scale farmers, the Egyptian government, with Foundation assistance, is studying ways to integrate the use of groundwater with surface water in irrigation projects. Water would thus be freed for eventual use in land reclamation, and drainage problems would be reduced as the water table was lowered.

In the Sudan, where two-thirds of the population live within the Nile Basin and agriculture and industry are both dependent on its waters, the University of Khartoum's Institute of Environmental Studies received supplementary Foundation assistance. The institute, a growing source of trained personnel for comprehensive study of complex resource management problems, will use the funds to strengthen its research and training programs in the management of water resources of the Blue Nile and the White Nile.

The Ganges river system of the Indian subcontinent has long presented great problems and great opportunities. In Bangladesh, for example, about 30 million people rely on its waters for their livelihoods, while fearing the effects of alternating floods and drought. These natural variations, however, are made worse by human intervention—primarily deforestation and erosion brought on by increased settlement of fragile hill lands. For a study of long-term environmental changes in that part of the lower Ganges plain immediately downstream from Bangladesh's border with India, Jahangirnagar University received a grant of $163,700.

Small-scale lift irrigation has become an increasingly important means of expanding food production and generating employment among the rural poor. Several projects designed to increase the use of this type of irrigation received Foundation