Between water stewardship and independent global water certification: learning from smallholder rice farmers, Karonga, Malawi

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Cooperation and locally driven water management are at the forefront of food production water management for smallholder farmers in low-income countries. The aim of this paper was to critically reflect on the experiences of 5,819 smallholder rice farmers in Karonga District, Malawi, who were members of a farmers’ organization that achieved improved water stewardship, but could not achieve Alliance for Water Stewardship certification within a three-year project. The data for this paper were obtained through farmer and stakeholder interviews. The partnership attempted to bring together four parties: academics, farmers, local government, and a non-governmental organization. The farmers were trained by combining stewardship and certification topics through a train-the-trainer approach. The farmers’ organization primarily focuses on agribusiness; therefore, they did not have any water-related data or detailed farm boundaries from the large and dispersed group of farmers and could not obtain a collective water permit. Understanding water governance was difficult for many farmers. Furthermore, moving from stewardship to certification presented some financial challenges. Critical thinking and questioning are required, along with a deeper understanding of the local context, logistical hindrances, priorities, alternatives, culture, and science, to evaluate how projects are designed and partially succeed or fail from the perspective of low-income farmers in the Global South.