Agricultural water projects contribute in several ways to achieving the Millennium Development Goals of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger and ensuring environmental sustainability. Increased yields and cropping area and shifts to higher-value crops help boost the incomes of farm households, generate employment, and lower consumer food prices. They also stabilize incomes and employment. Community participation and the creation of water user groups have become integral parts of these projects, which have empowered users and made them self-reliant. Mainstreaming monitoring and evaluating (M&E) will help generate the data to establish the cost-effectiveness of projects in reducing poverty and propose ways to improve it. Published by the World Bank June 2006