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The report evaluates three AWM scenarios in Tanzania's Mkindo watershed: expanding small-scale irrigation and livestock storage, intensifying agriculture via pumps and drainage channels, and large-scale cash crop expansion. It finds that while technological interventions can increase yields and incomes, they often introduce conflicts between farmers and livestock keepers, environmental pollution, and social displacement.

The report assesses three primary livelihood strategies in the Mkindo watershed: official irrigation agriculture, rainfed agriculture with supplementary irrigation, and livestock keeping. It identifies that while irrigated farmers are financially better off, rainfed farmers are more secure than livestock keepers. Key challenges across the watershed include poor road infrastructure, limited access to financial services, poor water quality leading to frequent health issues like malaria and typhoid, and escalating conflicts between farmers and livestock keepers over land and water access.

The report argues that AWM interventions often fail to capture holistic impacts beyond direct project boundaries, frequently overlooking negative externalities and socio-economic shifts. To address this, the authors propose a synthesised M&E framework based on five livelihood capitals: financial, human, natural, physical, and social. The document emphasizes the necessity of baseline assessments, participatory M&E, and the inclusion of both project-level and impact-level indicators to facilitate adaptive management. It applies this framework to review the M&E practices of International Development Enterprises (IDE) and IDE-India, and demonstrates its use in a baseline assessment in the Mkindo watershed of Tanzania.