 Sub-Saharan Africa, home to more than one billion people, is rapidly growing. This expansion results in more people needing more food, leading to significant environmental impacts through land use change for agriculture and the use of water and chemicals. This expansion is most noticeable in rural areas where most of the food is produced. Despite the trend of people moving to cities, most food production continues to take place in these rural landscapes. For example, in Kajiado County, Kenya, vegetable production using irrigation from local rivers has developed rapidly over the last few years. This has brought about increases in farmers' incomes, but it has also raised questions about the negative environmental impacts this way of food production is causing. For example, irrigation may lead to over-exploitation of the scarce river water, which comes from the so-called sand rivers that look dry most of the year but are still carrying water through the landscape under the surface. Besides for irrigation, this water is also needed to supply drinking water and to sustain livestock and wildlife. There are also social implications. For example, in terms of inequality between men and women who work the land, women in this county produce almost 70% of food but have very little rights over the land they work on. National governments often try to regulate these developments by introducing agricultural and environmental policies. However, implementation of such policies is often weak and locally these developments follow their own course. So the big question is how can we increase food production while at the same time protecting the environment and addressing social inequality? How can we bridge the gap between governmental policies and local practices to benefit farmers and achieve sustainable food production? These are the questions that the Polka Project is trying to answer. Another issue that the project is looking at is how gender influences local practices. We are in Kajiado whereby the inhabitants of the Masai community who are majorly pastoralists and due to the introduction of irrigation in the area there has been very great improvements. According to the Masai community, the women were only made to be caretakers and the men were the providers so the women did not have a source of income. But because of irrigation, currently they are the pickers for the produce and these has really improved their livelihoods. In the Polka Project, we will be seeking to get more knowledge on how this availability of water and the irrigation has impacted, especially on gender. Another issue that the project is looking at is how gender influences the local practices that community members are practicing so that we can promote inclusive, equitable and sustainable agricultural systems. The project will explore the role of gender in shaping agricultural knowledge and assess how local practices and national policies can be aligned and benefit each other. Another objective of our project is to learn more about the local knowledge and practices of local farmers that can promote sustainable agricultural practices and environmental conservation. So far, the research on sand rivers has focused on irrigation and water management. We don't know much about the importance of sand rivers for ecosystems and the range of benefits they provide to support people's livelihoods. There is a gap in the study of ecosystem services within the sand rivers and especially here where the community has planted nepia grass and the baboos within the river and also on the banks of the river to prevent flooding during the rainy season. So the Polka Project will fill the gap on identifying the ecosystem services and how they have improved the systems within the catchment. The Polka Project is also working in Uganda where with different partners we are studying initiatives to restore wetlands that have also been impacted by increasing food production. We are working into wetlands but mainly for her. So this wetland has been degraded and then the government came in through the Green Climate Fund to restore it. So it was restored by local communities and the same local communities were originally the local farmers in the wetland. So what we are looking at now is assessing that process and the benefits they are getting by getting out of the water and how the ecosystem services have come back. Drawing upon the diverse expertise of project partners the Polka Project will employ a transdisciplinary research approach. It will organize training webinars and customized learning events for project collaborators and conduct ethnographic and agroecological assessments at the designated case study sites. These sites include in addition to the ones discussed here others in Chad, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Costa Rica and India. The project will actively engage local stakeholders in ecosystem assessment, monitoring and decision making ultimately empowering social actors to drive transformations towards more inclusive, equitable and sustainable food production.