Participatory Irrigation Management

Abstract

In most developing countries, irrigation development project and their operation and management are heavily dominated by the public sector. Conventional wisdom once assumed that only the state was capable of handling large modern projects requiring heavy capital investment, complicated technical inputs, and the legal mandate to distribute water, and collect fees. Recent experience in many countries has over tuned these assumptions. Government-operated irrigation systems are often poorly maintained with steadily deteriorating infrastructure. Yet some of these same systems have shown dramatic improvement when their management was transferred farmer groups who entered into contracts with
the government for operating and maintaining portions of the irrigation system. For the past two decades most countries have adopted policies to encourage greater involvement of farmers on irrigation O&M but only recently has this trend gained momentum to transfer the balance of responsibility from government to farmers. Two of most dramatic management transfer programs have been in Mexico, where the government has transferred more than 1.2 million ha of irrigated lands to WUAs, and in Turkey, where a majority of agency controlled system have been transferred to user management.