Participation in irrigation water management

Individuals make decisions and they mobilize and manage resources, but there are limits on what can be
accomplished without collective action. By their very nature, communication and conflict management
require involvement of more than one person. In irrigation management, the activities of decision
making, resource mobilization and management, communication, and conflict resolution encompass the
main focuses of common effort among users. Moreover, they represent also the ways in which users can
participate in irrigation management at higher levels within the system.

Decision-making involves more than simply deciding on a course of action. It requires

evaluation of performance, identification of problems, gathering information, formulating
alternative solutions, building consensus, with decision-making consolidating the various
activities. Resource mobilization is the most visible organizational activity in irrigation
management, directed most dramatically toward construction as a one-time effort or more
commonly to maintenance as an ongoing activity or for rehabilitation. Labor is the resource
most extensively mobilized, through money and materials are also important; likewise farmers’
information should be regarded as a major available resource.

Even an impressive amount of resource mobilization will not produce the expected benefits
unless there is good resource management. This can be provided by users in many
circumstances. Whether it is easier for users to contribute labor than cash will depend on their
circumstances. Where money incomes are low farmers usually prefer providing labor, but when
there are good opportunities for wages employment or, other claims on farmers’ time, they
may wish to make payments instead of participating in work parties. Some form of labor
mobilization is common in most system, at least to deal with O & M requirements at lower
levels. Still, there are limits to how much of the cost of irrigation management can be covered
by labor contributions.

If we want to get ‘real participation’ it is therefore not enough to set up a Water User
Association or a user group. It is very important to look at existing water use and control
structure activities (and existing organizations for management thereof) to get an idea of new
setup make sense or not.
However, problems in irrigation management have persisted, and the enthusiasm about
turnover/decentralization of irrigation management from the government to water users is
partly the result of failure of the ‘participation’ approaches. Shift has become noticeable in the
policies for local organization in water management and in the conceptual frameworks
underlying the model of WUAs. In the new framework, ‘participation’ has been complemented
by a broader focus on “performance”. This shift reflects the adoption of typical (neo) liberal
values which stress less focus on large public investments in infrastructure, more focus on
people’s own responsibility. This fitted well with the changing development paradigm (and less
willingness/money to invest in large scale public infrastructure) a public from development
outfit with a focus on self-governance which has been popular around the world since the
1980s.

Decision makers play an important role in water resource management. They may subjectively
use different methods to address the same water resource management problem because of
the impact of culture, water policies, and the cognitive ability to solve problems. How one
makes a decision largely depends on one’s culture and personality (e.g., hierarchist,
individualist, egalitarian, and fatalist) (Douglas, 1982), which are internal causes, as well as
one’s cognitive ability. Water policies are external causes for decision makers and are
influenced by government, climate change, and economic development.

Water allocation

Water allocation is the process of sharing available water between (legitimate) claimants at a
specific time, in accordance with specified conditions. Water allocation regime is defined as the
complex set of institution, arrangement and infrastructure that dictate who gets water, when,
and for what?

The way water is allocated between users (cities, farmers, energy suppliers, industry and the
environment) and within sectors (such as between low-value subsistence agriculture and high
value export crops) affects the overall welfare of a basin and the distribution of wealth among
water users.

Water allocation becomes especially important in regions where water is scarce and water
users compete to access the water they need. This competition is likely to increase due to
rapidly growing water demand in many sectors such as energy supply, industry, and domestic
use.

According to economic theory, water allocation is efficient, i.e. pareto-optimal, if it is impossible

to make one member of society better off without making some other member- (s) worse off.
Efficiency is necessary, but not sufficient, to optimize social welfare. There can be an infinite
number of paretol-optimal resource allocations. A second criterion is required to discriminate
among efficient allocation: Equity.

According to economic theory, water allocation is socially optimal if it satisfies two criteria: the
allocation must be efficient; and the final distribution of water must be equitable (i.e. fair)

The combination of these two conditions - efficiency and equity - defines the socially optimal
allocation of water, i.e. water’s being allocated in a way that maximizes social welfare.
(Hellegers and Leflaive 2015 p275-276). The spatial distribution of agricultural water demand is
one of the main elements used by decision makers to allocate water to different regions. Based
on these key parameters, a water resource management model is employed to develop an
irrigation water allocation scheme for different levels of users.

Water resource management problems exhibit large differences between regions or countries
due to the impacts of geological conditions, water policies, economic development, and the
complex relationships among water management sectors. In economically developed countries
or regions, there are high-quality hydraulic infrastructures, flow, and water quality monitoring
systems, and efficient water-saving technologies. Water resource management problems focus
on how to optimize drip irrigation, spray irrigation, and sprinklers to allocate water at small
spatial scales (Pedras et al., 2009) and how to control the emission of pollutants and their
migration to protect water quality and aquatic ecosystems (Monte et al.,2009). At the middle
reaches of the Heihe River Basin, however, flood irrigation is the common system, and water
allocation for different levels of water use units, rather than water quality problems, is a the
priority for decision makers.

Equity

The early “gender and environment” debate was mainly preoccupied with establishing the
ideological connection between the domination of women and that of nature. Common
property resources appear in the debate as symbols of more egalitarian and ecologically
healthy societies (see Agarwal, 1992). The “participation” debate is more directly rooted in
development, and emerged as an alternative to top-down development approaches. Within the
context of natural resources management, participation of users or stakeholders is
predominantly seen as a means to improve efficiency of resource use (Raby, 1991; Lynch,
1985). Studies of locally managed forests, irrigation systems, or grazing lands are used to
substantiate the belief that these natural resources are most effectively and efficiently
managed by their users. Most authors of both streams of thinking do not explicitly
conceptualize gender relations, or any social relation of power for that matter. They do,
nevertheless, provide a number of strong and influential arguments for questioning women’s
lack of rights to common property resources.

The historical argument provided by the “gender and environment” debate is as follows:
although in most societies gender is and has always been one of the structuring principles to
determine inheritance and ownership rights of property, women were not always or
automatically the ones without access or control. In the pre-colonial and early colonial period,
many natural resources were not in the hands of individuals or households, and availability for
use to members of communities was arranged through a complex variety of customary rights
and arrangements (Agarwal, 1994; Rocheleau and Edmunds, 1997; Lastarria-Cornhiel, 1997).
The common property or public nature of these resources implied that women usually had
some form of access to them.

Water rights