Rethinking the management of agricultural water

In the past thirty years, there have been many efforts to reform agricultural water management in developing countries. However, these have produced few positive results. Policymakers should rethink water sector reforms, particularly now that investment in water infrastructure is increasing.

Efforts to reform agricultural water management have included attempts to ‘educate farmers’ and form Water Users Associations in Philippines, India and other places. During the 1990s, national and international policies proposed water pricing and privatisation to improve water use efficiency and allocations. However, implementation has been limited and, where tried, results have been mixed. Recent policies advocate river basin organisations to achieve ‘integrated’ water management.

All these policies have had a limited impact in two key areas; water productivity and crop yields, and cost recovery from infrastructure investments. Amongst the reasons for this is that government agencies still hold the most power in water governance, with a limited role for users.

These past reform policies have used a ‘social engineering’ approach. This refers to linear models for changing societies or organisations where ‘blueprints’ (lessons learnt, best practices, reform models) are used to replicate successful structures or processes.

This approach fails to restructure bureaucracies or empower users, especially women and ethnic minorities. This limitation is rarely discussed, except in projects led by non-governmental organisations. Policies to change irrigation management can shift power in favour of water users (for example in Turkey), but can also neutralise or reduce their power (for example in Indonesia). This depends on the extent to which different interest groups use and reshape water reform policies and programmes to their own advantage. For example, larger water agencies have successfully managed to reproduce their preferred focus (infrastructure creation) and maintain managerial and policy dominance.

Instead, policymakers should use ‘organic analogies’. This refers to the fact that each water governance system and reform process is a product of its environment, rather than a replica of processes elsewhere. Changes to the management of agricultural water may be influenced, catalysed and guided by approaches elsewhere, but these models cannot force reforms.

Societies are complex; water policies should address the specific context of each reform and acknowledge its inherently political nature. In each situation, policymakers should ask:

• What will be the benefits of institutional and policy reform, and how will these be distributed?
• What will be the costs of policy reform, and who will bear them?
• Which coalition of interest groups (such as irrigation agencies, environmental NGOs and political parties) will push forward and implement reforms?
• Around which issues can policymakers most productively support such coalitions?
• What can realistically be done by bilateral and multilateral development agencies to enable institutional transformations?
• How can academics, consultants and practitioners play a more active role in reforming the water sector?

Furthermore, policymakers should:

• analyse water management problems as ‘issue networks’ that extend and change in space and time, rather than see problems as geographically confined to hydrological watersheds
• create governance structures that acknowledge and include the many organisations, institutions and ecosystem services in the water sector.

Peter P. Mollinga
ZEF Center for Development Research, Walter Flex Str. 3, 53113 Bonn, Germany
pmollinga@uni-bonn.de

See also

‘Policy and Institutional Reform Processes for Sustainable Agricultural Water Management: The Art of the Possible’ by Douglas J. Merrey, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Peter P. Mollinga and Eiman Karar, Chapter 5 in Water for Food Water for Life, Earthscan: London, edited by David Molden, 2007

‘Water Policy – Water Politics. Social engineering and strategic action in water sector reform’ by Peter P. Mollinga, chapter in Global and national water politics in developing countries and in countries in transition, Nomos/German Development Institute, edited by Waltina Scheumann, Susanne Neubert and Martin Kipping, 2007

The Politics of Irrigation Reform: Contested Policy Formulation and Implementation in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, Ashgate: Hants, UK, edited by P. Mollinga and A. Bolding, 2004

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