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Abstract:
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"In what some may regard as an overly ambitious exercise, we have chosen in this paper to present some salient aspects of the evolution of Asian irrigation. The focus is on South and Southeast Asia. It is argued that geo-politics has provided the main driving force for the development of public irrigation systems in Asia. Three geo-political eras are identified – the Colonial Era (1850 to 1940), the Cold War Era (1950 to 1989), and the new Era of Globalization (1990 onward). The objectives of irrigation development set forth by colonial regimes, national governments, and development agencies in each of these time periods have been rather similar. The focus has been on the often conflicting goals of poverty alleviation and food security on the one hand and profitability and revenue collection on the other. Irrigated agriculture, however, has changed dramatically and has in turn fostered change and economic development in the rural communities. Irrigation has evolved in each of these periods through a dialectic interaction among resources, technologies, institutions, and culture. Land and water, once abundant, have become scarce. Surface and groundwater technologies have been developed to facilitate the expansion of irrigated area and intensification of irrigated agriculture. But the success of these endeavours has brought new problems. The intensification of irrigated agriculture has led to an increase in pollution and environmental degradation. Food grain prices have plummeted with the result that the benefits of irrigation have gone largely to consumers. Farm households have looked to other sources of income from both farm and non-farm sources. The rural economies are undergoing social as well as an economic transformation and the rural-urban frontier is getting blurred. There has been a serious lag in the development of appropriate institutions to deal with the new environment of water scarcity. The challenge ahead lies in creating the institutions that can: (i) allocate water equitably among competing uses and users, (ii) integrate management of irrigation at farm, system, and basin level to reduce upstream-downstream and head-tail conflicts, (iii) integrate the management of ground and surface water irrigation, and (iv) address the problems of irrigation development, including use of waste water, in environment and health. This agenda represents an important component of integrated water resource management (IWRM). The central point in institutional reform is to define entitlements or 'rights', in order to determine the allocation and access among users and uses at the basin, system, village, and farm level. The growing importance of common-pool groundwater resources adds greatly to the complexity of then problem. The task is monumental. It is likely to take years, perhaps even decades, to establish enforceable water rights and the complementary set of institutions for IWRM."
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