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Conference Paper Challenges in Getting off the Ground the New Nicaraguan Water Law: From Farmer Groups to Formalized Irrigation Districts?(2011) Novo, P.; Garrido, A.; Meinzen-Dick, Ruth"The Nicaraguan Water Law was passed in September 2007. While all new Water Laws need time to be implemented, the progress in Nicaragua is meager. Nicaragua’s water sector, especially in rural areas, is highly informal and primarily based on small water supply systems and on local informal water institutions. The new Water Law foresees setting up irrigation districts to improve water management in the agricultural sector. Despite the lack of formal users’ organizations, there is evidence of farmer groups sharing and managing common irrigation systems without any formal bonds or statutes. The objective of this research is to assess the challenges in the formalization process of the agricultural water sector in a developing country, such as Nicaragua. Since major water-related problems have already been identified, the new Water Law still faces a number of barriers that may delay its implementation. It is essential to indentify the socioeconomic, institutional and environmental factors that structure incentives for farmers to willingly become involved in a formalization process. The theoretical framework is based on the literature on collective action and social capital. The empirical focus is given by 5 focus groups and 98 surveys hold in the Upper Rio Viejo Sub-basin in North Nicaragua. The study focuses on (i) the problems related to agricultural production that farmers face, (ii) how they are organized for irrigation, (iii) how they perceive public organizations and (iv) the pros and cons of formalizing in irrigation districts. The study attempts to contribute to the Water Law implementation by analyzing both the impact of the Water Law in agricultural water managed areas and the cooperative behavior of the different farmer groups considered in the Upper Rio Viejo Sub-basin."Conference Paper Examining the Gendered Dimensions in Using Open Access Water for Production Among Rural Market Gardeners(2011) Gutsa, Ignatius" • 70% of Zimbabweans live in rural areas. • Rural livelihoods linked to access, use and management of natural resources (subsistence and income generation). • Water entry point to poverty alleviation and livelihoods protection. • Water strategic resource for development (IUCN 2005). • Women traditionally recognised and accepted as main users of water • However gender relations limit their access to, control and use of water. • Most households in Goromonzi depend on surface water to produce food and earn an income. • Mutsvati dam located in Goromonzi district • Irrigation infrastructure appears uniform (water pumped from dam or seasonal river to gardens) • Buckets, simple technology treadle pumps, hand pumps and motor powered water pumps used to apply water to the fields. • Gardens watered and cultivated by individuals or families (women mainly performing the work)."Conference Paper The Commercialization of Common Pool Resources(2011) Parr, Adrian"Unsurprisingly, the water crisis is capturing the attention of social activists, journalists, and politicians. And it is being billed as a problem of far greater magnitude than the looming oil crisis. The reason is almost too obvious to state: A person might be able to live without food for several weeks but they cannot survive without water for more than a few days. As a result, there is a lively discussion over how to most effectively avert the crisis by restructuring systems of water management. This has spurred on a blossoming water market that has facilitated the privatization of water infrastructure, resources and technologies."Conference Paper Sustaining Mangrove Forests to Reduce Vulnerability of Coastal Villages from Climate Change(2011) Das, Saudamini"Mangrove forests provide a range of welfare enhancing services to humans, but they also provide life support during calamities like tropical storms by reducing the probability of death. The coastal regions of India face a maximum threat from tropical cyclones due to climate change as these areas are situated at the coast of one of the core areas of cyclogenesis, namely, the Bay of Bengal. Studies on vulnerability indexing of these areas to cyclone and storm surge risks have identified Kendrapada district of East Coast of India to be either the most or the second most vulnerable district of the country. We study the 262 villages lying within a 10 km distance from the coast of the Kendrapada district and compare the relative vulnerability of these villages by estimating the village wise probability of facing human fatality due to severe storms. We calculate such probability from a cyclone impact (human deaths) function where a wide range of factors including natural ecosystems like presence of mangrove forest are used to control for the exposure and adaptive capacity of the villages. Presence or absence of mangroves comes out as an important factor impacting vulnerability. Villages established after clearing the forest in mangrove habitat areas and those with more marginal workers are found to face a very high death risk and villages situated in the leeward side of existing mangrove forest are seen to be facing a much lower risk of deaths. The results have important implications for conservation of mangrove forests in cyclone prone areas and also in the design of development policies for villages established in the mangrove habitat."Conference Paper Diagnose Complexity in Social-Ecological System: Understanding Irrigation Institutional Changes in Imperial China(2011) Wang, Yahua"Adopting the diagnostic approach that Ostrom (2007) proposed, this paper offers an in-depth explanation of the emergence of irrigation self-organization in Qing China. The paper examine the underlying variables identified by Ostrom (2009) for self-organization with Chinese empirical materials from a history dynamic perspective, and shows that the SES framework is fairly robust as a powerful tool to diagnose the complexity in the social-ecological system. Besides the variables affecting the likelihood of self-organization identified by Ostrom (2009), the variables in contextual settings have been proved to be important such as the population trends, government policies and globalization, which provided initial forces or supporting environment for the development of self-organization in this study. Identifying the complex interactions among the variables is a big task for social scientists and better theories can be developed with the guidance of the SES framework."Conference Paper Transactions Matter, but Hardly Cost: Irrigation Management in Kathmandu Valley(2011) Bhattarai, Ram Chandra"This paper estimates the transaction cost in maintaining Farmers Managed Irrigation System (FMIS) in Nepal. It analyzes the factors influencing the transaction cost and compares it with the production cost in agriculture. This study is based on a case of Kathmandu valley covering 60 irrigation systems. The findings of the study show that the main element of transaction time is watching, waiting and negotiating which constitutes more than 92 percent of the total transaction time. The study also shows that the transaction time is relatively low for FMIS amounting to 5 % to that of total time required for the production of crops. The transaction time is higher for the households cultivating the land at downstream of the canal compared to the households cultivating the land at upstream of the canal. In terms of crops transaction time for the cultivation of winter crops is three times higher than that of the summer crop. The total value of output per hectare is significantly affected by transaction cost, reliability of the irrigation facility and infrastructure quality. However, there is an advantage of being a free rider and hence there seems to be a problem in collective action. If the institutions could somehow control for free-riding or deviant behavior, then presumably it would improve institutional efficiency and reduce expost transaction cost."Conference Paper Protecting of Reservations in Irrigation Schemes in Sri Lanka: Legal, Institutional and Social Issues(2011) Kamaladasa, Badra"Reservation in an Irrigation scheme which is a very important common that is needed for the sustainability of the whole system, can be broadly classified in to three types, one on the catchment and another associated with the headworks and downstream system and the third one the borrow areas and pasture lands. Reservation on the catchment is usually set apart to ensure quality and quantity of inflow to the reservoir. Due to limited land resources in a country like Sri Lanka, it is difficult to enforce strict regulations on catchments. Most of the time it is considered as a buffer zone where certain human activities are allowed as long as these do not conflict with the prime objective of the catchment reservations. But the reservations set apart adjoining the irrigation headworks and downstream system are to be protected strictly as areas thus reserved are essential for safety of the structures, use as access by the operation and maintenance personnel or may need for future developments of the project. In the recent past it was observed that incident of encroaching irrigation reservation had been increased. It was further observed that authority over the reservations is vested with many government organizations which are individually responsible for land or environment matters in the scheme or operation & management of the scheme. Overlapping these functions had prevented timely action on unauthorized activities in the reservations. In this paper shortcomings in the current legal and institutional framework will be discussed with the suggestions for improving the system. The social background that led the individuals to encroach the reservations also will be highlighted to suggest what intervention the government can make to control this situation."Conference Paper Intersecting Productivity and Poverty: Lessons from the Ganga Basin(2011) Clement, Floriane; Haileslassie, Amare; Ishaq, Saba"Increasing water productivity appears at the top of most agricultural water policy agendas around the world. It is usually assumed that gains in water productivity will always directly or indirectly improve livelihoods and reduce poverty through increased water availability, higher food security and agricultural incomes. Whereas many economics studies have established a strong correlation between agricultural growth and poverty, numerous activists in India and elsewhere have increasingly questioned the productivity paradigm. This paper adopts a qualitative approach to investigate some of the links between productivity and poverty through an institutional analysis of livestock water productivity interventions across three districts of the Ganga Basin, North India. We do not pretend giving a comprehensive review of the water productivity/poverty nexus but rather discuss a few prominent issues: the differentiated forms of capitals required to access to water, equity and democratic decentralisation."Conference Paper Roman Water Law in Rural Africa: Dispossession, Discrimination and Weakening State Regulation?(2011) Van Koppen, Barbara; Van Der Zaag, Pieter; Manzungu, Emmanuel; Tapela, Barbara; Mapedza, Everisto"The recent water law reforms in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere strengthen permit systems. This water rights regime is rooted in Roman water law. The European colonial powers introduced this law in their colonies, especially in Latin America and later also in Sub-Saharan Africa. By declaring most waters as being public waters, they vested ownership of water resources in their overseas kings. This dispossessed indigenous peoples from their prior claims to water, while the new formal water rights (or permits) were reserved for colonial allies. At independence, ownership of water resources shifted to the new governments but the nature of the water laws, including the formal cancellation of indigenous water rights regimes as one of the plural water rights regimes, remained uncontested. This colonial legacy remained equally hidden in the recent reforms strengthening permit system. Based on research on the new permit systems in a context of legal pluralism in Tanzania, Mexico, South Africa, Ghana, Mozambique and elsewhere, this paper addresses two dilemmas. The first is: how can the dispossession and discrimination be reverted by recognizing and even encouraging informal water self-supply since time immemorial to meet basic livelihood needs by millions of small-scale water users? The second dilemma, which prevails in Sub- Saharan Africa, but less in Latin America, is: can permit systems become effective regulatory tools to combat water over-use and pollution, collect revenue, and, where historical justice warrants, to re-allocate water from the haves to the have-nots, as South Africa’s water law aims? The paper provides evidence and best practices on, first, how the state can recognize legal pluralism and informal water rights regimes, and, second, how state regulation can only become effective through lean and targeted measures, so without nation-wide permits."Conference Paper Groundwater Management through the ‘Commons’ Lens: Recognizing Complexity(2011) Kulkarni, Himanshu"The complex nature and diverse contextual regime of groundwater problems in India compel the development of a strategic approach to groundwater management. The complexity itself is due to the wide diversity not only in the hydrogeological framework that defines the accumulation and movement of groundwater in different physical settings, but also in the social and economic drivers that determine groundwater use patterns and changes therein through a time-line. India is divided into six or seven different ‘settings’ to understand the complexity. Each setting can be described based on hydrogeological systems (including the variability within one setting), the social-economic factors that are influenced by (and which, in turn influence) groundwater resource status and response strategies adopted by policy makers and communities to mitigate groundwater related challenges. Clearly, each setting warrants a strategic outlook if groundwater is to be managed on a ‘commons-basis’. The development of strategies to respond to groundwater over-use and deteriorating groundwater quality require a ‘process-based’ approach, wherein there is a need to redefine the institutional structure that looks into groundwater problems in India. The process-based approach has many advantages over the current ‘institutional silo’ approach. First, it begins with a principle: the principle of perceiving groundwater resources under the category ‘commons’. Further, ‘processes’ are central to addressing groundwater problems and do not necessarily involve one-off solutions that are expected to constitute a ‘pill for all ills’. Second, strategy development can happen efficiently only in a ‘phased’ manner, with each strategy subject to adaptation and refinement as experience is gained."