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Types of Irrigation Management Transfer in India
(1996) Brewer, Jeffrey D.; Raju, K. Vengamma
"The Government of India and many of the state governments have decided that irrigation management transfer is one means to help solve some major problems in the performance of irrigation systems in all types of irrigation systems. However, the policies and programs adopted by the states, although influenced by national policies, differ considerably. Each state has adopted or is considering adoption of irrigation management transfer policies that are adapted to a) cultural traditions and prior policies in the state, b) physical and ecological conditions in the state, and c) the goals of the irrigation agencies. "This paper, using data from six states in India, identifies the major types of policies and arrangements being carried out and identifies the factors underlying the choices of management models made in each state. Some data on the level of operational, maintenance, financial, and agricultural performance is provided. Based on key elements, particularly the right and functions that are proposed for transfer from the government to the farmers, the paper proposes a typology of irrigation management transfer models in India and discusses the applicability of this typology in other parts of the world."
Role of Community in Irrigation Management: Sustainability of Traditional Water Harvesting Practices in South India
(1996) Chidananda, B. L.; Gracy, C. P.; Suryaprakash, S.
"Many of the developing countries including India are endowed with a variety of natural resources which have helped In crop diversity and growth. In India a substantial share of budgetary resources apart from Private Investments have been made on irrigation development each year. Historically also many of the rulers, kings and local leaders have evinced keen interest in developing irrigation structures. Statistics show that the overall irrigated area in the world rose from an estimated 8 million hectares in the year 1800 to 260 million hectares in 1994. India and China have contributed to as much as 40 per cent of the increase from developing countries. But the productivity per unit of water is very low in India due to various management factors. "Since there is a natural limit on the water availability for irrigation, due to decrease in the annual rainfall and other factors, efforts must be made towards conserving water. In most of the areas the problem with minor irrigation is that of the receding water table. Of late the policy makers have realised the need for reviving traditional irrigation structures. In the recent past many tanks have become defunct and those which are functional have reduced capacity to irrigate owing to the bad management practices. In scanty rainfall areas the water from seasonal streams are harvested by constructing pickups at suitable locations and it is very popular in coconut belts of Karnataka. "This study examines the institutional factors responsible for the deterioration of tank irrigation, the community management practices for tanks and pickups and an assessment of the sustainability of the management practices towards rehabilitating the tanks for irrigation."
Staking a Claim: Politics and Conflicts between Statutory and Customary Water Rights in Nepal
(1997) Pradhan, Rajendra; Pradhan, Ujjwal
Subsequently published as: Pradhan, Rajendra, and Ujjwal Pradhan 1996. "Staking a Claim: Law, Politics and Water Rights in Farmer Managed Irrigation Systems in Nepal." In, Joep Spiertz and Melanie G. Wiber (eds.) The Role of Law in Natural Resources Management, pp 61-76. The Hague: VUGA Uitgeverij B.V. This is a special issue of Recht der Werkelijheid, published from the Netherlands by the same publisher (VUGA). "This paper explores two sets of issues: first concerning the consequences of state intervention and the second concerning the significance of law, for water rights. It discusses the (un)intended consequences of state intervention in farmer managed irrigation systems for water rights: the customary rights of the existing rights holders are no longer secure and made secondary to state rights. Further, opportunities are provided for new claimants to stake claims to water rights in irrigation systems or water sources from which they had been excluded. "The second set of arguments concerns the significance of law and the relation between law and social relations in staking claims, conflicts and disputes, and alteration of water rights arrangements. Law confers legitimacy to claims and rights but it does not by itself guarantee or alter water rights. Further, the question is not only whether to use law but which law to use and how and where claims are to be asserted. In legal plural situations, claimants can use different legal orders and normative repertoires (customary law, state (statutory) law) and different forums to justify, assert or protect their claims. Whether and how claims are made, accepted, disputed, or water rights arrangements altered depend not only on law but equally, or more importantly, on social relations between the claimants (relations of power, political rivalry, patronage, kinship ties, etc.). The claimants are influenced more by 'political' considerations than purely legal ones in their selection of law and methods to assert and protect their claims. "The paper briefly reviews the relation between state and locality in the development and control of water resources, especially for irrigation, and several water rights related state laws. This is, followed by a discussion of claims, claimants and the normative repertoires (law) used to justify claims. We then describe several cases of conflicts and disputes between different claimants to property and water rights in a water source and an irrigation system. The concluding section discusses some issues raised by the case study concerning water rights and the study of water rights."
Public, Private, and Shared Water: Groundwater Markets and Groundwater Access in Pakistan
(1996) Meinzen-Dick, Ruth
"Determining water rights in Pakistan is complex, with canal water changing from state to common to individual property as it moves from the main system to farmers' fields. Overlaid on this system is growing use of groundwater that is pumped and owned by those who can afford to invest in tubewells. Groundwater markets, through which tubewell owners sell water to other farmers, have become the major means of access to valuable groundwater resources for those who are unable to purchase wells. This paper examines the implication of water rights for the operation of groundwater markets in Pakistan, with particular reference to their impact on equity, agricultural productivity, and incomes. "Findings indicate that larger and older farmers are more likely to own tubewells, and hence control groundwater supplies. Groundwater markets improve the access to groundwater for small farmers, landless tenants, and younger households. Although groundwater legally belongs to the owners of the overlying land, in practice it is owned by the owners of the tubewells. However, well owners do not charge full scarcity value for the water. Nevertheless, tubewell water purchasers do not have full access rights: they are frequently denied access when water or energy supplies are scarce. Small and younger farmers are significantly more likely to be cut off. This limits the productivity of groundwater for purchasers. "Joint tubewell ownership provides an alternative means of access to groundwater for small farmers. Because shared tubewell ownership gives farmers a stronger right to groundwater than water purchases, it may be a preferable option. However, the transactions costs of negotiating the joint investment, as well as the sharing of water on an ongoing basis, need to be carefully examined and traded off against the gains of stronger water rights."
Emergence of Water Rights in Two Farmer Developed Irrigation Systems in North Sulawesi, Indonesia
(1996) Vermillion, Douglas L.
"This paper examines how a process of trial and error with water allocation and negotiations among Balinese farmers in two newly developed irrigation systems in a resettlement area eventually led to a socially recognized and predictable pattern of water rights and allocation. The traditional rule of water rights which allocate water proportionately to area served was recognized by farmers as a simplistic, first approximation. Farmers considered the proportionality rule, per se, as an insufficient basis to create an acceptably equitable distribution of water in an environment where considerable diversity existed between fields in soils, access to secondary water supplies, distance from the headworks, and so on. Through inter-personal exchanges a set of socially-recognized criteria emerged to justify certain farmers in allocating more than proportional amounts of water. Such criteria constituted a 'second approximation' for more equitable water distribution among farmers."
Changing Contexts, Steady Flows: Explaining Patterns of Institutional Change within the Gravity Flow Irrigation Systems (Kuhls) of Kangra Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India
(1996) Baker, J. Mark
"In this paper I develop a framework for the analysis of change within CPR regimes in order to explain why and how some regimes persist despite environmental change while others do not. I use this framework to analyze the impacts of the rapidly increasing nonfarm employment sector on the gravity flow irrigation systems (kuhls) of Kangra Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India. Based on fieldwork among the 39 kuhls which divert water from the Neugal River just west of the town of Palampur in Kangra Valley, I argue that the potential for caste, class or locationally derived conflict among the irrigators of a kuhl, and the degree of reliance on the irrigation water a kuhl provides, shape the tensions arising from increasing nonfarm employment as well as the means people employ to resolve those tensions. I suggest that the temporal and spatial variation among kuhl regimes in their degree of role specialization and organizational formalization, and the extent of state involvement in kuhl management, reflect the differential responses of kuhl regimes to the stresses arising from increasing nonfarm employment. Furthermore, I argue that the varied roles the state of Himachal Pradesh plays in the management of different kuhls can be best accounted for as a process of negotiation between various state agents and individuals involved in kuhl management. When it occurs, the basis and content of this negotiation and the outcomes in terms of state involvement in water management, are also shaped by local social and ecological influences rather than by the undifferentiated application of a homogenous state irrigation "policy" across a socially andecologically differentiated landscape."
Private Exchange and Social Capital: Multiple Functions of Common Property Regimes in Haiti
(1996) White, T. Anderson
"A great challenge facing CPR enthusiasts today is understanding the conditions in which CPRs can be successful. Meeting this challenge requires understanding when and why individuals choose to create and maintain CPRs. Research in this domain often focuses on the relationship between individual incentives and the output of collective action (e.g. the managed forest or irrigation system). Increasingly, practitioners and researchers realize that individuals often contribute to collective actions for reasons not directly related to the output. This paper describes the findings of research on factors associated with individual choice to participate in watershed management groups in Haiti, as well as the survival of those groups. Results indicate that (1) a substantial percentage of individual participation could be explained by motivations associated with process, rather than the output, of action; and that (2) high levels of pre-existing collective action groups were a necessary condition for the survival of watershed management groups. A majority of participants (and almost all of those who did not directly gain from management) were members of labor exchange groups and farmer associations. Additional analyses indicated that labor exchange groups serve as antecessors of more complex forms of public good-producing groups. This study indicates that the existence of some 'critical mass' of social capital is a necessary condition for successful CPRs, and that in addition to utilitarian functions, CPRs maintain and extend that social capital."
Irrigation Management Transfer in Mexico: Moving Toward Sustainability
(1996) Johnson, Sam H.
"Transfer of the management of irrigation and maintenance from public agencies to water users associations and other forms of local management is a global phenomena. Mexico is in the forefront of this movement as in the past five years it has transferred 2.6 million ha's of its total 3.5 million ha's of publicly irrigated land to various forms of local management. This paper uses primary and secondary data to study impacts of the transfer program on both local users and the National Water Commission. These impacts include changes in agricultural profitability and public sector investment. As the transfer process was implemented as part of a larger structural transformation program in the agricultural sector, the paper also examines the impacts on the local community of changes in the legal status of land and water rights related to traditional communal (ejido) irrigated lands. The final section of the paper explores the longer-term sustainability of irrigation in Mexico and discusses the viability of post-transfer irrigation under local management."
Cambodia's Great Lake: How to Sustain its Ecological and Economic Diversity
(1996) Thuok, Nao; Ahmed, Mahfuzuddin; Nuov, Sam
"Cambodia's Great Lake is one of the most productive freshwater lake in the world. Located in center of the country's north-west plains, its 3,000 km2 waters expand to more than 6,000 km2 area inside the inundated forests, draining about 67,000 km basin area and feeding the Mekong river's flood water through the Tonle Sap river. The inundated forest that surrounds the lake in a diverse ecosystem consisting of hundreds of plant species and wildlife More than 280 different species of fish utilize this forest for at least 6 months for breeding, nursing and feeding during the monsoonal inundation The six provinces that surround the lake have a population of nearly 3 million people (about 30% of the country's total population). About one third of this population live on floating villages around the lake and within the inundated forests. Fishing and foraging for wood and wildlife,combined with occasional fanning form the principal basis of livelihood of the people. Due to the effects of massive over exploitation of the fisheries and destructive practices in the inundated forests, the resources and their diversities are declining, causing an imbalance in the ecological and economic system. The paper describes current management regime, and identifies the factors that have led the current regulatory management through control and enforcement to become ineffective. Likewise, factors responsible for the current lack of incentive to protect and conserve resources of the lake by its current users have been discussed. The effect of continuing destruction of watershed forests and waste disposal, such as, increasing rate of siltation has been identified as a major threat to the lake ecosystem and its diverse plant and wildlife population. The paper recommends for a more equitable fishing rights distribution and development of partnerships between government authorities and the local fanning and fishing communities as an alternative management option."
The Use of a Tradable Permit System for the Control of River Pollution in Wuhan, China
(1996) Jia, Hua Pan
"As a typical external problem, environmental pollution cannot be brought under efficient control in a lassie fair economy. Early in the 1920s, Pigou (1924) suggested a levy on pollution to remove the difference between private and social costs, or external cost associated with environmental pollution. In theory, such a levy is capable of producing an optimum level of pollution, but in practice it has been hardly implemented due to the lack of information on external costs and constant erosion of its effectiveness by inflation and expansion of the economy. A command and control approach is able to protect the environment from excessive pollution, but it intervenes in the operation of the market and causes of inefficiency in environmental management. Late in the 1960s, the concept of pollution permits was proposed, which were defined in accordance with environmental standard and tradable in the market (Dales, 1968). In the early 1970s, the cost-effective nature of a pollution permit system was discussed and demonstrated using an equilibrium analysis (see, Baumol and Oates, 1988). However, this approach as a policy alternative was employed as late as in the 1980s when it was adopted by the USEPA for the control of waste water discharge and emission of air pollutants. In 1988, a pollution permit registration system was put into operation in China but the trade of permits has hardly been institutionalized ever since."

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