PERFORMANCE OF IRRIGATION AND PARTICIPATORY IRRIGATION MANAGEMENT: LESSONS FROM FAO’S IRRIGATION MODERNIZATION PROGRAM IN ASIA

Recent efforts to improve irrigation performance in Asia have to a large extent concentrated on governance and institutional issues through participatory irrigation management and irrigation management transfer. Beyond the objective of improving financing of operation and maintenance of the systems thanks to farmers’ contribution, these reforms were also expected to improve the efficiency and productivity of the systems. Participatory irrigation management, together with demand management, is often the main measure recommended in integrated water resources management plans to improve productivity and efficiency of irrigation. A recent series of appraisals of large and medium-scale irrigation systems by FAO in Asia with a Rapid Appraisal Procedure suggests that participatory irrigation management has largely failed to deliver on all these major objectives. Water users associations created are weak and have little influence on major management decisions and water delivery while chaos – the difference between actual and stated management and operation – is not reduced. On-going efforts in a number of countries are essentially based on the same models and are likely to produce the same outcomes. These disappointing results have led reform promoters to advocate deeper reform on the ground that these disappointing results were due to incomplete reform. This paper argues that, unless significant results are achieved in improvement of service delivery to farmers and water users associations and reduction of chaos, institutional reform will continue to have disappointing outcomes. This will require addressing not only the deficiencies of the participatory irrigation management models presently adopted, but also addressing other factors of poor performance, related to system operation, management and design, as documented by the results of the appraisals of the systems.