Mirshoja Mir Charkhchian - Senior Expert in Social, Economical Department, Yekom Co., B.Sc. in Management

To make proper decision on irrigation management transposition, "sustainability in irrigation management" and specifically participatory irrigation management, which is the result of transposition program should be taken into consideration. In irrigation management transposition process, as the management transposition mechanism and the assured responsibility delegation method are important, the sustainability and persistence of activities are the main issue. Specially, since the stakeholders as the future caretakers for operation and maintenance of irrigation installations do not have enough experience for the acceptance and performance of the given responsibilities. Therefore, the persistence of these activities in the form of new operational system, which is the subject of sustainable management, is focal point of the transposition program. The main elements in the sustainable participatory irrigation management are: 1) Strategies; 2) Training and Extension; 3) Monitoring and valuation. In all the three abovementioned main elements, it is recommended that the rational advisory models to be substituted for the common governmental trends, which requires: - In policymaking, new guidelines with no consideration for administrative caution, but correspond to requirements of local developing society to be submitted; - In training and extension, in addition to formal education in agricultural and irrigation activities, the issues relevant to reconciliation of technical specifications of the network with social requirements of an operation unit to be clarified for the stakeholders. - By the assistance of a specialized support system (e.g. in form of a nongovernmental specialized/advisory organization) a diligent plan for monitoring and valuation of the performance of modern management to be designed to overcome the conditions resulted from establishment of the participatory operational policy instead of the past one. In this article, each of the main effective elements of sustainable participatory management have been analyzed, the limitations and strength points described along with the required organizational relations

Sustainable Participatory Irrigation Management