IRRIGATION MANAGEMENT TRANSFER: MONITORING AND EVALUATION CONCEPTS AND APPROACHES

Irrigation Management Transfer (IMT) from Government to users has brought many benefits including improved management, lower overall management costs and empowerment of local people that has multiplier effects in community – building and quality of life. Experience gained and learned lessons indicate clearly that institutional reforms towards participatory management of irrigation systems require a learning process that should involve representatives of key stakeholders. Different stakeholders will have different and potentially competing interests in the process, outcomes and possible impacts of the reform and, accordingly, IMT creates a new form of organization where much uncertainty is involved. Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) can play an important role in reducing the level of uncertainty about IMT and in bringing to light objectives and timely information about how IMT is being implemented, what outcomes are emerging and, eventually, what impacts are realized. Evaluation findings can enable policy-makers to assess whether the reform was appropriate or not and to give realistic answer to the question: “Are we doing the right things or the wrong ones?” M&E together enable us to judge the IMT process, though it implies designing an M&E system that is complete, concise and valid. This is what will be highlighted and discussed in this paper.