Gatot Irianto - Directorate General of Land and Water Management
Samsul Huda - Directorate General of Land and Water Management
Istiqlal Amien - Agency for Agricultural Research and Development of Ministry of Agriculture Indonesia; Jalan Taman Margasatwa No. ۳ Jakarta Selatan – Indonesia.
Hilman Manan - Directorate General of Land and Water Management

Irrigation network is vitally important for distributing water to fulfill crop water requirement at precise timing, quantity and quality to ensure good agricultural production both in terms of quantity and quality. Due to the economical crisis from 1997 up to know, most of irrigation networks in Indonesia have been deteriorated, and are not yet performed well till present. This problem causing the system of irrigation networks are unable to fully provide water demand sufficiently. For resolving this problem, an integrated approach and effort are demanded to save the existing water, rehabilitate irrigation networks and sustaining irrigation management for future generation. Irrigation development in Indonesia has been started since The First Long-term Development Plan, during the period of 1970-1990, technical irrigation areas have increased more than 2.6 million hectares from 1.5 million to 4.1 million hectares. Under this achievement, rice production was reached to a magnitude of 15 million ton/year, and by the year of 1984 Indonesia has attained self sufficiency in rice production. Unfortunately, this self-sufficient condition can not be maintained for a long time, and instead Indonesia has been transformed into rice importer. The decreasing of water quantity, quality and continuities are amongst the important constraints of the transformation into rice importer. Accordingly, a strategy needs to be formulated in order that the function of the existing irrigation schemes could support providing irrigation water in accordance with the economic time horizon with proper management to ensure its sustainability. For this, the basic concept of integrated approach under the era of regional autonomy will be discussed in this paper. This concept is divided into three major aspects, namely: management, integrated, and revolving fund system approach. Due to the past planning and development policy of irrigation, which emphasized the “top-down” approach, the entire management on irrigation networks became the government domain, with very limited involvement of the farmers as the end users. Incidentally, however, due to continuous financial crisis, the government could no longer fully provide the operation and maintenance costs. On the other hand, the management transfer of irrigation to the farmers, are not acceptable, having understood that the government should take the full responsibility for developing and managing irrigation. Based on this experience, participatory approach among the stakeholders on planning, development and management should be strengthening.

Integrated Approach, Sustainable Irrigation Management