Brief description of documents
     
    Title Demand Management of Irrigation Systems Through Users' Participation.
(10 pages)
         
    Author   David Groenfeldt and P. Sun
         
    Organisation   Economic Development Institute, now part of the World Bank Institute.
         
    Year    
         
    Summary/
Introduction		        In most developing countries, irrigation related projects are constructed and managed by government authorities such as irrigation departments. Conventional wisdom has assumed that only the state was capable of handling large modern projects requiring heavy capital investment, complicated technical inputs, and the legal mandate to distribute water, and collect fees. This government dominated approach may be referred to as supply-oriented management of irrigation systems. Under this approach, the government agency supplies not only the water, but also the system managers, and the operating rules.

     Recent experience challenges the monopoly of government-supplied management. The record of government management is poor; irrigation systems often poorly maintained with steadily deteriorating infrastructure. Yet some of these same systems show dramatic improvement when their management is transferred to water user associations (WUAs) who then select their own managers. This situation, where the irrigation users determine who their managers will be, may be referred to as demand management. The WUA enters into a contract with the government for operating and maintaining portions of the system or, the entire systems. The WUA has the authority and the responsibility to operate its system as it desires, and to hire its own management and other technical staff. Both the manager and the staff are then accountable directly to the farmers they serve.

     The theoretical advantages of this approach are simple: farmers who depend on irrigation water for their livelihoods have a strong incentive to manage that water very carefully. No public sector agency could ever match the discipline that farmers impose on themselves when they manage their own systems. Under the demand management approach, users through their associations make management decisions for distributing water, maintaining systems and collecting fees, while government plays a supportive role.
         
       

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