Brief description of documents
     
    Title Impact assessment of irrigation management transfer in the Alto Rio Lerma irrigation district, Mexico.
(Research report, 33 pages)
         
    Author   Wim H. Kloezen, Carlos Garcès-Restrepo, and Sam H. Johnson III
         
    Organisation   International Water Management Institute
         
    Year   1997
         
    Summary/
Introduction		        The economic crisis of Mexico in the 1980s led to radical and extensive reforms in its agriculture sector. Among the most significant institutional reforms was the program to transfer irrigation management responsibilities for large-scale irrigation districts from the sole control of the public sector irrigation agency to a joint management arrangement with newly created water user organizations.

     This study reports on the findings of a 2-year field research study started by IIMI late in 1995 in the 112,772-hectare Alto Rio Lerma Irrigation District (ARLID), Mexico. The study tests the hypothesis that, in general, irrigation management transfer (IMT) has positive impacts on operational performance, managerial accountability, O&M budgeting, overall O&M expenditures, cost of water to farmers, and agricultural and economic productivity.

     Each of the aspects evaluated was analyzed for the period October 1982 to October 1996, comprising 10 years of pre-transfer information and 4 years of post-transfer information.

     The study found that irrigation management transfer has had very little impact, if any, on surface water allocation and distribution, and the use of groundwater. Changes, if any, in agricultural and economic productivity and costs to farmers are related to the wider set of neoliberal agricultural and economic reforms that started in the 1980s, rather than to the transfer program per se. On the other hand, there is strong evidence indicating that transfer resulted in improvements in system maintenance and O&M cost recovery.

     Although diverse in the ways it has been implemented by agencies and adapted by users, a number of components characterize the IMT program at ARLID and elsewhere in Mexico:

  • IMT did not come alone, but followed, and was part of a wider set of neoliberal economic reforms.
  • IMT was made workable as it met with a political commitment at the highest levels.
  • IMT was accompanied by the introduction of a new National Water Law that recognizes water rights to water user associations (WUAs), as well as the authority and responsibilities of water users.
  • IMT is a rapid top-down process that has met with relatively little resistance from farmers.
  • New WUAs were given training on system management.
  • WUAs agreed to jointly manage the system with the agency during a fixed and relatively short period of time.
  • The Mexican IMT program aims not to maximize direct user participation in O&M, but to involve farmers in representative governance.

     WUAs in ARLID are still facing a number of problems that need to be resolved to make irrigation management by WUAs sustainable. These problems include: a water law that does not sufficiently recognize water rights to individual users, fee levels that do not follow inflation, high turnover of staff hired by the WUAs, lack of continuous training, and difficulties in identifying new roles that the agency could take on.
         
       

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